The Month I Always Forget

Somehow, I always forget about Nepal. My mind goes straight to Thailand. I have to keep reminding myself that Nepal comes next. But for some reason it still keeps slipping my mind. And before I know it, I found myself on a flight to Kathmandu. Because I spent so little time thinking about it, I didn’t really know what to expect. Once we landed, a squad mate asked me if was ready for Nepal. I said no, but that’s just because I hadn’t really took time to prepare myself for the country. I only had a vague description of our ministry and my month long YWAM experience in Darjeeling (which is mostly Nepali even though it’s technically still in India) to go on. Not that much really.

And it’s because Nepal wasn’t on my mind that I’m curious what God is going to do. It turns we weren’t working with the ministry we thought we were, but instead are working with New Light Nepal. It’s an organization that fights sex trafficking of both women and children. My team and two other teams will split up to focus specifically on prevention and awareness. I had no idea how big of an issue trafficking was in Nepal until now. Either traps are set for young women or families sell their children for a new roof (or something similar). It floors me that this goes on. I’m so excited to be working with a ministry close to my heart. Children’s ministry is always great and has been our focus for the last three months, but fighting trafficking is something that gets me fired up. This morning our contact, Bhuvan, gave us our briefing. We learned more about our ministries vision as well as the issues in Nepal such as child marriage and trafficking.

One of the most simple yet profound things Bhuvan said was that trafficking is a spiritual issue. The UN has a strong presence here to do something about it, and it’s not working. Jesus is the answer. When minds are renewed with a healthy Christian view of the value of women, young girls will stop getting sold by their families. Hinduism perpetuates the cycle of trafficking. But with Jesus, We can cut it off at the root.

We are in the village Kothe now where we are doing our ministry for the month. And in case you were wondering, Kothe is in the middle of nowhere. But it is beautiful. We live next to river and are surrounded by mountains. In between doing our anti-trafficking programs, we hike every day to different believers homes to encourage and pray for them. Sometimes they are the only Christians in their village, or even their family. Sometimes they suffer persecution. It is amazing work we get to do this month.