“Hey, Himal!” I yelled to our trekking guide who was walk/running a few hundred feet in front of me, “Did you know that God created these mountains we see here just so that you could hike through them and be super happy?”
Himal stopped for a minute and looked around. He smiled at me and said, “Not just for me. For everyone.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I replied, “but also just for YOU!”
Himal smiled.
Little did I know at that moment that that small remark about God’s creation would kick off a 20-minute conversation with Himal about how good our God is, how deeply he loves us, and how Christianity is unique amongst all other world religions.
Let me give you a little bit of backstory. A few people on my squad had met Himal at his trekking business a couple of weeks ago while we were on debrief. Something about him—maybe his love for Nepal, or his genuine, toothy smile—caught their attention. Ever since that initial encounter, they had this desire to use him as a guide for hiking into the Himalayan mountains. So, our first free weekend rolled around & I invited myself to go with the group on the mini-trek.
It was a 10-miles-up and 6-miles-down, 5000ft of elevation gain, one night at a tea house type of thing. Not going to lie, I semi-regretting going a couple times on the way up, but the views and the conversations that I got to have with my squad-mates & Himal made it all worth it.
On the way down the mountain on our second day, I was praying that God would give me the perfect opportunity to talk to Himal about Jesus. I knew that other people in our group had been talking and sharing with him the previous day, but I just felt that there were still questions that he wanted to ask about Christianity. So, when I saw him walking in front of me, happy as a clam trekking through the Nepali countryside, I felt the small nudge from the Holy Spirit to strike up the conversation.
The best part about it all? IT FELT SO NATURAL!! I could tell that the Lord had ordained this moment because Himal was the one who was initiating the conversation through his interest about what me and my team believed. All I had to do was be curious and honest—two things that I love.
After my initial comment about how amazing creation is, and how God made it for Himal, he asked if me and the group of people I was with were Christians. I, of course, responded with a resounding “YES!”, and followed up with “What about you, Himal, what do you believe in?”.
He explained to me how he believed that all religions were the same, and that he followed all of them. He didn’t think that one was right and another wrong, and that basically they all aimed at getting a person to the same goal: to live a good life & to be a good person. He talked about how if you live a good life this time around, you will have a better life next time. His words were laced with the sad reality that he believed that the weight rested solely on his shoulders to earn his way into a better life. The gods that he knew were far off and cold. They looked at humanity with greedy eyes, and were judging our motives and actions at every turn.
Once he was finished explaining this to me, I told him that I believed Christianity was different than all other world religions. I described how the saving work of Jesus on the cross is offered to us for free, and how God’s grace is so unfathomable that it covers everything that we have done wrong and everything that we have yet to do. I told him that there is no good or bad thing that he could do that would make God love him any more or any less than he does at this exact moment. With the biggest smile on my face, I told Hamal that God loved him so much, and wanted to have a relationship with him. I explained that unlike the 330 million gods in the Hindu religion, God wanted to live with him and talk to him daily.
Himal looked at me after that and said, “I think you’re right. That all sounds very good.”
Yet there was still some hesitation when I asked him if he wanted to invite Jesus into his heart.
I asked Himal if he had a Bible, and he proceeded to tell me that he had gotten a very nice Bible from a Christian sponsor in the United States. He told me that as a child his family had not been able to afford to pay for him to go to school, so he was connected with a program akin to Compassion International, and a Christian woman from Florida had paid for his education. This blew my mind!!!! God has been after this man’s heart from the beginning. It is no coincidence that he was sponsored as a child and no coincidence that God had brought our group to his trekking company the week before.
Before everyone else caught up to us, I told Himal that he should try reading his Bible again. I said that Romans was a great book for people who have questions about Christianity because the writer explains the whole thing in a way that is easy to understand. I asked him to pray that the Holy Spirit would speak to him through the words written on the page.
I am confident that more seeds were planted during this time, and still more watered. God is so clearly pursuing this man’s heart, and if I know anything about Him, I know that he will not relent until Hamal knows the Truth. Please join me in praying for more divine appointments in Hamal’s life. If I don’t see him before we leave Nepal, I am so looking forward to seeing him in Heaven.
