I will never forget this day because of the helplessness I felt sitting on that bed. They thought I had the ability to help them, to give them a hope and a future, not realizing I was just as helpless.
Pooja and Sweetie are beggars on the streets of Kathmandu. Their days consist of constant rejection and reliance on the compassion of strangers to give their family a hope of survival.
Kelsey, my team leader, met Pooja one day on her way to the market. Pooja, a young mother of two, is very beautiful and extremely intelligent. She moved to Kathmandu from India to get away from her husband and is now living alone with her mother and her two boys, ages 3 and 3 months. She lives in a place called Indian Village, located on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
On this day, Pooja invited us to her village for tea. We all crammed into the back of a taxi and were off.
Indian Village is a collection of 40 one room cement homes, all connected under tin roofs with no insulation. it was very rainy in Kathmandu during the time of our visit making the dirt pathways slippery and wet but even still everyone in the village was out and about. Kids were running around in the mud, women were doing laundry in small buckets outside or cutting fresh vegetables for dinner.
Sweetie, a short woman with a huge smile, is a friend of Poojas who has lived in Indian Village for many years. Today she so kindly offered up her home for us. Her home is a modest room with one window, one propane powered stove, a dresser, two chairs and one king size platform with rugs on top—their makeshift bed.
Sweetie and her four kids— three boys, two of which are teenagers, and one six year old girl— all share this bed each night. Her children don’t go to school because school is 4500 rupees each month in Kathmandu (around $38USD) and the free government schools are too far away. As a beggar, Sweetie has no way of giving her kids an education.
Sweetie ushered us onto her family bed while she and Pooja got busy mixing spices, chopping vegetables and preparing homemade ginger milk tea. Meanwhile, we were swarmed with children playing my uke, showing us their toys, and practicing counting in English. We would count all the freckles on our body until we got to ten and had to start over, because one through ten was the extent of their knowledge of English.
The women, still hard at work, would often send one of these neighborhood kids to the market to grab fresh ingredients and more spices.
I was astounded that these women, who had so little, were preparing an unbelievable feast for us.
When our meal was ready, and we all sat on the bed gorging on chicken masala with roti (similar to Indian naan but smaller and thicker) and fresh veggies, we shared stories with Sweetie and Pooja about Jesus. We told them how He has touched our lives and how He can touch theirs. Pooja and Sweetie, who are both Hindu, listened politely while they ate.
As our meal concluded and we were all stuffed, Sweetie explained to us her hopes of one day owning a shoe shine box so that her son can make a living without an education.
Shoe shining, they say, is a great business in Nepal. A boy will sit outside with his shoeshine box and shine the shoes of travelers, making anywhere from 1500 to 3000 rupees a day (roughly 13-26USD)
Sweetie begs to show us the shoe shine box, in hopes that we can help them afford it. Not knowing what to say, I said yes. She thanked us profusely and ran outside to grab the shoe shine salesman.
When the boy came in toting the box, we all gathered around. Looking up I saw so much hope in these people’s eyes. Sweetie’s oldest son kept saying ‘thank you, thank you’ to us. To him, we were going to get him this box. His lack of education now would have no hold of him. He would be able to provide for his family, he would be able to send his siblings to school, his mother would no longer have to beg on the side of the road.
But as they were unpacking and marveling at this box that could make their lives so much easier, I wanted to sob. I knew we couldn’t afford this box. I had very little rupees to my name and $74 in my bank account. I could not help them get what they thought they needed. And I knew we would have to endure their disappointment when we told them that we couldn’t give them the one thing they thought would save them.
This made the one thing I had to offer even more special. The one thing that would surely transform their lives the way it did mine.
Sure, the blood of Christ won’t buy them this shoe shine box. But it can get them so much more.
I wanted to stand on that bed and scream at them. Listen to our stories about Jesus!! He loves you so much!! He can help you!!!!
But the reality is, if you don’t know Him—if you don’t know the amazing love of the Father, His ability to provide, His ability to comfort, then they really are just stories. When you are struggling to survive you are looking to satisfy physical hunger, not spiritual hunger.
At the end of the day, all we could do was pray for them, give them what little money was in our pockets, and be on our way, hoping that the seeds we had sown that day would be enough.
Walking out of that village, with the little six-year-old’s hand clutched in mine as we walked toward the taxi, I was overwhelmed with sadness. My whole body hurt. I wanted to throw up. I have been praying incessantly for God to show me His heart for his people. And wow He sure did. I could feel what my Father feels toward his children who are lost. He weeps for them. His heart breaks for them.
He really did show me His heart. It sucked.
