These last few days, my team got to end our time in ministry on the World Race with one our coolest adventures yet: backpacking in the Himalayas!
I spent 2 and a half days hiking through these beautiful mountains for the sake of reaching local Nepalese people with the Gospel of salvation. We faced a few unexpected challenges: getting thoroughly soaked in the rain and then being repeatedly attacked by leeches chief among them.
Yes, leeches. They live in the forest and attach themselves to your shoes as you walk past, eventually inching their way up to your foot or leg to bite you. Everyone on the team got a bit bloodied up, but thankfully there are no real effects other than some weird red spots on our feet.
After spending a couple days hiking and one night in a trekking lodge, we reached the village of Sidhane. When our ministry host, Deepak, first took a World Race team to this village, there was no one there who’d ever heard the name of Jesus! But thanks to his continued ministry to this people group, gradually men and women are coming to believe in the name of Jesus and receive his life as their own.
We visited a man who the previous gap year team had shared the Gospel with. We sat in his home and were able to bring him a Nepalese Bible at his request, and shared a couple of our testimonies with him. And at the end of our time sharing with him, this man made the decision to put his faith in Jesus and enter into the family of God!
Because short-term work often consists of friendship evangelism and planting seeds, it’s pretty rare for us to be present at the moment of conversion. This was one of my greatest prayers for Month 9, and it was beautiful to not only see this man come to faith, but to see the Lord be faithful and hear my prayer, literally on our final day of scheduled ministry.
So if you’re done with ministry, what’s next, you may ask. Well, this upcoming week will consist of Final Debrief in Kathmandu: a time to rest, process our experiences this year, and just have some fun celebration of a year well spent. After that, I’m heading home to Colorado, leaving Nepal a week from today, in fact!
I’m excited for this upcoming season to reconnect with my family and community back home, hear what the year has held for all of you, and to share more stories of what the Lord did this year on my Race. I still don’t know exactly what the Lord has for after the summer, but I’m praying into my options and am excited to see where he leads me and hopefully announce what’s next very soon! Please be praying for me as I close my time on the World Race, and comment below if there’s anything else you’d like to hear about as an end of year blog.
Thanks for a great year!
~Joel
