So there is much to do in Nepal: mountains to trek, bridges to bungee jump, cold weather to enjoy. Aside from the unexpected cold front that blew in a few days ago, we won’t have much of an opportunity to experience these things. And I’m okay with that.
Granted, it helps when you have kids that scream prayers at the top of their lungs…
or sunsets…
but more than likely because of kids who help teach…
and smiles to contrast sass…
while someone else picks her nose…
It’s also helpful when you can tangibly feel the importance of your labor. We are located in a village outside of Sarlahi, Nepal called Haripur. They partnered us with a team to help effect change in the community by restoring value to those preyed upon by human traffickers and devalued by their own families. This is a little similar to the work we did in Thailand, when we helped a prevention organization that rescued at-risk boys and girls from hillside villages. The only differences are that we are combating both sex trafficking and slave and labor trafficking for not just boys and girls but men and women, plus teaching kids on top of that.
Sometimes on the race it’s so hard to see the direct effect of your work: you build a church, beautify an area, or help build a website. All of these help long term, but in the short term you don’t see much effect. It can get tiring after a while, going country to country, and not always seeing results. But it’s month like these that I cherish. It’s watching a woman or a girl realize her value. She sees that she’s important because she’s a person, because the Lord loves her, because she’s a woman and that’s how she was made. When she understands that her worth is based on love; she discovers she is cherished, and she knows her identity rests in the words of a Creator not what she can do for her husband. It’s seeing her realize that her value doesn’t come from how much her husband wagered her against at the weekly poker game. Nor how much of the dirty foot water she can drink after washing her husband’s nasty feet. When she believes that she’s no longer a commodity, tradable; but Jesus instead traded his life on the cross for hers.
And it’s not just the wife. It’s her son who she almost sold to make ends meet for the rest of the family. Or the daughter who gets deprived school since she’s a drain on the family because one day a man will buy her away with a dowry…assuming her parents won’t sell her to a sex trafficker.
A family member as a bargaining chip is a true problem in areas like these. The only people immune to it are the husbands, who perpetuate the problem rather than preventing it.
And this is why education is so important in areas where the value of a person is marked by their immediate contribution to their family. We aren’t submitting to the culture and saying that it’s a legitimate system, but rather we are showing the community that their wives, daughters, and sons have a greater value than just the immediate. They have a human value, which Jesus restored. They have a value that’s worth taking a chance on. They have a value not controlled by cultural expectation or belief but of hope and opportunity. Because, just like the Lord saw value in our failures and our ancestors’ mistakes, we want these people to know they’re past or their community’s past shouldn’t define or guide their future.
The people – kids, women, and men – of Sarlahi are worth more than their past. If you would like to help show this, you can go to the below website and help contribute to the education of a kid or the school as a whole.
