After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of Him to every town and place where He was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, "The kingdom of God is near you." The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your Name." "... do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." Luke 10:1-3, 9, 17, 20, 23-24
Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Sc
riptures. He told them, "
This is what is written: The Chris
t will suffer a
nd rise from the dead on the third day, and
repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preac
hed in His name t
o all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Y
ou are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you ha
ve been clothed with power from on
high."
Those who had been scatte
red
pr
eached the word w
went dow
n to a city in Samaria and
pr
oclaim
ed the Christ there. When the crowds he
ard P
hilip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close
attention to what he said. With shrieks,
evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were he
aled.
So there was great joy in that city. Acts 8:4-8
In Lystra th
ere sat a man crippled i
n his fe
et,
who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him
, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At
that, the man jumped up a
nd
began to walk. Acts 14:8-1
0
"It feels like we are
living in the book of Acts," was Gil's insightful quote after our first day in Nepal. Gil had the p
rivilege of interviewing 15 of the church-planters during our two days with them, and it
was fun to watch his excitement about their stories. In fact, he was so
moved by their stories that he felt he must speak to them at the conference the next day. He wanted them to know how much t
heir sacrifice and labor for the Lord had encouraged him, even though we were the ones coming to Nepal to encourage them. I dar
e say Gil's faith will never be t
he same again. I can hardly wait to re
ad all those stories when he gets them typed and put together. I will be sure to share some with you!
What I can share, however, is that what God is doing among the believers in Nepal loo
ks very much like the early church in the book of Acts. When you first hear about people being healed and demons being cast out, you think, "Yea right. That sounds like something embellished to gain converts and im
press people." Either that, or you think that must
be a rare experience that happened
to a few people.
But when you encounter one person after another,
after anothe
r, after another who all share the same kind of miraculo
us stories--and then you begin meeting these people who were healed or had a demon cast out of them--your eyes become wide-o
pen to the fact that this is the reality of the new Ch
ristian church
in
Nepal. It was so incredible to be right in the middle of it! I will share some specific stories in upcoming blogs.
So on our second day in Kathmandu, Michael did more teaching with the church-planters, Gi
l
spoke words of encoura
ge
ment
to them, and Sasha and I
went
to the Children's Home to paint. Mark was
so g
racious to
le
t the ladies (i
ncluding Bhakti) do the work while he looked on to encourage, take photos, and inspec
t our quality.
Hmmm. Well, he
did mix the paint for us (which wa
s thick as molasses and ne
eded water added to it), and finally picked up a brush to help later that afternoon.
I wore my 72 shirt that day, knowing that I would probably g
et paint on whatever I wore (and I knew I could get a
one back home), and boy did Nepal ever leave its mark on
our 72! My shirt has to be the most authentic 72 shirt of them
all now!
In case you don't know, our LifeBridge 72 shirts are bas
ed on
the Luke 1
0 passage quoted at the beginning of th
is blog (when Jesus sent
out the 72), and we wear them when we are out serving and loving in Jesus' name
. Mine now has the true m
arks of service and love...and Asian Paints. :)
Around noon, we loaded up in the taxi and went to get Michael and Gil for lunch. I was so thankful that a lunch had been prepared for us at Lazarus' church so I didn't have to go to a restaurant covered in paint from the top of my head to the tips of my toes! Lazarus sure did get a surprise when he saw u
s covered
in paint. We enj
oyed yet another meal of rice and lentils with chicken (dahl bhat; dahl--lentils, rice--bhat; this is the third me
al of it now--every lunch and dinner so far). I forgot
to mention that we went back to that great little internet cafe for breakfast and to talk on the internet with family, so at least we had Americ
an fare for breakfast both mornings.
while Gil stayed to interview more pastors. As I mentioned in my last blog, little Bikash totally warmed up to Michael. Michael picked him up when we first arrived at the home, and Bikash melted into his shoulder and stayed that way for about an hour. Then Sasha held him the same way for a while, then it was my turn. Bikash now likes white-faced foreigners. :) In fact, the poor little guy cried every time we set him down. It broke our hearts to leave him later that day!
While painting at the Children's Home, I got into a conversation with Bhakti about some
health issues of hers. She showed me a rather large, dark scar on her leg from a bus accident years ago, and then explained how fortunate she is to be alive and still have that leg. Imagine the traffic of a large inner-city, but withmost people actually walking in the streets or riding bicycles amongst all those vehicles (along with some cows and goats), no emissions regulations, no posted speed limit, no lines to designate lanes (there are no lanes--you just drive straight at each other until the last minute, then somehow pass around each other, kind of like "chicken"), and the rule that you must honk your horn so people know you are coming up behind them, and you will have a pretty good picture of the typical road scene in Kathmandu.
Bhakti explained to me that when a bus hits a person walking in the streets, the driver will quickly throw it into reverse and back over the person because it is less expensive to pay for a funeral than for medical bills. Can you imagine? When she was hit many years ago, God graciously provided someone to get her out of the way quickly so that her life was spared. The doctor didn't give her much hope for her leg, though, saying he would have to amputate.
She was so ill from the effects of the accident, because it also injured her abdomen. Yet she shared the story of how God came to her in a dream while she was sleeping. She saw God massaging her leg. The next day, when the doctor examined her leg, he gave her the good news that it would heal and not need to be amputated! She still has that scar and some abdominal pains every now and then, but she is a healthy woman caring for nineteen children every day! Glory to God!
