Let me tell you about our Indian hero. My team and I are in Nepal now but we still talk about him. His name is Lazar, short for Lazarus. He’s the one on the right. He went everywhere with our team. He is one of the head pastors of the district and responsible for the health and growth of hundreds of churches. Sometimes I wondered why he was with us, I was sure he had more important things to do than baby sit a bunch of American women. Towards the end of our month we found out his role with us was security. Which totally makes sense.
Lazar is a very humble man, soft spoken, with the kindest darkest brown eyes and a shy smile. Most of the girls on our team towered above him, but he carried a very strong presence. Looking back at the month, I have realized how safe we were with Lazar. We spent the whole month visiting all kinds of villages, and each one had a different atmosphere. Everyone we met was respectful and honoring to us, but you could see the differences in each village in the way the people treated each other.
Some communities were so kind, generous and loving. Some villages seemed so depressed, some had many who suffered from polio, and other villages were full of alcoholism. Some villages were very segregated with the “nice” houses with a fence on one side of town, and the huts and shacks on the other. Other villages were violent, where the kids had tempers that would cause them to fly off the handle at a moments notice and hit each other. Hard. In some neighborhoods the people had wild and unpredictable eyes.
When we weren’t in villages doing ministry, we were in the city we lived in. I think during the whole month in India, I saw one other white person that wasn’t related to our ministry. We were huge targets for people who wanted a handout. There are no rules for beggars in India. They will grab your arm and shake you, hold on to your tuk tuk and get dragged away, and even put the baby in their arms in danger to get what they want. And that was in the safe neighborhoods.
But during all of our ministry time, Lazar was by our side, with eyes wide open. In one situation there was a tall, scrawny teenage boy who had developmental disabilities. I’m not sure if he was abandoned or homeless, but his clothes and body were absolutely filthy. Our team wasn’t bothered by him when he came and held out his hand for money, but one of the local people with us was very afraid of the boy. She kept jumping away as he wandered through our circle of chairs and was shrieking in fear every time he took a step toward her. So Lazar got up to walk over to the boy and was shouting words we couldn’t understand. The boy braced himself for a blow, but Lazar reached into his pocket and handed him a handful of coins. The boy left.
Later that night we returned to the same place and were given coffee. The boy came back and the native female started to cry out in fear again. This time Lazar picked up a stick and started walking toward the boy. Every single person on my team whispered “oh no”, watching in fear that he was going to hit the boy for our sake, to send him away. The stick was low in Lazars left hand, kind of behind his back. The boy couldn’t see the stick, but we could. Lazar started shouting at the boy again and in an instant, the situation totally changed. The boy sat down and Lazar gave him his own cup of coffee and went back and sat down. He was so kind and wise how he handled the situation. My admiration grew.
The dogs in that village that same night were disgusting and ferocious, constantly going back and forth in attack and retreat mode. After dark we ended up in the middle of a nasty dog fight. Right next to us a big dog got a puppy in its mouth and started shaking it. I thought we were about to watch it get ripped to shreds in the next 30 seconds. Lazar picked up his shoe and threw it right in the gut of the big dog. It dropped the puppy and ran away. It was AWESOME. Perfect shot. Lazar went to hero status.
I never felt unsafe or vulnerable when Lazar was around. On the way home from one of our best nights of village ministry, our interpreter told us we were going to make a late night prayer stop for Lazar’s son, John Mark. He was in the hospital with a nasty fever and infection.
We walked into the hospital where there was no front desk, no waiting room, no bright lights, no one checking the ID of people coming or going. Just a cement ramp up to the third floor of numbered rooms. It looked like the motel from your worst nightmare. We got to John Mark’s room and opened the door to a cement room completely empty of anything except three beds and one skinny pole on wheels that held the IV connected to John Mark’s little arm. When the door opened my eyes filled with tears.
Lazar’s son was on a bed, with his mom sleeping behind him, her sick little boy tight in her arms. His little brother was sleeping on the second bed with the grandpa in the third. His grandma was standing in the corner crying. The room was full of sorrow and rich in love.
Have you been in a situation like this? I have. Several times, whenever anyone in my family gets sick. We love each other so much. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings are all there throughout all hours of the night for anyone who needs support. Our family means the world to each other, it’s the most important thing we have. So this particular scene gripped my heart as soon as the door opened and I realized who all was there.
Lazar led all 10 of us into the room and we crowded around John Mark to pray. I got on my knees right in front of him and laid hands on him and prayed “Lord, of all the hundreds of prayers we have lifted up on behalf of sick people this month, please, please answer this one.”
We had prayed literally hundreds and hundreds of prayer through our time in India. The main part of our ministry was prayer and sharing the Gospel. We prayed through every village for healing and blessing for the people. But this one mattered more, because it was family. It was personal. So we prayed for healing for John Mark and we left.
And that night left a mark on my heart.
Because I realized every single person we prayed for was personal to God. I knew that before, but something about the massive amounts of prayers we said for people started to make it routine to me. Kind of impersonal and detached. I didn’t know the people’s stories and I didn’t know their families. We said the same prayer of healing, asking God to deliver all the people from all their sickness. But when we prayed for Lazar’s son, I was more desperate. Because I was more connected to him than the village people we prayed for. The village people were strangers to me.
But they were not strangers to God. They are His children and He was there with them everytime we prayed. And He is still there, in every single hut, loving each of His children and holding them in His arms as they suffer. And He is doing this all over the world! There is so much pain, sickness, and injustice the people of this world live with. How can He really be a personal God who cares about all of us?
I’m seeing so much of that brokenness here in Nepal. Devastated buildings and people are everywhere. I cant even comprehend how God’s love can be big enough to hold every hurting person in this world. But I know He is with us. In my darkest times when I have felt so alone, His presence has been very real to me. He has showed me that I matter to Him. I’ve felt His love the most during the hardest times in my life. He is so personal to me. And I know He loves us all so much. Our pain and suffering is very personal to Him. It matters to Him.
So moving forward from that night in the hospital, praying for my hero’s little boy, I’m asking God to make me a more personal carrier of His love. I don’t want to slip into that routine, impersonal kind of person I realized I was becoming. I want to listen to these people’s stories and let them know that I care about what’s happening in their life, they are not alone. Most importantly I want the people of Nepal to know that God cares for them, and He has not forgotten them. Please pray for me and my team, that God would fill us with more compassion, and more of His love. These people need it. Desperately.
