Do you ever find yourself lacking trust in the Lord in hard times in life? Have you ever seen how the Lord needs to wake you up in an odd way and simply show you that you need to trust Him? Well the Lord did that for me this past month in Nepal and it was a hard reality that the Lord will work in my favor and the favor of others if I simply have trust in Him.
I am going to tell you a hard truth of the world and that it is an evil place that needs love and hope that only Jesus can bring. It all started at a cabin restaurant, sadly I could not go because of a sickness that had hit a lot of people in our house but the rest of my team went and it changed the lives of some girls who work there. Now if you do not know what a cabin restaurant is I hope that you pray for all the girls that work in them. They are all over Nepal and are such a casual thing that just breaks my heart, it is a place where men go into these restaurants and pay for food and drinks and for the waitress as well. The booths in these places are big enough for the men and there women and it is a dark place fueled by evil. Now my team got the chance to pay for something to drink and have a conversation to some of the women working there. They got to know them and share the word of the Lord with them and also pour into them with love and the women agreed to meet up with them again! I wish I could have gone to the restaurant but I guess the enemy has great timing for sickness. About a week after my team went we got told we were going to meet them at the zoo by our place and hangout with them for a few hours as our morning ministry. We would be going with Ruth who helps run the ministry we work with her husband and she would be there to translate and speak life into the women as well. As we were leaving we got a phone call from Ruth saying we would be going to there house instead, so she picked us up in taxis and off we went. We arrived in a different city not to far from us and one of the girls came out to greet us. Now I had not met them yet but they gladly let me come in without meeting me before. There were only two girls who where there and they both lived together in one room with a bed, a stove on the ground and a bathroom located outside of there room. We all sat down on a blanket next to there bed and started to talk. They were very open about things that they were going through such as how one girl had left her husband and children in the village she had lived in because her husband found a new wife, and the other girl left her village to simply find work.
Now as the conversations kept going we were able to talk about Jesus with them. It started with Ruth simply asking us to pray as they talked because of language barriers but it then turned into a teammate of mine, Allison reading to them a story in the Bible. They did not ask many questions but you could feel the Holy Spirit entering the room. We all started to speak life into these women and shortly after we asked the girls if they wanted to accept Christ into there lives and one quickly agreed. Before she did this she confessed that she did not know if she could be a Christian if she still made bad choices with drinking and smoking and then I got to share my testimony to her about how the Lord had saved me from a life of bad choices involving those things and how He is the ultimate redeemer of our lives! We all sat there holding hands and praying as Allison with the help of Ruth translating helped the girl give her life to Christ. We all could feel the Lord moving. We then asked the other girl who was there if she wanted to give her life as well and she said she was already a christian but still was willing to rededicate her life for Him!!! Such a blessing to be apart of there lives getting changed.
After all of this we ate lunch with them and they told us they wanted to hangout with us for the rest of the day. Now we quickly found out that if they missed work they would most likely get beat up by there boss and it made us all un easy but they wanted to go see things and just be with us and we all knew it would be a great day. Once lunch was finished we headed out to have a day on the town! We made it to a site where the earth quake had destroyed a large tower and then we made our way to a mall near by. As we entered it was awesome to see how the girls had never been to a place like this as well as had never rode on an escalator which was fun to watch them ride it! They had said that they wanted to see a movie which we agreed to, but we had time before then so we decided to go bowling before the movie! Which was again a first for them and it was an awesome time! We then made our way into the movie which if you have never sat through a 3 hour foreign movie it is not as fun as you think it is but we saw how much the girls enjoyed it so it was a blessing…but after the movie it was time for us to go. We had meant to spend maybe 3 hours with them and it turned into a 10 hour day! As we were waiting for there bus to arrive we all had the reality hit us that they would have to go back to work in the morning and probably get beat up. It was a hard thing to think about because we all hear stories of these things happening but after being with them all day it was harder to know what they would have to endure. We all said goodbye not sure if we would see them again and with heavy hearts we started to pray that job opportunities would come quickly for the girls to get away from the cabin restaurants.
We luckily got to see them again just two days ago and we were able to share some more encouraging words before we leave this weekend for Vietnam, but we also got to bless them with coats because neither of them had one and it gets so cold here. We also got to meet there friend who is expecting and not sure what to do with the baby but we got to pour into her as well and tell her God will provide and protect her and the baby! We got to get a jacket for her as well which was a way for us to explain to them what Christmas is about and why we celebrate it. It was cool for us to give them a gift that they could remember that Jesus Christ was born and that this is why we gave them these gifts!
Leaving them knowing it most likely would be the last time we would see them was hard. We all hugged and walked away to find our bus and it hit me. Now someone as myself who feels things so deeply was hurt. I did not want to talk to God at the moment to see what He had to say because He would obviously be right but my emotions were just too much for me to handle. We had been praying for the past week and a half for our ministry host to find them a job that would pay as much and be better for them, but nothing had turned up yet and I was so frustrated. How could the Lord not quickly answer our prayers and give these girls the jobs they deserved. A thought simply came to my head, Trust is a valued character trait often lacking in today’s world. We have to learn to trust God in every circumstance and in every area of our lives. And well I was rocked. I had not truly been trusting that the Lord would comfort me in these hard times and be with the girls after we left them. How could I be so hard on the Lord when I know that He will one day give them a job and comfort them in a way that only can come from trusting the Lord. I know that I needed that because it is a hard thing for us in this day to understand that we need the Lord and His love and comfort that can only come from trusting and believing He has greater plans for us! I wish I could say that a job has become available for them already but I guess that is where trust comes from. I know and TRUST the Lord will bless these girls simply because they believe He loves them. I can not thank the Lord enough for helping me through knowing that there are hard and dark places in this world, but this is why I am ready to show the love and hope that the Lord offers everyone.
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all you ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”