Besides painting, Sasha and I also had fun placing some goodies on the children's beds. One of the beautiful older girls
named Sangita took us around and helped us with this task. We hung out with the kids in the study room, too, which was fun that day because they were done with their exams. They were all in such high spirits! Michael got to interact with them as well, and he took that precious video of them singing to him (in the last blog). Mostly, though, he held sweet little Bikash.
Sasha's pixie sticks were always a hit!
We didn't want to leave, but we knew we had to get back and get ready for the closing worship service with the church-planters. So we sadly said good-bye (we would have to do this so many times in the coming days while traveling around Nepal, and it was the hardest thing we had to do). Our driver whisked us (as much as you can whisk down bumpy dirt roads around cows and goats) back to the hotel, where we changed clothes--Sasha and I trying as much as possible to get all of the paint off our arms and feet and out of our hair. We had all of five minutes to do this!
Then we headed back to be with the church-planters for a beautiful time of worship (video clip) and fellowship. I absolutely love the way they worship and pray! They sing with passion for the One who has saved them, whether they know the song or not. When they pray, they all pray simultaneously for a while. Then everyone will gradually stop until it is almost silent. At the end, one designated person will pray to close the prayer. These are no short prayers either, and they are beautiful! I absolutely loved doing this every time we had prayer. It is not intimidating, like praying out loud as we do, because everyone is praying at the same time. So no one knows what anyone else is saying. You can just pour your heart out to God while everyone else does the same! There is something so incredible about hearing all of those voices joined in prayer together.
Michael gave a great closing message to all the pastors gathered. It was hard to believe our time with them was coming to a close after only two days! These were some pretty amazing men.
Holy Communion was a very beautiful experience that night. Michael consecrated the elements as usual, then he and Lazarus handed out the bread and juice (Christians in Nepal do not drink alcohol at all) to every single person. We all held our elements in our hands until everyone had theirs, then we "ate and drank" at the same time, all 50+ of us. What a picture of the unity of believers!
When it came time for the benediction, all the men got out of their chairs and knelt down on the ground with heads bowed as in prayer, so our team followed suit. Then Michael spoke the benediction over them. Wow. Such a powerful way to receive those precious words from God.
Lazarus and his wife presented each person on our team with some gifts. You will see in the photo at the beginning of this post that we were adorned with beautiful garlands made from flowers. This seems to be a common practice in Nepal for special guests. The men received topis (the traditional Nepali hat many of the men wear), a Gurkha knife (the official military knife of Nepal), a Nepali drum (yea!--the one thing Michael wanted to get while we were there!) and a Nepali flag. The ladies received a Nepali flag and a photo album covered in beautiful Nepali cloth--perfect for all the photos we would be taking.
After the service we shared a meal and a great time of fellowship up on the roof. In addition to another delicious meal of dahl baht (four meals in a row now, excluding breakfasts), we were treated to fried chicken--Nepali KFC, as Lazarus joked (not really--those hard-working women on the roof fried that delicious chicken for us). Lazarus and his associate pastor (who is from Korea, I believe) explained to us that a KFC recently opened in Kathmandu. It is their first ever, and one of his kids waited in line for four hours to get a piece of fried chicken the day it opened!
Someone also told us they have a Pizza Hut, and of course we found Coca Cola and Pepsi products all over the country, even in the remotest places. As Joel Vestel mentions in his book Dangerous Faith, Coca Cola has managed to infiltrate every place on the face of the earth (he has been to many of the remotest, too). Yet there are still people groups and countries in which people have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. How messed up is that?
It tells me that we as the Church need to rise up and do a more outstanding job of spreading the Word of the Living Water than a mere soda company does with marketing a product that will just make them thirsty again. "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14) We need to get busy offering this Living Water to the millions of people whose souls are still thirsting for the only One who can fill and satisfy them! See Isaiah 55 for more on that.
As we closed our time with the pastors, we handed out the bags of toiletry items LifeBridge folks had purchased for them (thank you to each of you who took those bags and filled them--it really blessed these men). Then we said our good-byes and our "Jay Mahsee"s (men speak this greeting/farewell, and then shake each other's hands, but they only speak the greeting to women...no touching of hands or hugging, which was hard to get used to but we knew we needed to follow custom).
So Sasha and I hugged every woman and child we had the chance to because we are huggers by nature. :) Sasha especially hit it off with the woman in charge of cooking the meal. I thought that woman was going to kiss her all over her face! I think Sasha hit it off with pretty much everybody on our trip. She is definitely a good person to be with if you want to get to know everyone. We loved that about her!
We went back to our hotel, met for a debriefing to share powerful stories from the day and read more notes of encouragement from our church family, and make plans for our departure early the next morning for Pokhara. We had much rearranging to do in our luggage because we needed to only take a small suitcase and backpack with us to Pokhara and then to the remote villages. So we all stayed up for a while trying to rearrange and cut back to the bare necessities, hoping we would have enough clothes and supplies to get us through the next six days. I have never packed so light and simple!
I was so proud of the work for the Kingdom that Michael did on this first leg of the trip. I know he already felt as if he had been "poured out like a drink offering," to quote Paul's words, and he deserved to feel so. If he had done nothing else for the remainder of the trip but the teaching of those 40 church-planters who are taking the message of Jesus Christ into new territory for the Gospel, that would have been beyond sufficient. I have no doubt these words were spoken from God's heart to Michael's: "Well done, good and faithful servant." (Matt. 25:21)
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