Heyo!
On Saturday at 6am I woke up and gathered the rest of my unpacked things, cooked an egg, and hobbled out to meet our new host. We left TAMI (The Agape Mission International) with some sore hearts because it was such a dream: unheated houses with self-cooked meals, cold bucket showers, and crazy, wild, wonderful, life-changing ministry.
*Quick glimpse into ministry with TAMI*
Kathmandu is a very, very large city and it’s also a very, very broken city. There is so much hurt here. We walk down the streets and see children begging and people and starving and so many women in horrible situations. Our ministry varied from looking for street children around various temples to playing Wednesday night football with them and feeding them a meal that some of our members cooked. Wednesday nights with those kiddos were filled with lots of goofy stories about my life that I related to the Lord’s goodness and giggles and aggressive shouting over goals and if that one white girl touched the ball with her hand!
Other than the wonderful Wednesdays, we cooked a whole bunch of Nepali food (Buff chili and Biryani and rice for ever and ever amen) for Sabbaths and various prayer meetings and church services. We prayed over so many temples and hiked to a few temples over this massive, broken city and the inhabitants. We covered a lot of ground on our prayer walks and covered a bunch of topics in our weekly teachings and testimonies in churches around Kathmandu and experienced a ton of prophesy in the slums.
The final week we spent partnering with TAMI was absolutely incredible. Women’s ministry was unbelievable: we were a part of the opening of a women’s rescue center through TAMI, which is basically the whole reason the rest of this ministry could take place. With the two women who are helping to lead ministry with TAMI, we had the incredible opportunity to go into the local cabin restaurants (“restaurants” where women are sold on the menu through very over-priced food and drinks) and build relationships with the women. Then, over a meeting that we arranged with the women at the restaurants, we were able to offer them the simple, beautiful Gospel and show them His love as a way out into the rescue center. On top of all that happening each day, there was another whole group that went to dance bars and did a very similar ministry with the dancers there.
Okay, I promise I’ll finish this up soon! My ministry the final week was a combination of prayer walks and writing and publish a book… HUH!? We sat with Brian (the founder of TAMI) and he told us 10 of the stories he has collected over the years and asked us to write a book about them. That was such a daunting task! But it was, I guess I’ll use this word for the 100th time, INCREDIBLE. It doesn’t quite feel real that a small group of us began writing a book Monday and published it that Friday. It seems simple… I get that. But it was honestly one of my favorite ministries I have done thus far. Hearing about how many lives this ministry has touched is inspiring to me, and the fact that we were the boat that is taking these stories all over the world to continue raising funds for this organization that is changing lives daily is pretty nifty!
Now I’m living somewhere West of where we were living… ummm… let’s just say still in Kathmandu. We have only been here for three full ministry days, but so far it has been great! Our first day we were taken to a government school next to a slum. There, we were taken into some small, crumbling, dusty classrooms with bright-eyed young children who were completely ready to laugh at us and yell at us in Nepalese when they didn’t understand our English lesson. The first day was… hard? I am not a patient person and three of us were asked to work with the youngest group, class one and two. We introduced ourselves and listened as each child stated their very long names, all while anticipating that the teacher would soon hand us a lesson plan or guide us in the direction of what she’d like us to teach. She looked at us after the kids finshed and simply said “start”. HUH???
Well, it turns our the tinies don’t speak English. And the marker for the weird chalk board was broken… and the kids don’t have paper… and they don’t have pencils…. and they really, really like to yell. a lot.
I am not a patient person.
We made it out with only a little extra dirt on our pants and no voices left from explaining what we find outside and inside and how to spell house. Charades are great.
The second day of teaching was much better. I was with the same group, but moved into an older class (that’s because Jesus loves me and values my sanity just as much as I do). We had a great lesson about how to say the words thumb and thousand and they practiced their conversational English by writing down what they heard when we spoke. that proved to be pretty hard for them, despite the fact that they actually spoke a decent amount of English. There aren’t many people speaking English around these parts!
We left the school with a prayer and I was showered by some unexpected kisses and then we were waved away with blown kisses. The little girls were pretty cute!
Today was a community and home visit day. We prayed over a purely Hindu community and their sacrificing grounds. That was an experience. Then we went to a home and prayed for their family and had a meal with them.
Now we are about to start our nightly devotional with Papa before dinner!
That’s all for now!
-Laura
P.S. I’M FULLY FUNDEDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU ALL SOOOOOO MUCH!
