While in Nepal, team Rooted Freedom has had to face many challenges. Sometimes the situations we were in felt like they would never end. It’s crazy to me that we can put our bodies through so much that they’re not used to and they just adapt. If you would have told me four years ago that I would be living in the jungles of Nepal and going through all that we are currently up against, I would tell you that you were crazy. Well, here I am, and here are some struggles that we accept as normal now:
· Sleeping five girls every night, sleeping pad by sleeping pad, under a bug net that is held down by tracts.
· Waking up sweating at 6:00 in the morning and don’t stop sweating until around 10:00 at night when the fans come back on.
· Avoiding scorpions as they crawl across the place on the ground where your foot used to be.
· Getting charged at by cows. (Watch out, they kick too)
· Smelling body odors come off of yourself that you never knew existed until now.
· Finding out that every inch of your body is capable of sweating. All the time.
· Walking through the sugar cane to get to the bamboo forest so you can cut down stalks of bamboo, you end up getting cut by the sugar cane instead.
· After someone tells you that every 1 in 100 mosquitoes carries malaria and you count your bites up to 104, you realize that you might have malaria.
· Multiple times a day you are faced with the decision: to go outside and get eaten by mosquitoes or stay inside and die of heat exhaustion.
· The water that tasted funny at the beginning of the month now tastes quite normal.
Despite our arduous situation and the struggles we had to face, when we look back at our ministry in Nepal, I think it’s going to be a favorite.
We’ve been looking at the positives and they far outweigh the challenges that we have been through. The pastor and his wife (who we can Auntie) with whom we are staying are the most wonderful people I think I’ve ever met in my life. Every morning, after setting us out our pot of tea and tea cups, they go to the room behind the dinner table and sing praise songs together. They pray and worship together every morning. Their house is large even though they are two people, and the purpose of the extra rooms is to serve others. They take people in who need to rest. They understand the love that God has shown them and extend that to those around them. Along with Pastor and Auntie, our neighbors have really become part of our family. The neighbors have been pouring into us since we arrived. They are members of Pastor’s church and have two kids: Dabika who is 13 and John who is 10. We can expect the kids to hang around us daily as soon as they get home from school. The parents spend almost as much time with us too. There was one night that Josi and Dabika were talking about food in Nepal and Dabika told her about moma. Josi inquired more and Dabika ran home to ask her mom if they could make it for us. Even though the process takes a few hours and it was already late, Dabika’s dad drove to the market to buy a chicken and the family made us moma that night. They wanted to be the first to share it with us.
The way that people here truly love floors me. It challenges me. I want to be more like them. I want to show that kindness, that generosity. I want to be someone who loves serving others just because I know that they are loved by God. I want to be someone who consistently puts others first, even if it means that I have to sacrifice. I want to love with a love that causes others to question my sanity. That is the love that we encounter here every day.
