Nepal - Week 2

After our first week we understood a little bit of the price you must pay to be a minister or missionary in Nepal. Praise God instances of physical persecution are not common in Nepal, as far as I know, but it is still very difficult for believers there. There are many gods, temples, and shrines all over the place and for us it was a little disconcerting at times.  There are so few people willing to go...but some ARE going, and God is working through them and people are hearing all about Jesus in these remote places!
We often prayed that those false places of worship would be ruined and that the one true God's name would be lifted up in those places instead. Please join us in praying. Also we understood the physical cost of evangelism and discipleship in these mountain villages. It is very hard to climb from one day to a couple weeks to get to some of these villages. As Jesus said -->

In week two a couple of our girls, including my wife Yuliya, went back to Kathmandu to help with some camps in the orphanages instead of going with us to Tibet. The rest of us got back on a bus and then took a jeep up very steep mountain roads, past a few guard checkpoints and into the Tibet region of Nepal (near the border of China). The place where we were the first week we worked mostly with Hindu people, but closer to Tibet Buddhism is the dominate religion.

Everywhere we saw the very colorful Buddhist flags which actually have prayers written on them. They believe the winds blow the prayers to heaven. Our plan in Tibet was to climb all day for 2 days to reach a village and show the Jesus film there where it hadn't previously been shown before, and in a few villages on the way up. So we climbed, and climbed, and climbed with the sun beating down on us and the dust kicking up and resting inside our nostrils. It was much harder than the first week in terms of climbing but we kept going and helped each other as much as possible. We finally reached our destination at 3500+ meters which is more than 11,000 ft. It is already high enough that no trees grow as you can see in this picture, and it was freezing cold at night. We woke up to snow and our translator was very happy as it was his first time seeing snow! We showed the Jesus film to about 40 people again. At the base of those mountains is a Christian church so we shared with them our plans and route so that they could also continue working with these people.

Please join us in praying for the people of Tibet. Buddhism has a strong hold on the area and the work there is very slow, often without a lot of visible fruit. Please pray that pastors, and missionaries would be called to reach these people who again are in need of a Savior, and that he would give them strength and boldness to preach the Gospel to these remote mountain villages.