I’m in the land of Buddha!
Nepal is a beautiful country. My team and I get to see mountains, farms, really cool buildings, and of course more mountains! We had a rough few days of travel at the beginning of the month. I am most positive we stayed on a bus about 46 hours. On our way to the border our bus got rear-ended by a truck but that didn’t stop us! We fixed the back door and kept on to the border. At the border we switched buses to take us to Katmandu. After a small ride and arguing for our bags we made it to our place of rest. Thankfully it was a place we could rest for a day and then head out to ministry.
Here is the point in my blog where I hesitate…
my team and I were praying and this phrase came up again “WITHOUT HINDRERANCE.” It’s come up many times for me throughout my trip…clearly God is saying something. It’s from Acts 28:31. This is how Paul lived. This is how Jesus lived…A life without hindrance…
This month I worked with a school in a village. This is Buddhist country so many are Buddhist in the village. Nepal also has some influence of hindu as well. My day to day ministry was teaching to kids. We taught everything we could think of; English mostly, math, motion songs, the alphabet, and as many creative/active games we could think of. Some afternoons we would organize a vbs for the kids at the church. Most of our time was spent pouring into our contacts. We found ourselves being used most with them. My new team is made up of some awesome people and the Lord used us and our struggles and joys to give to them. Most days I would say it was difficult to be in the village for me. In India I lived in a village and this was much the same. The time in our schedule allowed us as a team to get to know one another and get to get to know our contacts. Our main contact was a guy who is married with one kid and one in the oven. His wife is currently 7 months
pregnant! The other couple is young, recently married 6 months ago. When you live with people for a few weeks you can pick up on the actions or demeanor. We began to see some of these things. We knew that our contact wasn’t well, his wife is sick and pregnant, he has a school to run, and six foreigners just invaded his house. After a week of living in the village it was clear why we were there. For them. I didn’t experience much of Nepal culture or meet people in the village. Our contacts needed to be loved on. They needed some truth to be told to them; people to be honest with them. They need prayer and for the love of Christ to flow in their marriages. My team and I could have spent our days JUST teaching or JUST playing games with the kids but we chose to step out even if it was awkward. That is where Christ’s love flows all the more abundantly. When we love even when it’s uncomfortable. We aren’t perfect beings but when we try Christ meets us and gives us words to say.
I know you may not think anything is weird about what I said but it is if you were looking for some crazy experience I had in Nepal. Sometime ministry looks different than what we expect. Some people read these blogs expecting just that; a radical encounter. Something I’m learning more and more, especially as a leader is that the actual ministry we do here is not near as important as the PEOPLE we do ministry with.
So walk as Jesus walked…without hindrance.
