On our trek to the Tsum Valley, a very remote region of Nepal that you can only reach by hiking for days, there was a day where our team split up. The sick half of us stayed back from trekking for the day in a village called Chumling, while the rest of our team continued one last day of hiking up into the mountains before we were able to trek back.
While recovering in Chumling, we decided to take a few hours of the day to wander into the middle of the small farming village, where trekkers normally don’t go. We wanted to share Jesus in some way, not knowing what that might look like. As we walked, the village seemed to be almost deserted. Most people were not sitting around but were working in the small fields in the mountainside.
When we had walked through the entire village, we came across a field on the other side. Working in this field was a mother, whose two young boys were sitting among the crops playing with each other. The young boys stared at me immediately as I walked into their view, and though neither of them smiled, their eyes were locked on me. I began to wave at them and loudly exclaimed, “Namaste!” No response. Not even a joyful flicker in their eyes. I continued to smile, wave, and do anything I could think of to make them smile. Still no response.
Until one of them picked up some dust from the ground and threw it towards me…
So I kind of shrugged my shoulders, bent down to pick up some dust, and threw it back… and I was blessed with some shy smiles! So we continued throwing dust towards each other until dust turned to pebbles and pebbles turned to rocks. During this whole silly rock tossing activity, they kept smiling and giggling at me, at first trying to hold it back and remain serious until they didn’t even try anymore. It was so sweet, and the boys’ mother would look up from her work every so often to see her boys having fun with this crazy trekker and she would smile.
Although there were not many people in the village and those in the village could not speak our language, we were able to share Jesus through our love and joy, a few mediums that transcend all language barriers. My prayer is that those children felt loved and that their mother saw something different in me, and that she heard through others in the village of our faith in Christ. (Our trekking guide, Bharat would tell everyone we met along the trek that we were believers, even though he was a Buddhist. Pretty cool!) Whether we made an impact or not, I feel content in knowing that God had us there for a reason, and He always provides the results. Even when its through something spontaneous and bizarre like throwing rocks back and forth with children! I only have to provide the love and the obedience.
“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.”
1 Corinthians 3:5-9
This is just one of many moments that we were blessed with during our Legacy Journey in Nepal. If you’d like a closer look into our team, our struggles, and the lessons God taught us through it all, you can check out the three-part video series that Kaydan made here:
Meet the Team
We Didn’t Plan for This
Finding Joy in the Journey
(Updates on our time in Malaysia and Thailand coming soon!)
