Day 15: Travel to
Bharatpur. Our next location was a long bus ride away and we were saying
goodbye to Marduk halfway there at a place called Bharatpur. We got off the bus
and had some lunch at a restaurant/hotel. While we were eating Harry announced
that he was the leader of the trip and so we had to listen to what he had to
say next. Then he told us that he didn’t want us with him if we were going to
encourage people to meet in homes instead of in traditional churches. He said
that we were there to run kickstart seminars, not to add on our own teachings.
I tried to explain to him that it is not our teachings but from the book of
Acts but he wasn’t interested. He told us that the only way we could continue
teaching the kickstarts is if we stopped talking about home church. Mike and I
told him that we weren’t prepared to do that so we decided to part company.
We booked in to a hotel and tried to figure out what to do
next. While we were there I went to thelastreformation.com where the kickstart
teachings came from and read what they believe the reformation will look like:
‘A reformation that will go deeper than any reformation
before: away from wrong church
traditions, and creating an understanding that church is who we as
believers are, not where we go to on Sunday. We believe that with this
reformation, we will go back to what we read in the Acts: A simple
disciple-life led by the Holy Spirit, where the kingdom of God comes near in
homes, on the streets, in shops – yes, all places where people are.’
Something didn’t line up with what happened. It became
obvious that Harry was unhappy with us and wanted to get rid of us. He had
never mentioned anything to us before so we were caught unawares but felt at
peace after he left. We relaxed in the hotel while we thought about what we could
do. We quickly realised that we needed a good interpreter with whatever we
planned. We went for a wander around the city for a while with no real
destination and ended up at a café for dinner. We asked the waiter if anyone
spoke English and he said his boss was coming. When the boss turned up he spoke
great English and actually taught English at a local college. When we said we
were looking for sick people to pray for and an interpreter, he told us that he
was busy but might be able to send us one of his students to help us! He was
not a Christian but he was happy to help us out. We also got a phone call from ‘Tom’,
the pastor where we were due to run the next kickstart. He was disappointed
that only 1 person had turned up when they were expecting 3 and that they had
been praying for the kickstart for 6 months. He wanted us to catch the next bus
but I told him that he would have to run it past Harry.
Day 16: In the
morning I spoke with Harry again but there was no way he wanted us with him. At
least that meant that door was closed for us so I went to meet with the café
owner in the morning to organise some sort of outreach. When I got there, the
café owner had called a Christian friend of his who regularly goes to visit
mentally unwell people in rural villages. The man was willing to take us to the
villages so we could pray. As I was talking with him I received another phone
call from Tom, who told us about his brother, ‘Martin’ who was also a pastor
and we could run a kickstart at one of his villages. We would have to leave
that day to meet with him. I said we would do that and apologised to the café
owner but promised that I would call him back when we came back through. So we
got on the next bus to a town called Butwal and met Martin. He is an amazing man
who forced his pastor to baptise him because he was so keen to follow God. He
has also taken in approximately 20 orphans into his home and clothed and fed
them out of his own pocket.
Day 17: Rest day
in Butwal. Good to rest as Mike and I were actually really tired. Travelled to
village where we would take the kickstart.
Day 18: First day
of kickstart in village. Good day of teaching with Martin translating. Mike
took ‘Christian or disciple’ then I took ‘Luke 10’. All the villagers know a
lot about harvesting because the fields were all being prepared so I asked them
to teach me about it. I asked about preparing the soil, planting the seeds and
watering the ground. Then I acted foolishly when it came to harvesting and
asked them whether we yell out from the edge of the field for the harvest to
come in. They all laughed at me. Then I asked whether sweeping the barn would
help. Again, they all laughed. Then I asked whether music would help and pointed
at the instruments on stage behind me. No one was laughing after that. Martin
even stopped interpreting for a while and I had to repeat a few sentences. Mike
shared ‘the gospel’ after that and got everybody to practise with each other.
Day 19: Second
day of kickstart in village. I had the runs all morning. Ironically, I was
supposed to speak on ‘healing the sick.’ I was
not in any pain but I couldn’t stray far from the toilet. One person asked me
if I needed a doctor but I just laughed and said that I would be fine.
We prayed for one lady who
had a fever and immediately lay down when she came in. After praying for her
for around 5 minutes she was able to sit up and drink some water. Some people
there prayed for her some more and after around half an hour she was able to
listen to the teaching. We found out later that she saw a ghost hand reaching
into her home which wouldn’t go away unless she put some food on it. We
encouraged her to tell it to go in Jesus’ name if it ever came back.
