Nepal Part 3

The day after our long van trip, we hiked for eleven hours. We stopped for lunch in a village that had a small church with about eight members. The paster and his congregation were all persecuted and looked down upon. In addition, they are cut out of all the village share cropping, which is how most people survive. We were able to share the gospel with two groups of about 20 people. Both groups had people who were very accepting of us, and asked a lot of questions. We gave out medicine to everyone there, and left all the extra with the pastor of the church, so that people would come to him when they needed help. The people asked us to stay longer and tell more stories, but we had to get to the next village. Our destination for the night was a village that they had tried to reach before but hadn't made it because some of the people in the group couldn't make the climb. There was one believer in that village, and they had promised to visit and han't been able to follow through. We were determined to make it.

The hike after lunch that day was crazy. We basically had to go strait down, cross a river, and then go strait back up another mountain. When we started it was a little foggy, so we couldn't see the mountains around us. Unfortunately, our guide knows the way by looking at the mountains. We ended up heading in the wrong direction on a non-existing trail. We made our way down the side of the mountain for about an hour, pushing our way through bushes and underbrush, before we got to a point where it dropped strait down about 200 yards to the river. As it turned out, we had to go back up where we came from and take another trail down going the other direction. When we got to the trail that we were supposed to be on, it was rock stairs going strait down for about 3 hours. It make it worse, it was raining, so the rocks were slippery. My pastor has a bad knee and he hadn't put on his brace, so he was really having a hard time. Finally we made it to the river, and a really sketchy looking bridge that we had to cross. After crossing the river, it was strait up to the village, which was on the top.

The beginning of the trail going up was going through rice paddies. It was clear very soon that our pastor wasn't going to do very well going up. He thought that his knee would be okay going up, but it he was in a lot of pain. In order for us to make it to the village before dark, he sent us up with one of the guides, while the other guide stayed with him. We made it to the village just as it was getting dark, but still had another half an hour climb up to the village center, and then back down to a house for us to stay in. It was at this point, when we were walking through a remote village in the pitch black, following our 20 year old guide and some local boy, that we realized we could disappear in the middle of the Himalayas and no one would have any idea where we had gone. Of course, everything ended up fine. Our pastor made it about an hour later, and retired to our humble quarters almost immediately.

The next morning we got time to get to know some of the villagers before we shared the gospel with them. We played with the kids a lot. One thing that we learned was that if we can capture the hearts of the children, we have a lot better chance of reaching the parents. I gave stickers out left and right, and we played frisbee with a some of them. When we finally started preaching, we ended up with a group of about 60 people, all listening intently. They were so happy to get even basic medications. When we headed out later that morning, they were handing us flowers in bunches. There was even an older man who started dancing for us. I was an amazing feeling to know that we had caused so much joy in these people's lives in just a few hours. Looking back, that village was the one that will stick in my mind the most. It was such a challenge to get there, but it would have been worth hiking five days for the experience.