Tibet was filled with so much Power and Spirit, but this is our favorite story; the story of who I’ll call the Games family – where playground tactics won the hearts and minds of a family of Tibetan Buddhist Monks.
I’ll precede the story with a statement on the power of healing. I don’t pretend to be an expert on healing, the Spirit, or God, but I do desire to be an expert in obedience to God. It’s a lot easier said than done, but it all starts with faith. Faith that God is just and powerful (to name only a couple relevant attributes). In the Old Testament (OT), we learn about Mt Sinai and Mt Zion – revered places of prayer, worship and experiencing God’s glory because of the geographic high ground that would literally and figuratively bring people closer to God. In the New Testament (NT) Jesus explains that faith can move mountains. The statement is literally “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted to him” (Mark 11:23). A common interpretation is that we do not need to be on a mountain top for a spiritual connection to God; that with true faith, we can bring the mountain top anywhere and He will meet us where we are – that the power of prayer can bring us to know and experience God anywhere. Keeping that in mind, here’s a blog about healing by one of our teammates. I must admit, I’ve seen it on television and held reservation and doubt. Then when a friend I trust shared her experience, and we got to share in it with her, my life was changed. Since then, prayer for healing has become a normal part of experiencing God – I have experienced healing, Victoria has experienced healing, we’ve each prayed for healing, and we’ve each seen healing. Now, here is the story about the Games family.
Norbulingka Palace is a beautiful place, but on a day to celebrate Buddhism, spiritual oppression was apparent. We toured the area and found specific ideas we could pray for (discussed in our previous post). We also encountered a little girl I’ll call “Talker”. Talker was an eleven year old doing eleven year old things when Sam, our team leader, asked to jump rope with her. Sam has a tendency to borrow things and use that as her/our way into conversation. 60% of the time, it works every time. She’s got some wild stories using this tactic. So jump rope got the team involved with Talker, her siblings and her cousins, all of whom have monk parents. The team was invited to sit with the family – grandparents, their adult children, and the grand kids. All in all, it was probably fifteen people. We were fed tea and bread and invited into conversation as the team continued playing with the kids. We spoke to the adults through a phone app called Google Translate. We would type in English, it would translate to Chinese, then Talker would read it, then translate Chinese to Tibetan to share with her family. It was amazing. Then she would do it backwards and we’d receive what they were sharing in English text through the app. This went on for probably close to an hour as we shared each other’s company.
Eventually, Austin answered a question with “We are followers of Jesus. Do you know Him?” to which the obvious answer was “No”. Boom. Door Opened. We spent the next while explaining why we love Jesus, what He did for us, and the authority that resides in us through Him. The monks seemed to comprehend what we were saying, but that was a lot of pressure to put on an eleven year old in three languages… so we showed them. Sam asked if any of them had any pain. The grandfather and patriarch, we’ll call him Grampa, indicated he had pain in his knee, so we asked if we could pray for him. He said yes and being honest with myself, I had a moment of hesitation and probably fear – what if it didn’t work, what do we do if it does? I decided either way it didn’t matter, we are only the vessels of God’s work. We aren’t responsible for it working or not working, only to be there for Grampa as God has asked of us. So the men laid hands on the monk’s knee and the women laid hands on us. Austin prayed out loud, the rest of us prayed silently. We said “Amen” and slowly raised our heads. A tense moment went by before we asked “how does it feel?” Grampa indicated there was no pain! He seemed confused and shocked as he explained to his family, who shared his surprise. Then he asked us to do it again for his ankle. The team looked at each other, then assumed the same prayer posture and prayed again. This time, not surprised, Grampa stood up, shook his leg and danced around for all to see. Again matching the grandfather’s disposition, the family celebrated with him!
In that moment, we knew the Games family needed more resources to learn about Jesus. Cool story though – we left the Bible at the hotel, almost two miles away. As we were talking through our options, the Games family shared that they were leaving at 6pm – in about three hours. Three hours may sound like a lot, but navigating a foreign city on an irregular bus system is tough in three hours. As a team, we came to this decision – Victoria, Jewel, Sam and Austin would stay at the festival with the family to remain in conversation while Hannah and I bust a mission to the hotel to pick up a Chinese Bible for our new friends. I say “bust a mission” because we were almost two miles away and didn’t know the public transportation system… so we ran… on day one… at 12,000 feet elevation. #stayhard. We would have made it, but we hit a speed bump when cops yelled at us for running in the street and I tried to jump a fence onto the sidewalk right next to a police checkpoint without my passport. The message from that story is 1. always have your passport 2. use police checkpoints, not fences 3. take your team treasurer (Hannah) everywhere. We got out of that predicament by eventually finding a cab that could take us where we needed (boy was that tough to communicate though – our hotel was down a series of alleys). So we got the Bible and along the way, bumped into another team that happened to have a Tibetan New Testament in video format on them. We took that too.
Once we got back to the palace, the team was basically best friends with the children – they had learned games, taught games, and genuinely loved all of them while the parents joyfully observed. We came together as a team to pray more, love each of the Games family individually, and express our gratitude for being welcomed into their family space, sharing their community with us, and allowing us to share Jesus with them. We presented the Games family with the New Testament video and they began to read about it as they expressed their thankfulness. The Chinese Bible went to the eleven year old – a beautiful little girl that has such a heart to serve others. We prayed for her specifically; that she might have the confidence to read and study on her own to learn of the fulfillment, direction, and leadership God provides. She sat down and began reading.
We left the Games family shortly after, but that would not be the last time we saw them. We met them again at the exit of the palace. Then again at the bus stop. Then again as our taxi pulled up next to theirs in town. They continued to share in and return the joy and excitement we had each time we saw them. We don’t know what will happen from that experience and we’ll probably never get to go back to Tibet to find out, but the Power of God that brought us to that moment is truly incredible. The most isolated city of the most protected region of the most politically closed country in the world, and we were able to share the Gospel. A family has a New Testament. An eleven year old has a Bible. Praise God.
