Nepal has been my favorite month on the race thus far. It’s not that we have been over loaded with ministry or there has been adventure after adventure. Maybe it’s all the beautiful people. Maybe it’s the hospitality of our hosts. Maybe it’s the beauty of being in the Jungle when I was expecting to be in the cool mountains. I don’t know, but God has me here and I’ve loved it!
This month expectations have been thrown out the window time and time again and I keep allowing myself to fall into the trap. We were told before we left India that we would be working with youth ministries. I didn’t really care what we were doing I was just so happy to leave hot India and work in the cool mountains of Nepal. Then we got to our big ministry contact here in Nepal and we were told all about doing ministry to shed light on human trafficking and to show women and young girls how important they are. In the Hindu religion (80+% of Nepal) they see women as objects and not people. Parents will sell their young daughters to be slaves or even marry them off before age 10. They believe if they marry off their daughters before puberty then they will go to heaven. In the villages parents sell their daughters so they have money to change from a straw roof to a tin roof. 12,000-15,000 Nepali girls are trafficked to India each year. They even allow mothers find out the sex of the baby while she is pregnant and if she has a girl the mother can abort her just because she doesn’t want a daughter. Hearing all of that disgusted me and I was really excited for ministry to start. I couldn’t wait to go into the villages and love on the girls and share how important they are and share the love of Jesus Christ to them.
Yet again, expectations shattered when we arrived to Haripur, Nepal. It was not what you would picture Nepal at all. It was hot and there were no mountains. We are in the jungle and are just above the India border. It’s safe to say we have been put back in India for another month. We find out ministry for us is at a school where the children were on vacation until the 15th, so we had about a week and a half at a school with no children. Our ministry was to weed the garden and paint a classroom. Thennn, mind you this is a Christian school, we find out we are not allowed to talk about Jesus Christ because the parents get mad when the kids come home talking about Him. I was in shock!! I thought to myself, “you mean to tell me I cannot mention the name of Jesus at a Christian school, isn’t that denying Christ before men?” I did not have a good attitude about it at all. We as Christians should not be afraid to talk about our Savior…especially at a Christian school.
God had to remind me that He has us here for a reason and we still had a room to paint. The task was to incorporate the alphabet and numbers on the wall to help the children out. We thought of a theme for the room and were hesitant, but prayed and brought it to the headmaster of the school. HE WAS OKAY WITH IT!! What was it? Well, to incorporate the alphabet we have “The A,B,C’s of the Good Shepherd” A-almighty, B-beautiful, C-compassionate, etc. And to incorporate numbers we have the parable of the Lost Sheep. On one wall we have a pasture with 99 numbered sheep. The next wall has Jesus looking for the lost sheep (#100) and you can see it in the distance. Then you see Jesus holding the lost sheep (#100). When the children see it they will ask who the man on the wall is and what the sheep mean and there you have it! It’s an easy way to bring the gospel to the children and then the teachers can show them attributes of the “man” (Jesus) with the alphabet. Quite genius if you ask me! It reminds me of the Bible verse Matthew 10:16-“behold, I send you like sheep among wolves: be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” This Christian school is placed in a village (wolves) where they don’t accept the name of Jesus Christ. The school is very cautious to keep the parents happy so the government doesn’t come in to shut the school down. When I heard that we couldn’t mention Jesus I was upset, but I now understand that we are only here for a month and change takes time. When our team leaves the school is still here and we had to keep in mind not to start an uproar in the community by just doing it anyways. Doing that would have done more harm than good. Jesus gave us the perfect way to ease the gospel in to the children and I’m excited to see how things will blossom in the years to come.
Matthew 18:10-13 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.”
No matter how many times we wander astray Jesus will always come find us. It’s up to us to answer his call. Will you?
