Hello from the Top of the World!
(Well, sorta)
I am in Nepal, home of Mount Everest.
This past week has been the best week of the World Race for me.
Signing up for the Race, Nepal was one of the countries I knew the least about, but it has quickly become one of my favorites. The food here is delicious, the markets are cheap, the country is gorgeous, the dress is colorful, the children friendly and respectful, but most of all these are some of the most beautiful people I have ever met!
This month my team is partnered with one other team, and we are in the Sarlahi district of Nepal, a couple hours away from the Indian boarder. We are not in the mountains, however, but in a village in the flat lands where it is very hot and humid, surrounded by rice fields, corn, water buffalo, and other crops and livestock. We are housed in a Christian school of about 75 students. In the evening near sundown we hear the Muslim call to prayer from the mosque, and then throughout the night we hear the songs from the Hindu temple.
One team is doing evangelism this month throughout this village and other neighboring village while our team is working here at the school, showing kids the importance of education and teaching in the classroom.
This week, we had the opportunity to hike up some of the foothills to the Himalayan Mountains with a few fellow Christian believers. There are less than 2% Christians here in Nepal, and we got to hike with these men and women, who were reaching up towards 60 or 70 years old that make this hike every week to fast, worship, and pray. It was an incredible opportunity and I was so blessed by it! Our group even had the chance to sing How Great is our God–one of my all time favorite songs. I’ve sang that song in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, I’ve sung it with thousands of other believers at the Passion Conference, I’ve sung it in foreign languages, and now I’ve gotten to sing in across the world in the Himalayan Mountains!
We’ve been able to go on prayer walks through dusty rock dirt roads in the hot sun through rice field to remote villages where we would sit under a tree for rest among the women of the village who gathered there. I felt like Jesus with the woman at the well. We were invited to a couple people’s houses to be refreshed from our journey with Nepali food.
These are the places I have desired to be for a long time–in the 10/40 Zone where there are literally thousands of unreached people groups!
But more than that, part of our main ministry is to put on human trafficking awareness campaigns. Human trafficking is rampant here, with hundreds being trafficked each year from Nepal to other countries like India or to the Middle East. (When flying to Nepal, we had a layover in Qatar. We were told that although Qatar and the Emirates are very rich, most of their labor is not done by natives to those countries but is actually produced by foreigners, many of whom are subject to human trafficking and forced labor.) Even children as young as 5 years old are trafficked from villages like the one we are staying in.
We have been able to put on one Anti-Trafficking Program already, and will be able to do at least one more this month. I was able to see the beautiful faces of these women, young and old, and children, both boys and girls. I saw these women, the beautiful dignified people, and I saw the possibility of where trafficking could lead them. It was an honor to be able to sit in that little room with them, listening to their stories and being able to give them the knowledge to avoid this modern day slavery.
In this culture where Hinduism in the primary religion, girls are told from a very young age that they are not part of their family. They are told that when they get a little older, they will be married off and become part of that man’s family, so many families here see it as a waste to give girls an education or anything else because someone else will be reaping the benefit. This leave many women without an education, dependent on others for money, and therefore at much higher risk for being trafficked. On top of that, they are without a sense of loving security from their family of origin.
Recently, God has been teaching me about what it means to find our identity in Him. “Identity” literally means “the state of being identical.” It is the state of being individually unique in a group of others similar to you. So often we tend to seek our identity from other people, comparing ourselves to others and seeking our worth and affirmation in others. But the Bible tells us where our identity comes from, who we are identical to:
“ ‘Let us make man in our own image,
in our own likeness’…
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
(Gesesis 1:26-27)
Our identity, our dignity, our self-worth comes from the very fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God. This is the message that I and my team get to bring to these beautiful people of Nepal!
Thank you for making this possible!
Thank you for your love. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your prayers.
You have helped make some of my greatest dreams come true, and you are helping save lives—saving practically from enslavement through human trafficking in forced labor and prostitution, and saving spiritually through the Good News of Jesus Christ!
Praise God! Hallelujah! Amen!
