Christmas


For Christmas weekend we went up to the Tibet/Nepal border and spent Christmas at a small orphanage. The orphanage is run by a pastor and his wife, it has about eight children living in it with some widows who live in the same building and help care for the orphans. We got to participate in both the Christmas Eve and Christmas day celebrations. We sang some carols that were off key, but the locals seemed to enjoy it. It was hard to be away from friends and family (I got pretty ill, complete with nausea and explosive diarrhea on a five hour bumpy bus ride) but I was also reminded about why we celebrate Christmas, it is not for presents and lots of food, but for the birth of a small child who would one day save the world.

My Nepali and Tibetian brothers and sisters also taught me some things. Some of them walked a couple days on tough mountain terrain, just to come to church and worship the living God. They also showed me that Christmas is about proclaiming who Jesus was not in the church or to the church but to the Hindu community. It was a treat to see pure joy on an 80 something year old woman’s face as she danced to some Nepali Christmas music and got a kick out of basically forcing the white guests to dance (who could resist her?).
One of the highlights for me was watching the orphans open Christmas gifts (they each got two gifts) and listening to the stories about the pastor and his wife's ministry. The pastor use to be in the mafia, his job was to "knock off" people, but God grabbed a hold of him and he never looked back. the story of the church and orphange sounds like something out of the book of Acts and was encouraging to hear and to share life with these amazing people. This Christmas was a lot of things but boring was not one of them.

Prayer requests:

For the health of my team. Clear vision from God about what our next ministry steps should be. Team unity and trust, as well as joy and respect for one another.

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