Our ministry contact this month in Nepal is Megh Gurung. I pray one day that you all will get to meet someone as cool as him. His story is inspiring and I hope it encourages you.
Megh grew up in a Buddhist family (2 brothers, 3 sisters, a mother and a father) in a remote mountain village called Fulkharaka, Dhading. His village was filled with either Buddhist or Hindu believers. At the age of 8 he attended a small gumba or a monastery for one month. Tradition was to dedicate your middle children to God. One lama taught them about Buddha throughout the day, but this lama in particular liked to sleep a lot so that’s what they did also. The children then went home at night, but in larger monasteries the children stay the night and live there as in a dorm.
As part of his religion, his family had a Buddha statue made of stone with a bowl of water in front of it. This bowl of water was an offering to the Buddha to drink. The bowl was always to be full with water. At the age of 15 he accidently dumped the bowl of water over and it spilled. His mother beat him for this and out of anger he then kicked the Buddha statue over. His mother yelled at him and told him to bow down before the statue and ask for forgiveness and he wouldn’t. She told him he’d die and be cursed. He was sure that God would punish him for this. Over time nothing happened to him. The statue just laid there and God did nothing. From this time Megh stopped practicing Buddhism.
At the age of 26, after being married to Vhim and during Vhim’s pregnancy with Subash, a village friend picked up a track (a pamphlet with info about Jesus) from the road and, being illiterate, he gave it to Megh. On the pamphlet, John 14:6 was written, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” As soon as Megh read this he was filled with a good feeling and kept this pamphlet with himself always…in his shirt pocket, under his pillow. He kept it for one year. This is the first time he’d seen anything of the Bible and anytime he read it (which was often, especially when he was upset or not feeling well) it was ‘so nice’.
A year passed and he ran into a friend in Kathmandu. This friend invited him over for food and began talking with Megh about Jesus. His friend opened his Bible and read Megh the exact verse he had been clinging to for the past year…John 14:6. At that moment he decided to stop drinking, which he did heavily, and stop getting into fights. He then accepted Jesus. He stayed with his friend for a few days and bought a Bible. He then went home and with such excitement (trust me…Megh has a lot of energy) he told Vhim about his experience and he told her he accepted Jesus in his heart and she rejected him. After 4 months Vhim accepted Christ and Megh prayed for her.
After becoming Christian, Megh converted his elder brother to Christ 7 months after he became a Christian. One year after he became Christian, 2 neighbor families came to Christ. Megh then began a house church with these 2 families. This then grew to 5 families, then 6. People in his village started getting unsettled and even upset at Megh’s practices. For 3 months they would throw rocks into his windows, come over and kick and beat his family. One day Vhim and her friend were home and a group of people came and grabbed them by the arm and hair and dragged them down the road until there wasn’t much skin left by their ribs. This all led to a village meeting, where all 3000 people met to discuss Megh’s family and the other 6 Christian families. The meeting turned into a brawl and half the village supported Megh’s family even though they weren’t Christian and the other half supported the persecutors. They began fighting to near death and the Megh-supporters were destroying the persecutors. Afterwards the persecutors asked Megh and his family for forgiveness and paid for Vhim’s doctor bill and her friend’s bill. An attorney had the persecutors sign a document saying that they would never persecute Megh’s family and the other Christians again.
All of those who persecuted Megh’s family (about 50 people), except 1 family, are now Christians. Megh’s mother and father became Christian after 5 years. Now all his siblings except 1 sister are Christians by watching the way he lives his life. Now Megh has started 4 churches within villages and is pastor of the largest one, with over 100 people…the one we have had the pleasure of being a part of this past Saturday.
In 2000 Megh began seminary school and got certified as a pastor.
Right now he is praying about finances to buy land for a church in the mountains, where there are now 72 Christians.
$1300 land
$1500 tin roof
$500 toilet
$1700 stones, sand, cement for building
$5000 total
His family is also praying for $18,000 to build another story onto their house to support missionary visits.
