A Beautiful Beginning

The first two weeks we spent around Katmandu and praying A LOT into what the next three months will look like. The first week, we went to a Buddhist temple that was on the top of a huge hill, overlooking the entire city, and we got to pray for a little girl who was blind, who could see better after! As we walked up a million stairs to the top of this temple my eyes were just opened so much to the spiritual warfare here. It’s crazy learning about the Hindu and Buddhist religion. Its so hard for me walking around that place, seeing all these man made gods that they worship and gold jewelry and statues everywhere. They sacrifice anything and everything, multiple times a day, because they think that this is how they will be forgiven and seen as ‘ok’ in this life. Just makes my heart want to scream and tell them all that there is one God, living, who paid every price for their sin and wants relationship with them. We got to the top and my heart got heavy and my head started to hurt as all you can see is gold and crazy symbols and statues everywhere. We stood at the top of this mountain and started to worship Jesus and it started pouring rain. As I just looked out into the city God started to speak to me about how much He is going to do in these three months. We all left feeling so ready for what God is going to do, so excited, ready to run after Him.

We live in a little flat close to the children’s home. It’s been such a blessing having our own space for our family of nine to come home to at night. We are growing each and everyday with what it means to be a family, to love each other well, to run after Jesus together, and I am learning so much through that. We have three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room. We spend most nights curled up in the living room reading Narnia together, telling stories, worshipping, and drinking hot chocolate. I’ve been getting up early in the morning to have alone time with God and just talk to him, worship, journal, and be still. It’s been in these moments that God has softly spoken and met me deeply. I am growing in what it means to be intimate with God. The reality of intimacy is becoming a lifestyle for me, in ways it never has before. Time alone with God is something I hunger for more than I ever have. Understanding that my entire life is an overflow of intimacy with him, intimacy has become what I want. My life is a response to how much I love Him. And everything I do in life, every ministry or job or mission field that I am on, every relationship I have, every person on the street I try to love well, every good deed I do, it’s all out of a place of intimacy with Jesus. It has become my obsession.

The second week started a huge Hindu festival here in Nepal where most shops close for the week to allow people to travel home to villages and to spend the week with family, giving sacrifice after sacrifice to the millions of gods they believe in. We decided on Wednesday to travel to a temple where thousands of Nepali’s come to sacrifice anything from flowers to goats and chickens and money. We arrived and it looked like a huge party with colors everywhere, food was being sold along the road, and we started walking with thousands of people pushing and shoving towards the temple. I had no idea what was about to happen. As we arrived closer we realized we were walking past a line of thousands of people who are waiting to get to the temple to sacrifice everything in their arms. The need for this nation become real in a whole new way this day. It become an ache in my heart, for them to know the truth. To be set free. To walk with Jesus. To experience freedom and rest in Christ. To know a real, personal God. To understand the love of a Father who is chasing His children.
It’s real.
And He’s after these people.
And I want to fight for them to see it. And feel it. To get them out of this tradition that they are stuck in and often don’t even know why they believe what they do.

I stood there and watched as thousands of people killed things and blood spilled everywhere, the smell that lingered in this place was horrendous. They sacrifice and kill and then they get marked with red paint on their foreheads, believing this will pay for their sins. I started weeping as I walked through this dark place, and somehow Jesus started reminding me what we carry- that we carry LIGHT and that nothing can overcome Him. That he is the light of the world. That he has already overcome ALL of this that I was standing in the midst of. And my heart started to just look at him, praise him, and pray for these people. I felt light. I had hope. We got to tell people about the God we believe in, the one that talks to us and answers prayer and wants relationship and loves us intimately. We walked up the steps and saw about 15 lepers sitting- most asking for money and food- and we began to pray for them. As we began to pray, a few started to ask more questions and then we saw a woman we had handed a Bible to earlier come ask us for another one because she gave one to her friend. As this happened, the lepers started asking for Bibles, haha it was incredible. They started reading them out loud to each other and they started pointing to things in the word. A witch doctor that was sitting there with a satan pitchfork next to him asked us for a Bible! It was a beautiful thing seeing how hard the enemy has to try to keep these people in bondage, and how God barely lifts a finger to move in their hearts. He does it all. We are just vessels being sent. As we step out in faith, in obedience, He moves. He touches and changes hearts, I don’t. But he’s asking me to walk in faith. And believe that he will.

We ended the week going to a leper colony. We got to pray for many and saw some partial healings. We got to encourage the head of the leper colony who was a Christian and just pray for him and his work. As we were leaving, we got to pray for a man who couldn’t walk. He was sitting in a chair and allowed us to pray.
Five minutes later, HE WAS WALKING, and crying as he was encountering the love of God☺ He really does make the lame walk! That night we went to Joel and Tammi’s house for dinner and fellowship. We get to hear testimony every week about what God is doing in Nepal, and the harvest is seriously ready here! He is moving in crazy ways! Continue to pray for revival and that these people would see the one and only living God, that every other idol would fall and the veil would be torn from their eyes to see who Jesus is☺ He is after their hearts!!!!