We went out to the local
villages after this to find people to pray for. We didn’t talk to many people
and I could sense my group wasn’t really interested in approaching anyone. We
seemed to keep walking past village and houses. After a while I understood why.
They were taking me to their newest church building that was half built. There
was an amazing story about how it all started. The pastor of the church prayed
for a lady who had been sick for years and she had spent a lot of time and
money trying to get healed. When the pastor prayed for her she was healed. The
husband of the woman gave some of his land to the pastor so he could build a
church there so that his wife and the locals didn’t have to walk 7 km’s to get
to the other church. This church was now focusing a lot of energy and resources
into building a place for these people to worship together.
I saw Martin hand over a lot
of money to the builders so that the work could continue on the building. When
I saw this I had to walk away in disgust. I couldn’t help but think that this
money could have been used in much more effective ways. The pastor had started
out preaching the gospel and healing people but it had all stopped because now they
were focusing on a building. Didn’t they have perfectly good homes they could
meet in? I had attended a house fellowship in the last village where 40 people
gathered together outside to sit on mats and worship God. There was so much joy
there. These beautiful believers had been taught that to follow Jesus is to
build a building and invite people there, rather than to listen to Jesus who
said to ‘Go and preach the gospel.’ How many other people have been caught up
in the same trap?
I was fuming on the walk back
home. The 7 km walk gave me a good chance to get my heart right. I realised the
people there had a heart for the kingdom of God. They genuinely wanted to see
more people worshipping God but their focus was on the building, not the
people.
That evening we travelled
back to Butwal and had a good chat with Martin about focusing on people rather
than buildings.
Day 20: Rest
at Butwal. It was Mike’s turn to get the runs. I prayed for him but I think he
needed some rest. I went with Martin on his motorbike to pray for an old lady
who couldn’t move from her bed. She had to be helped up to go to the toilet. I
prayed for her for around 30 minutes but nothing happened.
Then Martin took me to a
prayer meeting. There were about 15 people there all sharing their prayer needs
one by one in Nepali and Martin didn’t translate so I had no idea what was
happening. When it came to my turn I just gave a brief introduction of myself
and what I was doing and requested prayer for strengthened faith. After
everyone had shared, they had a communal time of prayer. Some of the older
ladies requested prayer for various pains in their body so Martin told me I
could pray for them. A lot of them had sore knees or stomachs. I asked some of
the younger ladies if they would like to pray and gave a quick example of how
they should pray. It was a struggle to get them to pray short commanding
prayers instead of long pleading prayers. In the end I had to do a lot of the
praying, just so the ladies could get their healing.
As I was about to go one man
came up to me and told me that he was always afraid. I asked him a few
questions and it seemed like he had a spirit of fear. I prayed for him and came
against the spirit of fear and any other unclean spirits that shouldn’t have
been there. After about 1 ½ minutes of this nothing seemed to be happening so I
got my interpreter to ask the man what was happening. The interpreter took one
look at his face and didn’t say anything. The man was not moving but looked
like he was struggling to keep something in. It almost looked like he was
trying not to fart. It would have been comical except that I recognised that it
was the demon. I spoke freedom over the man and told the demon to go. It didn’t
want to go but I kept commanding it to for the next 5 minutes. The Nepali
people that were left were joining in with me. One of the ladies started
jumping from one foot to the next and clapping her hands together. I remember
looking at her with a quizzical look and motioning for her to stop. At least it
wasn’t as bad as what happened in the last village where Cushna whacked Anita
over the head with her Bible when we were halfway through casting the demon
out…
A few minutes later the man
was free and felt peace. I encouraged him to resist any fearful thoughts that
come along in the future and come against the schemes of the devil in Jesus’
name.
The rest of the day was
uneventful.
Day 21: Butwal
church service. Martin asked if Mike and I would speak at the church service
the next day. Normally I’m not that keen on church services but Martin was such
a strong man in faith that I didn’t want to say no to him. I had 30 minutes to
summarise kickstart seminar. I shared scriptures about how the gospel comes in
word and power. If we only share one of those, we are only presenting half a
message. I shared how all believers need to be in the harvest field. Then I
taught them how they could share the gospel in word and demonstrated the gospel
in power.
After the service the people seemed more interested in
organising their Easter Sunday picnic than discussing anything I had said. No
matter. Hopefully God will use that in some way.
Later that day we shouted Martin and 5 of his orphan
children dinner and had a good chat with Martin about the best use of resources
in Nepal. He has planted many churches here and realises that having a building
empty for 6 days of the week is not efficient. With some of the church
buildings he has built he has added a couple of rooms for orphans or widows to
sleep in.
