Sorry this has taken me so long to post, but things have been a little crazy around here. Our trip to Nepal was absolutely incredible and filled with stories of how God is moving amongst his people there. I won't bore you to tears with all of those, but here's a quick recap of what we did.
After two days of flying, we arrived in Kathmandu--which including the surrounding areas hosts over a million people. Our main goal in Kathmandu and the two other cities we visited was to lead a pastor's training, and usually two of us would stay with our professor, and the other four would go out and talk to Nepalis. 80% of those are Hindu; 10% are Buddhists; 5% are Muslim; and then a smattering of other faiths make the rest. The majority of the non-Christians that we talked to were Hindu, but we did spend a great part of the day at this Buddhist temple.
Surrounding the temple on all sides are prayer wheels. The people walk around the temple clockwise for hours spinning the wheels which they believe are ushering up their prayers. The people that we got to talk to, we would ask how long they had been doing this same ritual. Most would reply nearly everyday of their entire lives, to which we would ask would it ever be enough and could they know for certain the outcome of performing these rituals, to which they would uniformly answer, "No."
These were great opportunities to share that Jesus came to perform all that we need to reach God, and that no amount of good works will ever give us complete fellowship with God because of God's holiness and our sin. The supposed freedom and enlightenment that Buddhism brings is really enslaving these people's lives under ritualism and doubt.
But the main focus of our trip was encouraging and ministering to pastors who are eager to teach their congregations but have had little to no theological education. Below are some of the dear brothers in Kathmandu and me teaching through a translator.
After a very successful four days in Kathmandu, we drove six hours to the southwest to the very rural area of Chitwan. Here there are a lot of Christians and a growing amount of churches mainly due to the work of one man whose goal it is to plant over 100 churches over the next 10 years. We did much of the same kind of teaching in Chitwan and spent some good time answering questions in small groups, such as "Are we now free to eat beef? What happens if someone dies without being baptized? How is it that Jesus is both fully God and fully man?" All great questions, and the kind of things we talk about at length in American seminaries, but these pastors have no one to answer these questions.
After three days in Chitwan we drove five hours north to the mountain town of Pokhara which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. We taught at a small school directly under the Anapurna range of the Himalayas.
After the first day of training in Pokhara, several of us went up to a small rural village to talk to people about Jesus. By God's providence, when we stopped the truck there was a man named Sunil standing right where we got out. He had become a Christian a few months prior but still had many questions and didn't know of church nearby. It just so happened that Timothy, our translator, knew a church that his father-in-law pastors at the bottom of the hill. Sunil was overjoyed and invited us back to his house, which was no more than a mud hut where his wife made us lunch--which probably cost them a week's pay--and he brought person after person over for us to tell them the good news of the gospel. This might have been my favorite day of the entire trip to see God's sovereign hand at work, to be able to encourage new believers and share with those who knew nothing of Jesus, and to be utterly humbled by this hospitality.
After our final day in Pokhara, we returned to Kathmandu and flew home. As usually happens in short-term mission trips, I'm sure we learned more than anything we taught the Nepalis, but nevertheless I am confident that the work we did in two weeks will have eternal significance for the furtherance of the Kingdom. Please pray for Nepal--for the perseverance of these eager pastors, their churches, and the gospel to go out with great expectancy to an unbelieving culture. Thank you so much for all of your support without which this incredible trip would not have been possible. I hope that you have been encouraged by the faith of these believers who are under considerable persecution by their families and culture. If you're my friend on facebook, you can see the rest of my pictures.
