“Mahima grew up in a village with her parents and two brothers. Life was hard for them, since they were poor. When she turned ten years old, a man came to her village. He offered her to take her to Kathmandu to study. She came with him, but she didn’t end up in school. He took her to a carpet factory.She often got beaten up by the owner of the factory. One day, he tried to rape her. People heard her cry, so they cam to see what was wrong. He blamed Mahim,a of being the one who tried to molest him. Her friends told her to run away, and she ran. Without knowing why, she had done nothing wrong. She was just an innocent girl. She came to Kathmandu where a woman found her and connected her with the Agape family.
Mahima became like a leader among them. She was used to tough labor, so helping out with cleaning and cooking was like a picnic for her. She accepted Christ, and got baptized. She is everywhere all the time, serving in a beautiful and loving way.”
– Excerpt from ‘Higher’ by Nicolina Hellstrom & Emma Svensson
I wanted to share this story to give you a better picture of the family that we were adopted into during our time in Nepal. Many of our Agape family who we did life with for the month of November come from broken pasts; some have escaped entrapment in the sex industry, others have run from abusive relationships and many have been rejected and cast out by family as they have accepted Jesus as true Lord and Savior. Now they have become each others new family, living in community under the same roof. Because of their pasts they are passionate about sharing Jesus with others and they have eyes to see the people others might overlook; the children living in the slums, the sick who fill the hospital or the young girl on the street corner trying to make a living. We simple joined their day to day walk for a month, loving the children who came to their slum ministry and joining them on many prayer walks. According to the world’s standards we didn’t accomplish much, but we listened to the prompts of the spirit who lives within in us and saw through His eyes the people unseen by the rest of the world.
We invited our new ‘family’ to celebrate American thanksgiving dinner with us 🙂
