Month eight, Nepal. It is the last country in Asia and I couldn’t help but feel like the Race will be over soon. I wanted to see more of God, experience more of His greatness and just try my best to live the fullest everyday. Surely God is good, He again came through by giving me one of the most memorable experience on the Race (and in life). I went trekking in the Himalaya’s mountains for 11 days and saw things that I will never forget.
This is the second time of “Manistry” month since Malaysia. Three men from my squad combined with eight other men from R squad to do ministry for a month. It was awesome to walk through a month journey with all the Christ-like men, challenge, pray for, and confess to each other. It was fun! It was much needed after being with female teammates 24/7 (Don’t get me wrong, I love the girls. They are incredible). As 11 men came together in Kathmandu, we prayed and discussed our plan. Many ideas came up but most of them were trekking. I thought “Of course I would love to do that. Com’on! Who wouldn’t want to do that in Nepal! But how are we gonna pay for it?” Trekking is expensive, depends on the location, it usually costs over $400 plus gears and tips for the guide (you have to have a guide in order to trek). Well, God is the God of the impossibles. We started a fundraiser and it reached half of the goal within 5 days. We decided to trust God for the remaining funds and signed up for the trekking.
The place we went to called Langtang (it is almost pronounced as “long time”). We chose this locations through the trekking company we prayed and decided on. We wanted to reach the local people who lived in mountains that never heard of Jesus. Packed up things we needed for 11 days and little did we know how super physical demanding it would be. I am physically fit and work out regularly but the trek was something else. We woke up 7 in the morning for breakfast, hiked 3-4 hours, lunch, hiked another 3-4 hours, dinner, slept like a baby, and next day did it all over again. It was difficult because of the weather conditions too. Most days we were drained in sweat and rain, it got much colder as we climbed up higher altitude. The hike itself was another hard part. We walked in river that was freezing cold with barefoot, places where landslide had happened and we were told to talk fast, and raging rivers which could easily drag us away. I don’t intend to exaggerate the difficulty of the hike, it is just what it is.
(This river was ice cold because the water came from top of the mountain where snow accumulated. Usually there were supposed to be any river like that but it happened due to the heavy rain)
(This was one of the scary part where we had to balance on rocks and log to cross.)
Climbing over the mountains was hard, but the view was definitely worth it. I witnessed nature I only saw on National Geographic. Often I would stop and just admire God’s creation. He loves me so personally that He took me into His nature and let me enjoy the surroundings. I was in awe when I stood in front of mountains, it was so tall and huge and it goes on till my eyes couldn’t see. The rivers were so wide and furious, the clouds were so close I could tell the details so well, the night sky was like a dark cloth covering the whole earth. A night I was standing next to the locals as they built a gigantic bonfire, gazing at stars I could hardly count, “The night sky is lonely, I bet not many people pay attention to its beauty.” I thought God may feel lonely too, all these creations, all these goodness He desperately to show us, yet we are too busy focusing on ourselves. I began to relate where bible talks about when Jesus went into the wilderness. During day hike, I got to be in constant prayer and worship. At night, I got to sit in quiet studying bible, no phone, no wifi, no technology. If my God could create these magnificent views, why couldn’t I trust Him more with every worry in my life? In front of a great God, my problems suddenly seemed small.
You may be wondering, why exactly God called us to this trek. Reaching the unreached was harder than I thought. Many locals we spent time with were the staffs/owners of the guest houses we stayed. Language was one of the difficulties, many locals weren’t actually Nepalese but Tibetan. Luckily I was always mistaken as Nepalese, they often invited me to the kitchen where they work and sleep to have tea and chat. We prayed for few of them but it was almost impossible to share the gospel without a translator. This is where I need to talk about our trek guide – Bharat Gurung. He works as a guide for 18 years, knows all the trails in Nepal so well, even treks for days when he visits his parents who live far away. We found that he is also a believer on the second day. He shared a lot about his family, his job, political view……but not much of his faith. I knew God wanted us to encourage this brother in Christ, we needed to show him that being a follower isn’t just a title but a lifestyle. He went from watching us pray to praying with us to asking for prayers for his family. He told us we didn’t need to pray for the locals because they were Buddhists to witnessed God’s love is for everyone. He went from respectfully treating us as his normal customers to allowing us to be his friends. On the last few days we told him that we would like to stop trekking because God called us to minister to the people instead. He was shocked, he worried that we wouldn’t experience the best with the amount of money we spent. We showed him that people are more important than adventure to us. We spent our last few days in a small town, connected with a church, met more locals and prayed for them. We trekked 51 miles, reached over 13000 feet, but the unreached was right beside us the whole time, it was our guide.
(Our guide and the church we connected with)
Greatness isn’t reaching the highest of the mountain, it was loving that one person. Greatness may not be converting a group of people to Christianity but pouring into the people right next to us. Trekking in the Himalayas is an experience that went above and beyond my expectation, because God was there.
Thank you for reading and please pray as I only have three more months left on the Race. Also some of my teammates are still not fully funded!! YES!! They NEED your support in order to finish this journey. Please help and share. Praying that God will show you some cool stuff today, have a blessed day.
Go to these links and donate to those are fully funded:
http://rosaleite.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=bio
http://caseyring.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=bio
http://mhairimcfadyen.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=bio
