Nepal

After a summer spent concentrating on domestic ministry details and planning trainings on the other side of the globe, Christopher leaves U.S. soil again this weekend. He’s headed to Nepal, to a location we’ve long prayed to step into. It’s not only unreached with the Gospel, but also strategically located near the Indian border. The impact trainings here can have is unparalleled; we are grateful for the opportunity. We’re also grateful for…

A married daughter!

Although we were heartbroken not to be able to attend, we are focusing on the fact that a wedding is just a day, and a marriage is a lifetime. Christopher will be able to host a family gathering once he’s in Kathmandu, bringing together members of our new son-in-law’s family (how strange is it to say that!) as well as our knit-together tribe, which includes Babita’s biological sister.

It’s funny, so many years later, to contemplate the ways God has woven Nepal into our hearts. When we first began, it was a place. Just a location on a map in need of Jesus. And in many ways, of course, it still is. While Kathmandu has a Christian presence, leave the city’s boundaries and you are in a whole new world—a world where trees have spirits that are worshipped, and angry gods must be placated with plates of food even as children starve. Even in Kathmandu, try buying a bar of soap without the image of a Hindu god on the box, or banking in a business that doesn’t advertise the favor of some auspicious sign. Nepal is a nation very much in need of the Gospel. That hasn’t changed.

Yet, none of this feels foreign to us now. Why? The people. Not only Babita, whose photo on our “kid wall” reminds us daily of her absence in our home and her place in our family. That’s a given. But our lives have intertwined with so many others over the years we have served in this amazing place.  Nepal has brought us a beautiful community of friends who have become extended family, people we wish we could invite to holidays and graduations and even just for dinner after church on Sunday. The children we watched grow at the Children’s Home who are now young adults. The pastors we have worked alongside. The friends with whom we have laughed and cried and served… despite the fact that we carry different passports.

Nepal has brought us pain. But it has brought us so much more in a measure of love. It has given us gifts the Lord knew would enrich our lives and our faith even as we’ve struggled through the growth and the longing. We are blessed to have the threads of this nation woven into the fabric of our family… a family that now numbers one more soul.