Hey there everyone. So I come to you today in complete honesty. It’s usually really hard for me to admit when I’m in pain, but today I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It was definitely the hardest day on this trip so far for me.
So we’ve been living in Kathmandu, Nepal for about 6 days now with a mega-team (my team and one other team are living together with one host), and we’ve been doing ministry every day since the day we got here. Katmandu is the 5th most polluted city in the world; you could definitely say our lungs have been hurting. The kinds of ministry we’ve been doing have been completely different everyday. One day we went to an orphanage and danced, sang, had our hair braided, and just played with the kids. Another day we held a house church and I led worship and gave my testimony. Two of my other teammates also shared a testimony, and I think we all walked away extremely encouraged. We also visited and prayed over a really spiritually dark Hindu area with temples and alters one day where a lot of suicides are committed.
Then yesterday we walked up and down a small mountain twice, which in total included about 10 miles of hiking, partially in the hottest part the day. Our destination was a church down in the valley on the other side of the mountain than we were. We worshipped Nepali-style (with handmade instruments including bells and drums), and we gave more testimonies. Then right before we left, we had the chance to pray over the pastor’s daughter who had been almost completely paralyzed since birth, but a few years ago a different world race team prayed over her, and now she can move her arms and legs. And she can actually understand what people are saying even though she still can’t speak.
The ministry has been really amazing and eye-opening. The church we went to in the valley was made up of people who had been very rooted in Hinduism before and even included a man who had been possessed by an evil spirit for years. He went to many Hindu exorcists and people who performed witchcraft on him to free him of this spirit, but nothing worked. Only when he came to the host pastor we’re staying with was he freed (the pastor is a super sweet man, and we call him papa because he wants us to all be family in our time here). So papa was able to free the man from the evil and darkness inside of him through the power of Jesus, and the man turned to Christ immediately. He has been going to the valley church ever since.
And now that you know about ministry, I’m going to tell you about today. So today was our first off-day. It was immediately following the 10 mile hike we did yesterday, and I went to bed sore and woke up even more sore, and I was aching everywhere. This is no exaggeration. But it was our off-day after all, so I decided to push through and go to the tourist city Thamel that everyone else was going to for the day to do some shopping and exploring. I felt decent for the first half of the day, despite the aching, soreness, and I had also developed some fairly intense stomach pains that would come and go. But still I wanted to push through and I didn’t want to hold anyone else back.
So after we’d been in Thamel for about 8 hours we started to head back home in a micro-bus. Basically it’s a van that should probably only realistically fit about 8 people by US standards. But here in Nepal they like to stuff all 12+ of us inside. So on our ride back I luckily was able to switch with a squad mate and sit in the front passenger seat that they shove two people in. It was an ok ride at the beginning despite the giant potholes and insane air pollution that got worse when we got closer to our home in Katmandu. As we got about half way I was feeling really hot, and my stomach pains had upgraded to me feeling like my stomach was turning, and I was having sharp pains at the same time. And then when we were almost home, traffic got really bad and we weren’t able to cross one of the wide dirt roads in order to turn right towards our house. So we had to pull over to the opposite side off the road and wait for an opening. The thing is, the traffic didn’t move for probably a solid 30 minutes, and then we still couldn’t get across because drivers here are very aggressive.
I was sitting in the front seat squished and unable to move, constantly hearing honking and smelling exhaust that made me feel like I couldn’t breath, feeling pain all over, being really shaky and feeling really hot; I felt so stuck, and instead of suppressing like I had been for the past few days, I couldn’t help but run everything that was and had been causing me pain over and over again in my head. I let it all flood in for the first time in a long time: my body hurts so bad, I miss home so much and the comfort there, I probably won’t see most of my squad mates very much if at all after the race, I don’t feel in control at all, I’m sick of fighting so hard every minute to be present, I hate this heat, I can’t sleep well here, the list went on. I almost broke down sitting in that car. But I didn’t let myself.
I made it all the way back to the house before I fell down on my bed (which is actually just a row of very thin mattresses on the ground that we all sleep on) and I curled up and couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. I started shaking even more and I couldn’t stop hyperventilating. I felt even less in control and in more pain than before and it just kept spiraling. I was sick of holding it together. It’s been so hard to press through these past few days and things just kept building up making it harder and harder. My team eventually came in the room a few minutes later and saw what was happening. They comforted me and tried to calm me down.
I had never had a panic attack before so I didn’t really know how to deal with it, which honestly just made me freak out even more, but my teammates helped me take deep breaths, and they just sat with me for a while. Papa also ended up praying for me which helped. For the rest of the evening I still couldn’t stop tears streaming down my face almost constantly, and my body was still so achy it hurt to move at all, but my breathing had calmed down for the most part and I wasn’t quite as shaky. Then it came time to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I would start crying even more and my breathing would get faster. I tried to fall asleep many times but then I felt like the Lord wanted me to write a blog post and just get it all out of my head. So here I am, and I must say I feel better having written it all out.
Honestly I still feel pretty terrible, but I know the Lord is in control. I would really appreciate prayers right now for this sickness, as well as for staying present and being able to push through these next few days and weeks; I will be here in Nepal until the beginning of June and then will be heading back to the US. Thank you so much for all the support you all continue to show me.
