Evangelism- Day One!

January 19, 2010
Evangelism Day 1. Several members of the Gorkha church teamed up with us from Kathmandu so that we wouldn’t get lost and so that a local face would be there with us evangelizing. Several members of our group are also originally from Gorkha, so they were also group leaders. Monoj, our church worship leader who is probably a couple of years younger than me, was our group leader. We also had an older auntie from the Gorkha church and a friend of Monoj’s named Ranjib. Rami and I were a pair, and along with Shiva, we completed our group.

We headed out with several Gideon New Testaments in Nepali (when I get home, they’re immediately going on my list of “organizations” to support! their Bibles are floating around all over the place here!) and hundreds of tracts. Monoj warned me that his home was so far away, and he wasn’t sure if I could make it. Shiva added that he was sure it was at least 15 km each way. If ever there was a way to motivate me, telling me you think I can’t do something is the number 1 way to get me to do everything in my power to do it! So, we started out, walking along a well established dirt road, when suddenly we veered off through the rice paddies and into the jungle. We climbed up and stumbled down hills and through creeks and over log bridges! About an hour later we rejoined another road, and walked another 30 minutes or so to “our spot.”

I guess we didn’t want to overwhelm the natives, so we broke into 3 groups: Shiva and the auntie, Monoj and Ranjib, and Rami and I. We would work three “levels” of homes built into the mountain at the same time, regrouping every 15-20 minutes. Rami had never been out evangelizing before, and I knew none of the Nepali necessary to share the Gospel in the jungle! So we made quite the pair. But, as we walked, I prayed that God would work through our broken Gospel and speak directly to their hearts. Most people took the tracts, but that was about it.

However, about halfway through our day, we found ourselves in a village with homes actually right next to each other rather than 5-10 minute hikes apart! Obviously, I caused quite the stir as a white person there is rare (this isn’t exactly a tourist trap!). So, within moments of entering the town, a large crowd of women had gathered around me and were trying to ask me questions, while the men of the town paused their intense cannon-ball game (it’s this big, wooden board game so to speak. people play it all over the place here!) to look on with mild interest. Fortunately, at that point, Shiva and the auntie had joined forces with us, and the Auntie dove right into the Gospel with the authority of a native old-timer.

I just sat on the bench next to the women and took turns holding babies for them and during gaps I would answer their questions to the best of my ability! I felt slightly like a politician?! Not exactly what you’d expect of evangelism, but God will use whatever he wants to draw a crowd, I suppose! So, I had the extremely easy job of entertaining small children who were probably more confused by the white face than they’d ever been in their life! In addition, I got to give out a lot of the Bibles, as they were more than happy to take a gift from a white American. They flipped through it, pausing here and there and mumbling to one another. Finally, we wrapped things up about 20 minutes later, and one of the women insisted that the auntie and I come over for tea. So we did, and it was a nice mid-afternoon refreshment (we don’t eat lunch, remember, and after all that hiking, tea was a nice but small source of calories!).

After finishing our tea, we headed out once more, and hit a few more homes here and there with tracts before dividing up once again. This time, Monoj and Ranjib joined Rami and I while Shiva and the auntie went their separate way. They were going to about 10 more homes spread across the mountain while we were going up to Monoj’s house. So, we started out, and it was quite the hike! After about 30 minutes of climbing, we arrived, and his mother had prepared an afternoon snack for us, which was exactly what we all needed! We each had a plateful of popcorn (not salted, sugared, or any sort of other spices; just plain, white popcorn. I might develop a taste for it before I come home!) with gundruk on the side, the national curry of Nepal! The kids have asked me ever since I arrived what the national curry of America is, and then I have to explain that not only do we not have a national curry, but most Americans have probably never even eaten curry. This amazes them to no end, as we eat it twice a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. So, gundruk is actually pretty rare in Kathmandu, but basically it’s like dried spinach with a lot of salt and other spices and cooked in a little oil. It’s not actually spinach (we have that all the time in Kathmandu), but it’s like it. It was a great afternoon snack!

To my enjoyment, for dessert I got a long pole of raw sugar cane to eat. Well, I’ve never had sugar cane before, so, they handed me this long very hard pole for me to eat, and I was completely clueless in how to eat it! So, I kind of looked at it, and whispered to Rami, and she didn’t know how to explain it, so I just looked at it intently some more, before Manoj’s family started laughing and his dad came over and basically broke it all down for me. You skin the outside either with a sickle or by peeling it with your hands, and then break it into strips to chew on. Then, you suck all the sugar juice out and spit the rest of it on the ground (there’s no way you could chew it up anymore!). So, my lunch was well balanced: fiber, iron, salt, and sugar! Pretty much all you need in a day (give or take a few vitamins and minerals)!

Well, as it was nearing 3:30 in the afternoon now, we began the trek back, and only stopped for water this time. Up and down, all around, hiking in the setting sun. We finally reached the main road once more, and we were down to a trudging pace at best. Our legs groaned under our weight, creaking like rusty gate hinges in the wind. Finally, about 30 minutes from home, Manoj and Ranjib veered off to go to Ranjib’s house, and Rami and I found a stone wall on a bridge to sit on for a few minutes, mustering up the energy to get up and go on. My entire body felt the battle of “door-to-door” evangelism in the jungle, even though we were only out for about 7 hours! My heart is full of thanks for the missionaries who do this for their entire life, moving from village to village in the jungle, preaching where others may have never heard the Word before! I know that we saw a lot of interest in the Gospel but had no actual bites, but what I really learned from the day was just how much missionaries go through to reach the villages that may have no other method of hearing the Gospel. And that’s a lesson I’ll never forget.