Hey guys, how’ve you been? I’ve been in Nepal if you didn’t know yet. I have been living here for a month and this is the first time i have had my laptop since arriving in the country, so sorry for the lack of updates!
In Kathmandu my team and I have been working with a Nepali organization that specializes in rescuing young women and children from high risk environments, teaching them english, and introducing them to Jesus. We have been able to teach english a few times a week to the older women and sit and talk and play with the younger girls. They are so vibrant and full of life considering their upbringings and backgrounds, and the older women are so eager to learn despite our lack of qualification in teaching.
It is really eye-opening to see what you read about in National Geographic and hear about in the news happening in real life. Another part of the ministry we are doing is going into cabin restaurants and talking to the women who work there. Cabin restaurants are little bars/restaurants where the price of food includes the price of a woman. You can assume what happens thereafter, and its gut-wrenching. The women that we got to visit were the sweetest, most generous women I have ever met. Thankfully there were no customers at the time, so we got to have a longer visit. One of them, Grace*, has a daughter who is nine years old and isn’t in school, so she has to come to work with her mother 10+ hours a day. Its awful, but there are so many people trying to extract her from that situation. The other woman working there, Joy*, is 19 years old and grew up in a Christian village, but feels now like she can’t believe in God anymore because of her work. My teammates and I got the privilege of speaking life and truth over her and encouraging her that God hasn’t stopped loving her and is still pursuing her even though she feels worthless.
We also get to visit the same two or three slums every week. We do songs, skits, and games with them all while being their human jungle-gyms. It is the most exhausting and also most rewarding ministry I have been a part of so far on this trip. These kids make fun of us in broken english and sing-song Nepali and we teach them the love of their Abba, Father.
Shouts of “OH LAY LAY CHIKKI CHANGA” and “Jesus Loves Me” echo through the narrow alleyways that separate their little stone and aluminum houses, and I am taken aback by the love of my Father. That he would love me enough to transplant me from my life in Omaha, Nebraska, into the slums of Kathmandu, to bear witness to the Gospel. My life is a reflection of GLORY and RIGHTEOUSNESS, just because I died to my own desires and laid down my life at the throne of God. Wow.
That’s all for now, folks! I’ll try to make at least one more post before I leave on the 27th!
P.S. I lost my phone so I lost pretty much all of my pictures of Nepal so far. Check out my Instagram story highlights (Nepal week one-four) to see a little bit of what my life looks like :).
