…I just didn’t expect it to happen in month 2.
My team and I were on our way to a Hindu temple for a day; our mission was simply to pray, talk with people, and let God lead. After spending some time talking with various other visitors of the temple, our Nepali host informed us it was time to head back home for the day.
As my team filed out through the left side of the temple I felt pulled to take the long way out through the right side of the temple. So I figured why not go with it? It’s only a 30 second detour to go the other way…or so I thought.
I split off from my team and headed the “long” way out of the temple. As I approached the exit, I heard some chanting/singing coming from inside one of the smaller buildings in the temple (the temple is an outdoor temple with smaller surrounding buildings/rooms). I started to walk past the building, then found myself walking toward the sound inside the building.
I stood outside and peered in; inside I saw a bunch of young boys crowded around a book chanting. One of the more animated boys saw me and said in accented English, “Come in!”
I hesitated until he stood up, approached me, and once again invited me to “Come in!”
So I did.
From there we proceeded to have a very cheery conversation, all the while the chanting continuing, loud and persistent. The boy’s English was good. He asked where I was from, I asked him his name, he asked me my name, etc. I could not pronounce his name well, but I know it started with an “S”. So from here on out I will refer to him as Sunny because he had such a sunny disposition.
After exchanging pleasantries, I asked Sunny what he and the other boys were doing. He told me they were praying/learning a prayer from their scripture. He pointed to one of the boys and told me that was the teacher; the teacher looked up briefly to smile, he and the other boys never missing a beat in their dutiful prayer.
I asked Sunny which god they were praying to, and he told me they were praying to Krishna.
As I was asking Sunny more about the prayer he found an extra book with the prayer in it and opened it up to show me. I looked at the prayer-all in Sanskrit-and told him that it was very cool, because it was. Then I asked him, “Do you want to see mine? Do you want to see my prayer book?” To which he responded with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”
As I was pulling it out of my bag-the prayer to Krishna still going loud and strong in the background of our conversation- I told him it was a little different, but that it was my own prayer book.
As I opened up my Bible to the Psalms, Sunny asked me, “Which god?”
“Umm…The God,” I said with a smile as I pointed up.
“Oh yes, the God!” Sunny repeated excitedly; he knew Who I was talking about. Cool.
He was looking at the Bible when all of a sudden I asked, “Do you want to trade?”
Sunny jumped right on board with that idea. So he handed me his sanskrit prayers, and I handed him my Bible.
My teammate, Julie, waked in shortly after this exchanged to see what was taking me so long on my 30 second detour. I explained to her how Sunny and I had just traded. Julie lit up, looked at Sunny and asked, “Do you read English?” Sunny told Julie that he reads English, but he does not read it very well. So Julie smiled and suggested to him that he use the Bible to practice reading English.
Sunny seemed to be on board with this. We stayed a little longer, and by the time we left Sunny I was saying to him, “Practice?” and he was holding up his Bible saying, “Yes, practice!”
So now there is a young, Hindu boy practicing reading English with his new Bible!
You guys, I gave away my Bible; they said it would happen at launch. I did not believe them-that Bible has so many important notes (important to me at least) in it-but thank goodness they were right!
I just smile every time I think about this! So cool! Pray for him with me, please and thank you. The boy is a leader- it just seeps through him. So pray that those life giving words in the Bible just jump out at him and change him forever!
Thank you everyone for everything. Much love to you all.
