Our time in Nepal is over. It has been packed with every sort of thing you could imagine. In the first week I spent alot of time going back to temples I had been to my first time through Kathmandu four years ago. I ended up seeing the Kumari goddess face-to-face. Definitely one of the most spiritually heavy environments I have ever encountered. If you haven’t read it yet, you should check out my blog about her. It is called “Weeping for Hope”…. No, really, go read it.
We continued to our ministry housing by week two. The next few days consisted of prophetic acts throughout the city. We visited temples and laid down rocks that we had written characteristics of God on. We proclaimed them over the country of Nepal and did many prayer walks through Buddhist and Hindu temples.
During week three we found ourselves working along side our host in slums and cabin restaurants. Some of us spent time sipping sodas and becoming good friends with girls who have been sex trafficked. Visiting their work places, being crammed into the same small 4×4ft cubicals where men come to order services from them. Others of us dispersed down into the slums to sing and play games with the most povertised children you could invision.
This last week, we have broken up and done a range of things: kid’s camp, women’s camp, painting, slums, cabin restaurants, writing a book, interview films, and farming/partaking in a 24 hour prayer tower that has been in motion for 17 YEARS with physically and mentally disabled people who have been shunned by their community. Whew!
Hard things have been seen. I worked in the slums nearly the whole time. The last day I was there was so emotionally trying on my heart. I wish I could bring you there to stand and look around for just a moment so you could feel it. You walk below a bridge alongside of a trash rotted river into what holds the appearance of a landfill. It smells like nothing you have smelt before. Puddles of black water with sludge in them gather in divits of dirt. Metal sheets are stacked side by side to form walls for the small shacks that so many people call home.
In the distance they will start to come. Some shirtless, some pantless and others with nothing at all. When they get closer you will see the filth on them, the rashes that cover their arms, the snot that is ever-dripping and crusting on their faces, the size of a babes bony little malnourished limbs, wounds that seem infected and odd growths. When they reach you they will grin and lift up their arms asking to be picked up. Once in your arms they will do one of two things:
1) Throw their heads back to hang upside down and giggle
2) Wrap their arms around your neck without a single smile or sound and rest their head on your shoulder for a moment of affection and rest from you… like they have exhaustedly waited for that moment all week.
There is no structure for them. A fight always breaks out. But you get to pray over them, teach worship songs and tell Bible stories. Our ministry hosts have a small room there that they use for a school. Some of the kids attend it. They are always looking for ones to rescue into Christian homes through adoption. The long-term effects are slowly but surely amazing.
There is no other way I would have wished to spend my time here. Walking away from those kids the last day of ministry was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Leaving them in that hole just hurt. When I reached the top of the bridge and looked out over those homes one last time, my heart slowly ripped straight down the middle. I felt the Lord’s heart for them, and it is a severly broken one.
However, we are moving on to Thailand rejoicing in the breakthrough of our cabin ministry. Three particular women that were befriended during this time decided they wanted a new life. A group of our squad was able to raise enough money to pay off these women’s debts to their boss AND find them new jobs!
Let me tell you something… If anyone ever tells you that short-term missions (or one month in one place) is not long enough to make an impact, you tell them they are wrong.
You should never put a time limit of capability on God.
Rejoice with us that three of His daughters have been shifted out of a life of sex trafficking! Purely through befriending them and taking time to tell them they are WORTHY.
During this, all squad month, we have experienced no privacy. I am living on the first level of a house in a room of 25 other girls where we sleep on the ground in close quarters. We have shared the stomach flu in ways you don’t want to know while having access to one toilet and one squatty. Did I mention the lice outbreak we had from our slum ministry? But I urge you to ask if we really cared. Any of us would tell you that it was absolutely worth it. It’s been real, Nepal… I won’t forget your country’s sweet faces that I fell in love with this month.
Coming for you, Thailand!
