Another one of my favorite moments of Nepal was talking and meeting a young man named Aaron. He was a 13 yr old who just started coming to church 2 weeks before we came to his village in Kaladha. His family is completely Hindu and he has never heard of Jesus until coming to the church at Bharat and Shova’s home.
To be honest I believe that it was only by the Lord that he started coming to church. He got invited by Bharat (the pastor) and was very curious about Jesus so he has been coming and learning. The day that I met him, I was preaching for the house church and at the end of the service we prayed for the people who came to church.
I got the chance to be the one to pray over Aaron. The pastor’s wife, Shova, told me he started coming to church even though his family is very against him coming and against Christianity. She said he was very interested in Jesus and has been enduring his family’s scrutiny to come and learn about the love of Jesus. I began to pray for this young man and as I was praying I just felt like he was a young King David, a man after God’s own heart. I felt that he would be a man that no matter the circumstances would serve the Lord and be devoted to Christ. I also prayed for his family to desire Jesus and support Aaron in his search for Christ.
Later that afternoon my team and I walked were going to be speaking at a youth service and that required us to walk 1 ½ hrs to get there. The youth from our village joined us as we walked and Aaron was one of the youth too. As we were walking I felt like I needed to encourage and tell Aaron what I saw in him while I was praying. Shova began to translate for me, so I began encouraging him to keep following Christ, to know that he has a destiny with Christ, and to not allow his family to stop him. I told him I saw in him a heart like King David in the Bible. The crazy thing was he had never heard of King David or knew any stories about David! So I began to share with Aaron about David’s life as a young man being a shepherd and how God chose him out of all of the Israelites to be king because of his heart for God. I told him how he became king, and got to share the story to this boy for the first time in his life! He was listening so intently and smiling the whole time as I continued to compare the story with David.
On the way back from the youth service the Lord gave me the chance to walk with him and Shova all by ourselves again for the last 30 minutes. So again I got to share with Aaron the stories of David. I told him the story of David and Goliath and how David clung to the strength of the Lord and was able to save a nation because of the faith he had in God.
For some reason walking through the jungles of Nepal with this young man brought me so much joy and hope in what God is doing in this generation. I got to share the stories of David who was a young shepherd boy, the lowest in his family, a nothing to the world, yet a man that the Lord used to change a nation and continues to use through the Psalms. It no longer became a “story” I read in the Bible, but a life that had been used by God just like Aaron will be.
THE BEST PART!!
We left his village and on our journey back from the other mountain villages, we got to see Shova one more time. As she was saying bye she told me that Aaron’s family had come to church the next week and were all now interested in Jesus and wanted to baptized!!! His father was also leaving to work out of the country and asked the Pastor to take care of Aaron for him. In one week the Lord changed his families hearts!! This young boy is going to change not only his family for the Lord but his village, and nation!
Its amazing what one prayer and one person can do…never under estimate your abilities to bless a life for Christ!
