Here in the outskirts of Kathmandu, “Cottage visits” are a weekly tradition. The pastor we have been living with hears of someone in the -village thats in need or carrying a burden and quickly responds to the call; stopping to buy a few pieces of fruit or bag of rice along the way.
These cottage meetings have blessed my soul every week. But as we climbed further up the hill away from honking trucks and swamped street vendors, I had a feeling this one would be unique.
My eyes were instantly flooded with smoke the second I ducked through the “Nepali size” door. This home was a 7x14foot brick room, consisting of a mud floor and a “bed” that was more bricks stacked along the wall with a layer of think foam as a mattress and piles of thick cotton blankets. The source of the smoke came from the open fire in the corner used for cooking rice. There was no chimney in the tin roof, so the smoke either escaped through the small door, or invaded our eyelids.
We greeted the family the way all christians in Nepal greet each other. With a “Jes Messi” (Jesus is the Messiah) and bringing your hands together in front of your nose and adding a slight bow.
The 6 of us crowded onto the bed and began playing with the children who filled the room with joyful laughter. The smoke from the “kitchen” kept growing thicker and I was doin good to keep my eyes open while these kids in front of me never even blinked.
The head count kept growing as the cottage meeting began. We sang in Nepali through watery eyes as the Holy Spirit seized the brick room.
I sat in a packed room surrounded by 30 people that literally have nothing. The residents of this particular village are all employees at the brick factory. Each employee begins there work day when the sun comes up. For every 1,500 bricks they carry up the mountain they earn 150 Rupees, or $1.78 USD. They work till the sun goes down and return to their cottages with just enough energy to eat a bowl of rice and fall asleep on the bricks that sustain their lives.
God broke my heart once more for the children He so adores. We gained one more brother in the family of Christ that night. A man named Prakash, whose lived his entire life as a Hindu and could not deny his heart in the presence of Jesus. As my teammate Graham prayed over Prakash, he was shaking uncontrollably. The sin was falling off of him and being replaced with Christ’s love. I was reminded of something we were told at training camp, “We are not sick people being made whole, we are Whole people shaking off the sickness.” That night in a smoke-filled cottage I got to see with my own eyes the sickness shaken off a new brother in Jesus Christ.
God does not need a fancy intro or projector to capture a room, He just needs willing hearts. His sanctuary is a brick shack in Nepal….
