Flustered Bride

Nepal | OM International

I spent this afternoon in a foreign-language-induced mental fog, through which I caught glimpses of the church God is building in the remotest parts of Nepal. My plan was to gather story material from reports given by the Nepali Christians who are being trained for ministry through OM Nepal. They just returned from sharing the gospel, distributing literature, ministering to children, and discipling believers in villages accessible only by foot.

At least, I think they did. It was my first attempt at story-gathering without a translator, and it didn’t go so well. I caught only snippets scattered throughout the afternoon’s reports. My version of the teams’ outreaches goes something like this:

“We were walking on this road … twenty villages in two weeks … people were gathered around a water tank … somebody had a headache … church members had no idea what they believed … we didn’t have enough time … we should pray for these Christians because it is very hard to be alone … all of a sudden everyone started accepting our books … a sick man believed in Jesus … it was a sad place … he was 105 years old … our time was too short … they gave us daalbhaat with vegetables … he wanted us to pray for him … two girls came to Christ … there was so little time … … there was this really big snake … we need to send another team.”

Understanding that much was an accomplishment with my five months of part-time language study, but it was nowhere near enough to really grasp the situations these teams had just encountered or the impact they had for Christ. One team leader talked passionately about meeting Christians who lived four hours on foot from the nearest church and were in desperate need of fellowship, I think. He spoke slower and more distinctly than the other students, but I was distracted by his pink “gothic punk” t-shirt.

Somehow it was just right. Nepal is the kind of place where a passionate Christian walks for hours through a monsoon to share the gospel with someone who has never heard the name of Jesus, all while wearing a pink gothic punk t-shirt. Where infant believers endure persecution for a faith they know almost nothing about. Where people turn away from their families, culture, and traditions to accept a gospel presented by strangers they meet in a tea shop, and then have no idea what to do about it.

To my western mind, there is something slightly bizarre about most things in Nepal, including the church. But that doesn’t make it less faithful, less effective, or less pleasing to the Lord. It just makes it less like what I consider normal. And maybe that’s the point. God promised to build a church that represents every nation. Where’s the fun – or the glory – in a church where everyone looks and acts the same? It takes a God as creative as ours to build a church like this one. Maybe it takes a church as unexpected as this one to showcase His ingenuity.

Credit: OM International
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