It was two weeks into Nepal ministry and our host tells me he has a list of all our team’s gifts and experience that we filled out before the Race and if we wanted to add anything to just email a list to him. As I’m gathering all of our updated information and preferences of ministry, Colby mentions refugee ministry. So I add it to the list, not thinking much of it (I didn’t know a thing about refugees at this point, sadly). So I send the long list of many various types of ministry to our host and at our next meeting for the next week’s ministry he tells me 1. We have 3 days in a row for adventure days and 2. Refugee ministry is available and he could readily set something up. That was the plan for our last week of ministry here in Nepal, and I couldn’t stand the idea of having 3 days vacation with only about 10 more days of scheduled ministry. Be that as it may, I stayed to do ministry along with Haley and our SQL’s and Kacie, and later even Tim and Karen, our coaches!!
On May 22nd Kacie, Haley, and I had the opportunity to do house visits to a few of the local refugee families in the area from Pakistan. It was incredibly eye-opening. Each family’s story varied but all were alike in the fact that they were stuck here: without job lisences (so when they find local jobs they’re often times very much underpaid and sometimes not paid at all for extended periods of time to observe their performance before hiring them), medical aid (once they’ve become injured and can’t pay for full recovery treatment, they’ve lost that many more job opportunities), or governmental financial aid at all but with fees to keep living here and fees if they leave the country. As I listened to their stories, the Holy Spirit kept shouting in my mind “INJUSTICE”! Some of them even keep certain parts of their lives on hold, such as marrying and having children, just so they won’t struggle to provide for another. After visiting two different families having been here for years now, we went with the man taking us to each home, he is a refugee too, to his house. There they fed us. And there he told us his testimony. And there was a moment, as he shared with us one of the hardest times in his life, he looked me directly in the eyes, and cried. And all I could do was hold back my own tears.
On the way to the first house visit, I literally had the thought, “I should’ve looked up the word refugee because I have no clue what that even means”. God showed me. And although I cry every single time I recount this story, I’m so So glad He did. I asked Him to break my heart for the things that break His, and He did. And now, finally, I’m doing the one thing that a man named John, one of the refugees we met, asked of us, telling people about it. Please, share the injustice and hardship of what people around the world are having to live with. And please, as the Spirit moves within you to do more, do it. Amen.
