As I prepare to leave the place where I fell in love with
the beautiful mountains, rivers, and people I reflect on Nepal, a place where I
will definitely come back to someday. This month we literally went on a 16 hour
bus ride, visited three villages, hiked for 5 hours in the mountains, helped
break ground for a church and school, ministered to a lot of people, and crossed
rivers in tubes to reach our destination. All in one month – an adventurous month. Our
contacts this month were Rueben and Rita Rai. They have so much vision for the
Christian environment here in Nepal. We worked this month in Kathmandu and
three villages in east Nepal.
We started the month by spending time and fellowship with
our contacts. We prayer walked over a monkey temple (a Buddhist religious
monument with many live monkeys living in parts of the temple) and a few places
in Kathmandu. While on the prayer walk we saw beautiful old temples, a
spectacular view over the city of Kathmandu and lots of monkeys.
The next day we drove and then hiked a mountain that had a
beautiful Bed and Breakfast, spectular views of the valley and Kathmandu. While
there we had worship and prayer time as a team. We prayed over the mountain
villages and our journey while here in Nepal.
While in Kathmandu we attended and preached at one of the
churches Rueben has started. We were
able to spend time with the church members, learn a few traditional Nepali
dances, and spread God’s love.
The next day we went on house visits to church members and
we prayed over their families, life, and their walk with Christ. We were served
so much coke, mountain dew, cookies, and all sorts of other things. The people
we met were so appreciated to us for coming and spending time with them.
We departed on a 16 hour bus ride to start the next three
weeks visiting villages. The bus ride in itself was a time to be in continuous
prayer. You could look out the window and see where you were about to be while
traveling along the curvy side of the mountain. We arrived at our first village
where we stayed for two days. While there we did a baptism over church members,
preached and had fellowship with church members. It was an awesome experience
to see lives change into people accepting to follow Christ.
We then traveled to the
second village located about two hours away from the first village. While at
this village we helped with building two toilets and a bathroom for a church.
The church has been ministering for one year and is in the process of building
a church structure. I also had the privilege to preach one Sunday at the church
on “Love and Compassion”. During our down time we were able to go on house
visits with the church members.
One of the church members, Ambrika was a very special lady
to our team during our visit. She has some mental issues from trauma she
suffered from her past marriage. One day we went to pray for her and while
praying you could feel the Holy Spirit in the room. She started to act like she
was going to get sick and we continued to ask God to set her free and that all
demons inside her be released. This was an experience for me that is very hard
to explain. While there we asked her to say declarations over herself. At first
she could not speak and nothing would come out of her mouth. We prayed harder that
she would be able to speak. She started to repeat everything we said and she
could not stop talking. She has a wonderful heart and touched our lives.
Now the adventure continues with a hike over mountains,
woods and through rivers. It took us five hours to hike three mountains to get
to our next village. It was definitely a hike where we had to ask for strength
and energy to keep going. I would not take back this experience; it was breath
taking to be able to go on a long journey in God’s beautiful creation.
We finally arrived at the village. While there we helped
clear land for a school. Rueben asked me to help design the school with my
background in design. I jumped on the opportunity to be able to design a school
in another country showing God’s love and future for the people of this village.
If you would love to learn more about the school check out my blog: (add blog
address)
We also were able to preach at their church service on
Sunday. At the end of the service we prayed over several members of the church.
The people in this village were so nice and caring.
It was time to finally leave the villages. We hiked, crossed
three rivers, and took another adventurous bus ride to our next location. This
was an experience in itself. While in Nepal, this is the monsoon season, so it
has been raining like crazy and the rivers are very high. Thanks to several of
the village men that helped us cross the river with our backpacks. Once we arrived
to a little town we then had a two hour bus ride to the next town. When the bus
showed up it was already packed .So we asked our contact if it was okay to just
ride on top of the bus as we had seen while here in Nepal —we did. It was
very scary and I kept asking God for safety and trusting Him. We went over
several rough spots were you felt like you were going to bounce off the top but
God was with us every inch of the way and helped us safely arrive to our
destination.
We stayed at a church were we preached and worshipped for
our next location. The people were so nice. We also had the opportunity to go
pray over land our contacts have purchased to one day build an orphanage. Our
contacts this month were wonderful and have such a big heart for God and the
people of Nepal.
This pretty much sums up month 6 of the World Race — a
month of growth, new beginnings, and a chance to build and share God’s love.
