(Due to my lack of internet and not so subtle hints that I need to update my blog more often, I’m posting two blogs now)
The first week in Nepal, we had the opportunity to go to
meet some foreign prisoners in Kathmandu and just provide some
encouragement. The four of us
girls talked to three prisoners, but I really spoke with the two men from
Nigeria. They have been in jail
for 4 years 8 months, and have a total of 8 years to serve. After they have served 8 years, if they
can’t pay the $7,000 fine (which they can’t) they have to serve an additional 4
or 5 years. The men say that they
have been accused of being accomplices to a drug crime that they are innocent
of. Since it’s not a political
crime, they said they have no way
of fighting it. These two men were business men back home. They are now in jail with terrible
living conditions… with a majority of the people only speaking Nepali. Their wives left them. They can’t communicate with their kids
or any other family/friends. They
have no family now, but they still have their faith in God. They use being in prison as an
opportunity to praise God, minister to other prisoners and lead bible studies.
On our way to Chitwan (5 hours from Kathmandu), there was a
7 year old girl in the car with us.
We had assumed that she was a daughter of one of the men in the car who
is affiliated with Prison Fellowship Nepal. Halfway through the trip, Dinesh (our ministry contact)
informed us that we would be stopping shortly to pick up two more abandoned girls.
He thought they are about age 5 and 7. Their father died and so they became homeless when their
mother remarried. The two girls we
picked up only speak their caste system dialect (not Nepali). Everything that they have ever known is
gone. They were put in a van with
a bunch of people they don’t know (including 6 Americans), to go to a place
that will now be their home for who knows how long.
God has great plans for all of them. The men in prison are taking advantage
of the situation, and I pray that all the girls do the same. Everything on this earth up to this
point may have failed them and abandoned them, but God has put them in a home
where they can really to follow Christ.
When everything/everyone else fails them, they can look to their
Heavenly Father- they can put their faith and hope in Him because He will never
let them down. He will never
abandon them.
