You can just leave me here.
Really.
I love it.
The work.
The scenery.
The people.
We spend our brief hours of official ministry time hanging out with 18 students at a Bible school in Kathmandu, which was started in 2007 by our contact, Reuben Rai. Our assignment? To teach them basic computer skills. Session topics on the list included blogging, photo and video editing, everything Microsoft Office, and "How to Tweet." We never got around to the last one, which was kind of a bummer, but I did help two of our students set up their very own blogs! Feel free to check them out, leave some comments... Encourage them to post more than one...
Sam: Holy Stone Band
Ishwor: Ministry in Sindhupalchock
Students come to this school from all over Nepal with their Bibles, notebooks, clothes, and registration money in hand. If they don’t have the tuition fee for the month-long term, they can pay in rice, potatoes, beans, flour, chicken, or essentially anything they have. In addition to our highly technical computer training, our precious students learn about things like church planting, discipleship, Bible distribution, and Nepali church history.
Hinduism, followed by Buddhism, is the dominant religion in Nepal. The Christian church is fairly young here, and many of the students are first or second generation believers. Regardless of their ages (15-50) and the few possessions they can call their own, they are all excited to return to their home villages and spread the Good News.
And I’m excited for them.
Their graduation ceremony was held in the Methodist Church, which is merely a small room at the bottom of the dorm type building where we live. I got a little teary during one of the “commencement addresses,” reflecting on the number of lives changed through this program and the way God is blowing up this country for His glory. Many Christians are persecuted here in Nepal – beaten, excommunicated, left by their spouses, cast out by the families that raised them – yet the numbers continue to grow. And the people are on fire. It’s beautiful.
It was at that moment that I started seeing pictures of myself: trekking through the wild, spreading the gospel throughout the Himalayas, teaching at the Bible school, adopting Nepalese kids… becoming a part of the movement. Embracing what God is already doing here.
I can’t yet claim that God is calling me to Nepal, but I can say that peace is all I felt.
We’ll see what happens.
Hiking through the mountains of Tatopani
Baptism in the river
Residents of the Buddhist "Monkey Temple"
Buddhist temple
Mt. Everest from my (airplane) window
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