It’s Saturday morning at 7:00 am. I join MC and Emmy (two girls on other teams from my squad) as we wait in front of the house for our ride to church. Our squad was being split up to speak at multiple churches around the city.
Our main ministry host is in the jeep along with John*, the pastor of the church we are going to. We ride for around 30 minutes until we reach his house. We are greeted by his wife Jodi. As we walk up to their living room, 8 shy kids peep at us from their room. This couple has two children and raise 6 orphans. They’ve basically started an orphanage in their house, but they have capped the number at 6 because they want to be able to raise them as their own kids.
We heard a little bit about their story as we all ate breakfast. They were both teachers in a Hindu school until they were fired because all their students converted to Christianity. They realized their mutual love for the Lord and for evangelism, so they got married and went into ministry together.
We took about a 20-minute drive even more into the country to this quaint little church where John is currently serving as the pastor. They had already started worship. After several songs in Nepali, my small group was up. We got on stage and sang a few English worship songs, and MC shared her testimony. Now it was my turn to preach. I talked about the seven lamps in the tabernacle in the Old Testament. The Lord instructed Moses and Aaron to keep seven lamps burning at all times. However, Jesus came and declared himself to be the light of the Lord. Instead of lamps surrounding a physical location of God’s presence, we have Jesus as our light and God’s presence in all of us as the Holy Spirit. Our ministry host spoke after me and spent about 2 hours going more in depth about the Old Testament traditions and how they were prophetic. The service concluded with an offering, communion, and celebrating a one-year-old’s birthday. (It doesn’t get much cuter than that. Look how excited he was for those donut holes.)
After a brief hiccup when our jeep was stuck in mud, we hit the road back toward the pastor’s house. This couple used to live near the Tibet border. They had a church and a guesthouse for mission teams. We were amazed to find out that they have hosted many World Race teams. Unfortunately, in 2015, everything they had was destroyed by the earthquake. The area was so damaged that no one is allowed to live there anymore because of landslides. John and Jodi are currently building a structure close to Kathmandu that will serve as their house, a church, and a mission house for teams. Their heart is for mountain villages, so their hope is for this building to be a launching pad to the unreached groups in the mountains. We had the privilege of visiting this building and praying over every inch of it. It gave me chills that World Race teams could be staying there in a few years.
They served us lunch (dinner? It was 4:30 PM by this point) before they took us back. We heard incredible stories about entire villages being saved. Because they are such a community oriented culture, it is not uncommon for entire areas to be converted. In one village, there was only 1 person who loved the Lord, and she walked miles every week to go to church. That person was a 9-year-old girl. The main chief’s baby girl was sick, and no doctor or witch doctor could heal her. This 9-year-old bravely asked the chief to let her pray for his daughter for one day. The chief said that if she could make her well, he would be the first person to start following God. The young girl locked herself in a room with the baby. She prayed and fasted all day. When she woke up, the baby was completely healed. The entire village started following the Lord.
I could write a multitude of blogs about all the stories I heard and how inspired I was by this couple. I knew that this is the couple who I wanted to give the painting to.
[[ Context: Before I left, I was contacted by a lady who makes frontlets (paintings with Bible verses on the back) and distributes them all around the world. She gave me 7 of her frontlets to freely give away in countries where she did not already have a painting. One of those paintings was designated for Nepal. ]]
MC was going to see them again, so she agreed to give them the frontlet. I wrote them a letter to explain more about the painting. I told them that it was an early house-warming present for when they finished their church/mission house. It would also be a reminder that they had people from around the world praying for them. It’s an honor to get to share a little bit of their story with you all. Please keep them in your prayers, specifically for funding to come in so that they can continue building at a faster pace.
