I gasped for breath and force my aching legs up the last ten feet of what Americans call a mountain but Nepali’s call a hill. I collapsed to the ground as I guzzled the last drops of water from my Nalgene. For five hours my team Lumos and I had been hiking through the Nepal mountainside with Pastor Uncle as our guide on a journey to an unreached village of Kaihrang.
Roughly an hour earlier we had been ceremoniously welcomed in the valley of the mountains that was an entrance to the village. We were the first westerners to ever travel to these people and a crowd of children waited in anticipation and what looked like fear on their faces. We walked into the crowd and were adorned with hand made flower leis from a few of the women at the front of the pack. Men greeted us with watered down Mountain Dew as if we were royalty. We prayerfully accepted these gifts asking God to purify any water that was used in them so that we would not get sick from aspiring to show respect to these gracious people.
We had already been provided for in amazing ways by the group of village men who had climbed the few hours to the entrance of the mountains to help us carry our bags in and escort us alongside the gut-wrenching cliffs that we had to cross in order to reach the village. A few times I nearly fell but was caught by a smiling Nepali man who laughed at my clumsiness and guided me along the safest path possible.
Once we reached the mountain top church the feeling of accomplishment was practically tangible in the air around us. The fields were the greenest I had ever seen and the streams we walked through sparkled like a million diamonds. This place was surreal like the garden of Eden or Narnia, I’m not really sure which. It’s hard to describe the beauty for what it was, the mysteries only the Lord knew that hid within the trees and the complexity of this place was exhausting, in a good way.
Nobody really knew what our week had in store but sitting on that mountain top sweaty and sore and exhausted I could tell you that God was going to do some awesome things in these people and for our team.
All week long we hiked hours to villagers houses, our team has a nurse so we were able to visit some of the higher caste Hindi families because they wanted to meet the nurse. For many we brought more than just medicine, but healing for the physical and the spiritual. During our stay six people came to the Lord and we celebrated with heaven as each new member was added.
Looking back at that week and the parts of it that were a struggle I realize were worth it for the sake of the gospel. This is what I signed up for, this was the adventure I dreamed about while reading blogs in anticipation of my world race. This is the world race.
