This month my team and I are in a village in the Southern region of Nepal. Now I have never experienced “village life” before on the race so I had some pretty high expectations for it.
And the village of Haripur has not let me down.
Every morning I am greeted by the snores and sounds of my 6 teammates as we all attempt to get out of our sleeping bags and off the floor to make it to our daily 7am Chai tea and cookies appointment. Know that I am not an early morning person, even without the beyond chilly Nepali air surrounding me, but I have not missed a single morning. Chai tea is serious in Nepal; we have it 3 times a day and it is glorious. Its made with fresh water buffalo milk that was milked just the day before from the family water buffalo, and it’s spicy, sweet goodness warms my heart and my finger tips.
My team is working with a family that pastors a church, runs a school for children in the community and does social outreach to the surrounding villages. They also are a part of an organization called New Light Nepal, which works to break the cycle of Nepalese women being sex trafficked into surrounding countries. Our ministry host, who we affectionately call Uncle, was the first Christian to settle in this village and now has a church body of over 200 believers. He, his wife, 2 sons, daughter and their families work tirelessly to serve this community and be a beacon of God’s love to the people. Most of the village is either Hindu or Muslim and vehemently opposed to Christianity.
Our ministry looks different every day. There is another team working at the school, helping to teach English, so we are here to serve Uncle in whatever capacity best supports his church ministry. Some days that looks like cleaning and organizing the church, other days it looks like walking an hour or so to a nearby village to preach, pray or minister to them. Sometimes we simply go to a village, drawing a crowd simply by walking through the rows of houses, then play games, sing songs and tell Bible stories. Some of the people have never seen a “white face” before or heard the name of Jesus. It is our privilege to work alongside Uncle and simply love the people God brings across our paths.
Being in the village is absolutely breathtaking. There are so many stars out at night I’ve stopped trying to count them. We have fields of sugar cane, rice paddies and empty river beds to run through. When I walk down the street, children come rushing out of their homes to shake my hand or shout one of the few sentences they know to me- “Hi, Sister!”, “How are you, Sister?”, “What is your name, Sister?”, “Where are you going, Sister?”. A simple smile or “Namaste” from me brings laughter and jubilation to a group of women making baskets on the side of the road.
It is so easy to love everything and everyone here.
With the beauty, the village also brings points of discomfort and hilarity. We have no running water, and for about a week we had no electricity. Which during the day was completely fine, no need for any of that. But then it was completely dark at 6pm and dinner was over by 6:30, so it left a lot of time in the day to either sit in the dark or find some kind of entertainment.
And find entertainment we did.
One night we went and laid on the ground and looked at stars, all huddled together as close as possible to keep warm, but simply taking in how amazing and big our God is. Another night we went out into the sugar cane field with only head lamps as a light and harvested some with our pocket knives and then attempted to eat it like we had seen the kids in the village do. Not as tasty as it looks! Some nights we piled together in our sleeping bags and told stories. My favorite story time was the telling of our first kiss experiences. So wonderfully awkward. And none of those moments would have come about if there had been electricity. Village life for the win.
So yes, Nepal is meeting and exceeding every expectation I could ever have imagined for it.
Oh yeah, and I absolutely love it.
“I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; before the ‘gods’ I will sing your praise. I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your unfailing love and your faithfulness, for you have so exalted your solemn decree that it surpasses your fame.”
Psalm 138:1-3
