Having just completed our week’s laundry in a bucket and hanging it on the rooftop in the home where we’re staying, Sandy and I pause on the roof for a few moments looking over the city of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, the poorest country on earth. We’re told that the average per capita income in Nepal is between $300 and $400 a year. While reflecting, we overlook this city set in the gorgeous Himalayas—the infamous peaks clouded by haze on this breathtaking morning. All around, however, is the poorest of the poor living in squalor and stench. Not because they choose, but because they must. It’s their lot in life, such as it is. It’s enough to break our hearts—and that it has as we consider our call to come here and bring hope amidst the bleak prospects for any change for these beautiful people.
What breaks our hearts even greater is that this is without doubt one of the darkest spiritual lands on the globe. Kathmandu has a 1%-2% Christian presence within its city; the villages and countryside outside of the city has a .05% presence of Jesus. Yesterday, we stopped by the pinnacle of the hill that rises dramatically in the midst of the city of Kathmandu. With its multiple Hindu temples and images of false gods cluttering every square inch of the hill, the darkness of spiritual death was undeniably oppressive yet pointed to the spiritual thirst of the people. And to reveal Himself as the Light in the darkness and the answer to the seeking soul, the one True God recently manifest His presence and power through a miracle in one of the ancient and ornate temples on that site. The doors on this temple have been chained shut for decades with no one entering. After Christians prayer walked around the temple seven straight days, a fire broke out inside the temple. With no combustible materials present, God miraculously burned the stone graven images and idols. They burned as if they were wood. The fire consuming the stone became so hot that the gold adorning the temple melted. God showed that He is the One God to whom all people must bow—accepting His intimate love for them through Jesus.
We head now by truck to a much more remote region of Nepal where we will meet with a group of pastors who swim against the oppressive spiritual current every day in that miraculous power of Jesus. It will be our privilege to encourage and pastor them as we begin to put together a Nepal Peoples Network of pastors and Christian leaders to help them reach the over 300 unreached people groups (about 95% of the nation’s people groups, which are 2% or less Christian) that are still screaming inwardly and without for some light and hope—and we passionately want to see them be introduced as soon as possible to the One and True Author of that hope, God Himself. And the way that is done here is only through the indigenous pastors who know the culture and the appropriate ways to love the people to Jesus.
Speaking of loving people, we are also seeking the most effective means to bring long-term, multiplying humanitarian aid to these people. While anything that one does is but a drop in the bucket, it actually makes a huge difference especially as it is “teaching them to fish” for themselves, and if it demonstrates the love of Jesus in a practical way. Then they know tangibly that our God is different than the false gods they work so hard to appease—only to go deeper into despair and spiritual emptiness.
Thanks for your prayers and interest! Without you, we could not be a part of this cutting-edge and absolutely necessary ministry to these largely over-looked people whom God created to be our brothers and sisters. We only seek to give them that opportunity.
