We are continually seeing so many new and fascinating things here in Nepal that it is sometimes hard to keep track of them. When we arrived we took just a few days to get acclimated to the culture and to learn as much as we could before we started doing ministry. One of the first places we went was the Monkey Temple. This is one of the most famous Buddhist temples. As with most things here in Nepal, this was simultaneously sad and fascinating. The center of the whole complex of temples, shrines, and monasteries was the large Buddhist temple which is ironically a hollow building with prayer wheels and prayer flags attached to the outside. It has the “all seeing eyes of Buddha” painted on all four sides of the top of this dome structure. It was at the top of a large hill and so the view was incredible of Kathmandu Valley below.
- The Staff Disciplers at the Monkey Temple
The Guys of Nepal at the Monkey Temple
The next day we went to see a few Hindu places of worship, including seeing what the Hindus believe is a living incarnation of the goddess Taleju, called Kumari. Every few years they select a young girl who meets the physical qualifications and they believe the spirit of the goddess then enters her for around 10 years at which point the goddess then leaves her. This makes me incredibly grateful to know that unlike hundreds of years of Kumari girls, I have the Spirit of the living God living in me and I don’t have to meet any sort of qualifications or fear that he will suddenly abandon me.
One really encouraging place we went was to an orphanage called Morning Star Children’s charity. This orphanage was run by a Christian man named Visnu (after the Hindu god.) His family was from the Brahmin, or priest, caste. When he was 12 years old he received Christ after hearing an evangelistic program he attended. Because of his conversion, he was kicked out of his house by his devout Hindu family. Eventually he was taken in by a pastor in Kathmandu and he finished his education in a christian school. As a result of his experience on the streets of Kathmandu he felt called to later go back and start an orphanage to take in street kids and turn their lives around. Now he is the head of multiple orphanages and he is making a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of kids. We spent the day at this orphanage and we were all encouraged to see a group of former street kids in a loving and fun environment. All the kids called each other and us “brother ___” or “sister ___”. I also received a Nepali name there at the orphanage: Taklu, which means bald.
The very next day we went to Peace rehabilitation center, which is a home for girls rescued from the sex slave trade. The team went to the home and we met with Shanta, who is the woman who runs the center. We learned about her story and how she started the home after going through a discipleship training school 30 years ago. We also learned about the problem of prostitution and the sex slave trade in Nepal. There are over 17,000 Nepali girls (usually between the age of 8 and 16) trafficked every year and that number does not even include those who enter into prostitution willingly. The problem is daunting, but at Shanta’s home was responsible for putting at least 6 of those sex traffickers in jail so far this year. When a girl comes to the home after being rescued (usually from a hospital where warning signs of abuse are found) she learns, among many other things, a trade so she can go back to her village and support herself.
Meeting Shanta
The next day was our last day of ministry in Kathmandu and we went to a modern day leper colony. I was not even aware that leprosy even existed until recently and yet I found myself in the midst of an entire colony of people in Nepal who had been so disabled by the disease that they could no longer live and work in their own homes. Leprosy is a completely curable disease but the effects cannot be reversed and so most of the people we saw had missing fingers and toes and some other disfigurations. There was almost nobody there who spoke english and so a few of us sat down with some of them and learned Nepali words for things we could point to and we just spent time laughing with them.
Learning Nepali words at the Leper Colony
After just over 2 weeks in Kathmandu, the capitol city of Nepal, we loaded up into a bus and drove 9 hours to another city called Pokhara. Pokhara is a much more laid back place and is very beautiful. We are virtually surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the world but because of the clouds we cannot see them at all.