Drinking my coffee, snacking on my banana, catching the rays and listening to a podcast for my quiet time on a cute little rooftop sounded like a perfect way to start the day in the beautiful country of Nepal. However, about midway through we had a few furry visitors crash our peaceful morning…
One of the monkeys even tried to drink out of my water bottle! I thought he was going to take it or even worse steal my bag or journal. They were a huge distraction yet created laughter and perspective as we started our day asking the Lord what ministry was going to look like today.
This month our team is renamed Baby Wave since we are an intimate group of 4 and our ministry is ATL, “ask the Lord,” which means we have free reign (with a few guidelines), of Nepal. We follow the Lord’s calling on where He wants us, who He wants us to meet and what we should do this month. So…the day we were released into the country we had no time to waste to do some serious prayer and networking to figure out what opportunities we had available. Oh, and we had to figure out where we were going to sleep that night, how we were going to get there and what we were going to eat all on our strict budget.
It is crazy how God shows up and shows off when you let Him. Living day to day not knowing how it’s going to shape up but trusting the Lord is going to provide and has divine appointments set up specifically for us is incredible. Even in this country where the possibility of getting thrown out for sharing the Gospel, God puts specific people in your life. On that note, after the troop of monkeys got bored of our banana peels and throwing the sugar all over, my day was filled with meeting other missionaries, learning about discreet ministries and finding other Christians to go on a prayer walk around this spiritual city. My cup overflowed with the smiles of kids I met on the way and my cup topped off with great testimonies shared with new friends over some Nepali tea.
Matthew 10 is the passage spoken over us and I am taking this part to heart:
5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.6Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.7As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
We don’t know exactly where we are going to end up but we are taking risks and trusting God’s provision in it all.
Fun Fact: Turmeric is a very common spice used in Nepali food mainly for coloring. It turns food a bright yellow color. We passed a guy making some sort of street food and we asked what it was, thinking it looked like grilled cheese…
However, it is just bread with a slice of potato and spice in the middle then dipped in this turmeric paste, just to add color, before being dropped in the frier.
