After
four days of debrief in Hyderabad, India, our squad picked up and headed for
Nepal. I cannot explain the wave of
relief that swept through our ranks the moment we stepped off the plane into
eighty degree weather! Nepal is the most
beautiful country we have been to yet, and the city of Kathmandu, where we
landed, is surrounded by green mountains on every side. In the evenings, you can see the majestic,
snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas towering above the clouds on the
horizon. Breathtaking!
View from my window… unfortunately you can’t see the Himalayas in the picture, but they are amazing!
For our
first couple of days in Nepal, the two other squad leaders, myself, and Steve
(our logistics guy) took some much needed R & R in Thamel, Kathmandu. Thamel is the tourist district of Kathmandu,
and the streets are lined with hostels, restaurants, and stores beckoning you
to trek the Himalayas or tackle class V rapids.
Every third or fourth store sells cheap Northface gear to outfit you for
such adventures. It took amazing
restraint not to go on a Nepali-shopping spree!
Nepal is my kind of place!
On our
third night in Thamel, we decided to meet up with a YWAM team that was in the
area. YWAM (Youth With a Mission) is
another Christian organization which aims to share Jesus with the nations. Their team, composed of about 20 young
adults, had been in Nepal three months.
Steve, Courtney, and I met them at 8 PM in the center of bustling Thamel. We introduced ourselves (it is always fun
meeting other missionaries on the field!) and then split up into groups of four
to start our “treasure hunt”. In YWAM
lingo, a treasure hunt is defined as a ministry where you listen to God for
clues, and then go out in faith to tell other people about Him and bring the
Kingdom. You never know where a treasure
hunt might lead!
Naturally,
we began our treasure hunt by forming a circle and praying. As the twenty of us held hands, music blared
from nearby bars, men stumbled in and out of surrounding brothels, and God
began to reveal how He was going to bring the Kingdom to Thamel that
night! Before we even finished our
prayer, I noticed a street kid crawling into the center of our circle, face
down, with his hands clasped in prayer.
Within a minute, six street kids were in the center of our circle on
their faces crying out to God. We didn’t
say one word – they just showed up. We
laid hands on them as tourists began to stop and wonder what was
happening. One minute, we were a group
of twenty Christians on the side of a busy street, and the next minute we had
attracted a crowd of fifty or sixty people.
I can’t describe what happened.
Part of the crowd we attracted as we were praying over the street kids!
The police came… seemed alarmed,
and then pulled out their cell phones to take pictures. Everywhere I looked, people were approaching
us to ask for prayer. Two Hindu men come
up to me. I asked if they knew Jesus and
if I could pray to Jesus for them. One
of the men said that he has had a really sharp pain in his side for weeks. I prayed for him, and a minute later he
looked up at me, wide-eyed, and said, “It’s like a miracle… my pain is gone!” I
told him about Jesus, he sincerely thanked me, and then disappeared into the
crowd that had formed around us. There
were probably about fifteen street kids with us now, many tourists, and tons of
local Nepali. All of them were hearing
about Jesus and receiving prayer.
When the street became too crowded
for cars to drive through, the police told us we had to disperse. I went with four people from the YWAM team to
buy dinner for the street kids. I have
never seen a more rugged looking group of children. The pack leader was probably about
sixteen. A couple of the kids were
huffing glue, and all of them were a canvas of scars. One of the boys had been severely burned, and
he wore a hoodie to conceal his grotesque face.
We sat down for dinner in the dim lighting of an outdoor
restaurant. I was dumbfounded as I
watched these kids eat. Stick-thin,
ten-year-old boys shoveled down two heaping plates of rice and dal by the
handful. They ate like animals, not
children. Yet, after dinner, one by one,
these gruff boys asked us for prayer.
They bowed their heads as we prayed over knife wounds, or stomach cramps
from untreated disease. My heart broke
for these boys who had been abandoned to the streets.
After dinner, we found a one-legged
Nepali man begging for money in an alley.
We prayed for his leg to grow back. It didn’t, but he seemed touched. We bought him dinner and talked with him for
a while. As we were talking, some of the
street kids we had fed earlier came up to us and sang us worship songs. I have no idea where they learned these
songs, but they sang to Jesus with their eyes closed, arms raised, and FULL of
passion. I suspect that these kids,
though they steal, do drugs, and get in fights, bring God more glory than many
people who sit in church on Sundays – myself included.
After a few songs, it was 11 PM,
and we were going to go meet back up with the main group when we got
sidetracked. One of the girls felt like
God was telling her that we should go into a nearby bar. We walked up three flights of stairs, past
the neon-orange sign, and into the smoke-filled bar. Immediately, I recognized a girl in the
corner of the bar. A couple of us went
over and asked if we could sit at their table.
It turns out that the girl, and her two friends, were seniors at
UW-Madison, the college I had just graduated from. 7,554 miles separate Madison and Kathmandu,
but that does not stop God. We shared
the gospel, I told the girl about my Christian organization back on campus, and
she expressed a lot of interest in the World Race. She showed a lot less interest in the Nepali men they were with. I could tell that God was moving.
It was past midnight when we finally
met up with the main group. Everyone had
similar stories of divine encounters.
One YWAM girl stood on stage in a bar, sang You Won’t Relent by Jesus
Culture, and then talked about how God would never relent in pursuing the bar
patrons. Another guy walked up to a
tourist and asked if he had an uncle with cancer that he could pray for. He did.
When I finally crashed on my hostel bed at 1:30 AM, I felt like
electricity was coursing through my veins.
How had I thought for so many years that Christianity was dull? How had I thought that Christianity was about
a list of rules? Thank God that is a lie…
Thank God that my savior is alive and
moving. Look out Nepal, God is HERE!
Prayer request: I need to be fully funded by July 1st! I still have about $1,800 to raise. If God leads you, I would be so appreciative of any amount of support – just click the “Support Me” tab on the left-side of this page. He will provide! Thanks =)
