..traumatic experience…let me tell you!
But other than than almost falling into the squatty, the beginning of our month in Nepal has been phenomenal. The entire squad met up in Kathmandu, which is nestled beautifully a month the foothills of the Himalayas. Before coming here, I virtually knew nothing about this country, but after only a couple of days started to realize some of the grave realities here.
Kathmandu itself is wrapped up in all kinds of spiritual darkness and oppression. There are approximately 30,000 human trafficking victims in this city alone. The city has some of the most symbolic Hindu and Buddhist monuments in the world. Some of the surrounding ‘suburbs’ have temples in which human sacrifices are still performed to this day. Thousands of young girls are taken to India from the villages of Nepal to work in brothels and the red light districts. And all of this is unfortunately masked by the natural beauty surrounding it.
So we have found ourselves in the middle of the mountains (hills) in north central Nepal. (Just 2 hours ride from the Tibet border, which we are planning on crossing at some point in the next couple of weeks!) Our pastor doesn’t speak English–so we have a ballin’ translator working with us. We’ve been doing evangelism and house visits here in Kothe and the surrounding villages. It’s been a slow month to get going, but I think God has his reasons for that and he’s doing a lot of work behind the scenes that we are probably unaware of. If nothing else, we’re here building up the local pastor and church for their continued ministry.
We’ve had a number of conversations with villagers and the reoccurring fear is that their existing God’s will be angry if they chose to follow Jesus. And unlike in India, almost everyone here is already familiar with Jesus. Many of the villagers are also bound by generations of ritual and tradition and are afraid of upsetting their families by switching faith. I wish they could understand that in Christ, there is no condemnation and the bonds of tradition are broken. It’s heart breaking…
