Pastor Ratna knows that faith and hope are often cultivated slowly. His life and his church bear witness to this. Twelve years ago, while Ratna was in school, he was introduced to the way of Jesus. After school, he eagerly returned to his village with new found faith. As he shared the message of Jesus, a small fellowship of believers emerged.
However, they soon discovered a problem. “There was no leader,” Ratna reflects. “I was the one who explained to them about Christianity even though I didn’t know a lot about it. But slowly the people grew in faith.” Together, the church learned what it means to follow Jesus. Soon, Ratna partnered with ServLife to receive pastoral training, and officially became the pastor of their church. What started with an encounter with Jesus led to an entire community of faith.
The slow cultivation of hope can be seen throughout their community. Tara came to Jesus, and Ratna’s church, after her son fell ill. At the age of two, he mysteriously began shivering, shaking and falling down frequently. Local doctors tried treating the symptoms, but he found no relief. When medicine failed, Tara turned to a witch doctor, who offered them only bad news. “He said the reason this happened was because a god is angry with us,” Tara recalls. “After he told us that, we did everything the witch doctor asked us to do but nothing changed, nothing helped.”
Running out of hope, Tara heard of a small community of Christians in the village, and brought her son to Pastor Ratna’s church for prayer. “He didn’t suddenly heal, but the situation changed,” she remembers. “We could see that the boy is different.” Slowly, his symptoms lessened and he regained strength.
The experience led Tara to Jesus, and showed her that, contrary to the witch doctor’s advice, she and her son are loved deeply by God. She can look back and see how far they have come. “Life also changed very much because of my child’s improvement. I am a Sunday School teacher now and serving the Lord in this church.”
Twelve years after Ratna first brought the message of Jesus, hope is still being cultivated.Ratna, Tara and the rest of the church continue to faithfully shine light in dark places, offering love, healing and community to all who seek it.
At the end of Psalm 27, David writes, “Hope in the Lord! Be strong! Let your heart take courage! Hope in the Lord!” But he doesn’t write this from a mountaintop moment; he writes it in the middle of being pursued by enemies, shut out from the house of the Lord, having just parted from his father and mother, and being subject to slander. In the midst of these challenges, he turns to God as his source of strength and hope.
Felicia had no idea when she committed eight years ago to be an educational sponsor for a girl in rural west Nepal that one morning she would prepare to teach a seminar on art in education and turn around to see Isha’s face.
Nepal. There, she finally got to meet the young lady she had been sponsoring for nearly a decade.
My marriage turns 18 years old this month. Our last year of teenage marriage! As my wife and I discuss our next year of marriage we want to focus on generosity and hospitality per Romans 12:13, “Contribute to the needs of God’s people, and welcome strangers into your home.”
I could tell you about the elephant in the river we spotted from the bus window on the ride from Nepalgunj to Chisapani, or the thick, humid 107 degree heat and failing air conditioners at the conference center, or the cluster of children shouting “Bonnie, Bonnie,” from across the gulch. But none of those could capture the spirit of the 2017 ServLife teachers’ conference trip to Nepal.
The twelve schools that attended the conference in 2015 grew to nineteen schools in 2017. Some of these teachers walked several miles each day to attend the conference — a conference that for many is their only professional development opportunity. Many of them were attending for the third time. By the third year, these teachers began to trust the crazy sweat-drenched Americans with a seemingly endless stream of flip charts who believe in Nepali teachers’ ability to make a difference.
Eight years ago, Ratna Kami’s life was spiraling out of control. He lived in a small, rural village in mid-western Nepal that was entrenched in poverty. The little money Ratna had went to feeding his excessive appetite for alcohol and gambling. On top of all of that, he was a member of the untouchable caste, placing him on the bottom rungs of society. Just when things seemed at their worst, he fell drastically ill. He experienced heart problems, joint pain and mental illness.
