Nepal is beautiful, if you have never thought about traveling here, I think you should change your mind. For one the country is beautiful. It has mountains for days, delicious foods, and nice, cutie people. I highly recommend it.
When we arrived at our ministry site we were ushered into a building that has a prayer/worship room on the ground level, 3 flats, and a rooftop terrace. Essentially we were told we would have the run of the building because besides Sameer, our hosts son, we would be the only ones using the building. What a blessing after living with families for the last several months. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved living with our hosts, but it is nice to have our own space. To be free to wear shorts on our sabbath day, to cook our own meals, to have team time uninterrupted, and to just be us.
Our first day of ministry was full of laughter, giggles, smiles, busses, and shy hellos from the at risk women at the women’s center. We jumped in right away and took a bus to the first of three slums we would visit to hang out, love on, and teach the kids. I have not had this much fun winging a lesson plan ever in my life. We came up with action songs and games, searching the depths of our minds from growing up in the church. Then we acted out a bible story while one of us narrated, and Sameer translated. The kids all intently listened and watched our every move. It was bittersweet to see how hungry they all were for love and attention, but I have to admit I soaked up every minute of it.
Later in the afternoon we entered the third slum. When we first arrive we walk to the makeshift classroom and half of us prepare the room while the other half goes and invited the children. This time I got to go help invite the children to come. We walked through the shack homes and would tell kids that we were there to bring them to school. We then proceeded down by the muddy river and encountered several small children building a house in the mud. As soon as they saw us they came up to us and stuck their little arms in the air wanting to be held. Now it sounds so cute and precious, but let me paint you a picture of what this actually looked like. The river was really a water duct that was dark brown it was full of trash and they kids were using some of the trash to make their “house”. So mud on their little hands, hair nappy and full of lice, dirty cloths and faces. These were the hands that reached up and wanted to be held. They were the ones pulling at our shirts asking for love and attention.
My Heart was breaking and melting all at the same time. I didn’t even know that was possible.
So what was I to do except pick up the little girl and love on her. There was actually nothing else I wanted to do in that moment (except maybe give them a nice warm bath). Something I am learning about myself is that I like to fix things. I have found out I that I am a fixer. I like to be the one who comes up with a solution to the problem. The world race has slowly been breaking me of that because I am realizing that not everything I think is a problem actually is a problem. Sometimes it is just a cultural difference and other times it is not my place to come in and be the white savior. I am not Jesus so all I can do is what he asks of me, which is to love the person in front of me. So in this situation the person in front of me happened to be the dirty, smelly, cutie, precious slum kid.
