These few weeks we have been in Nepal have been so spontaneous and Spirit led, and it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced in my walk with the Lord.
What we have been doing this week is going to slums and playing with the children there. We have also had the opportunity to go into these places called “cabin restaurants” where the women that work there are both waitresses and prostitutes.
In the first slum we went to we were able to see the peoples living conditions, which was basically a mud floor, tin roof, and maybe cinder block walls if they were lucky. The first slum we visited we were able to talk to some people that were from India. We played a couple of games with the children there and took pictures with them. We only spent about 20 minutes in the slum, and there was so much joy on all of the children’s faces. I believe that we were able to bring the light into the village. A lot of the children don’t attend school during the days and they actually go out into the streets of Kathmandu and beg for money. The organization we are working with will take a lot of these children in and give them an education and a stable Christian home to live in. Many of these children’s mothers are working in “cabin restaurants” or selling their bodies and their fathers are abusive, so the children resort to living on the streets and begging for money. When we went into the slums we were able to play games with the kids and we gave them candy and teach them about Jesus. The children have so much energy and really short attention spans, which led to some chaos during the games. Some of these children just wanted to be held and hugged or for you to hold their hands. Many of the kids were fairly small and a lot of them were young and some of my team had actually met them while they were begging on the streets.
For the “cabin restaurant” we were told that we may not even be able to go in and talk to the girls that work there. The Lord allowed us to be able to go in at a time where there were no clinets, and we met this beautiful girl (I’ll call her’N’) who is only 22 years old, and she has an 18 month old son who she brings to work with her. We asked her pretty surface level questions about her life and what she does for fun. Before we went to the “cabin restaurant” our guide told us that many of these women in this industry say that they have husbands that are “abroad” which means that these men spend a few weeks with them and then leave and go back to “work abroad”. We asked ‘N’ what her hopes and dreams are and she said when she was younger she wanted to be a teacher, but now she just wants to be able to give her son a good education. She said we were all so friendly and she seemed to be so happy to see us there. She had a beautiful smile on her face the majority of the time we were visiting with her.
What breaks my heart is that this industry seems to be these women’s first resort rather than their last resort. I just want these girls to know that there is a God that loves them so deeply and He will provide for them and give them a hope and a future. They seem to be so focused on the day to day business rather than the big picture. I want them to know that there is a bigger plan for their lives and they don’t have to be stuck in this industry forever. It breaks my heart that these women who are so young and they think that this is a sufficient lifestyle. However, we are supposed to meet with ‘N’ at a park so she can bring her son, which is so exciting! Please be praying for her and her son as we go to meet them on Monday.
