Nineteen-year-old Yashoda has made an expensive choice, a decision that costs her in every way. In the crowded Nepalese city of Kathmandu, where glittering idols sit amid Siren chants and incense ribbons swirling upward to appease Hindu deities, Yashoda has made a decision incomprehensible to most Western minds.

She has chosen to follow of Jesus Christ at the price of losing her friends, her family and her community.

Yashoda first heard the story of Christ from her uncle, Makunda, when he came to visit her small village in rural Nepal. Moved by the biblical account of God’s love and sacrifice, Yashoda began to believe that perhaps Jesus was the One she should follow. But when Makunda left, her Hindu family and community offered no venue for learning more about how she could know Christ.Things changed three years ago when Yashoda went to Kathmandu to complete her schooling. Staying with her Uncle Makunda, Yashoda began to ask questions that culminated in a decision to follow Christ. She was baptized only a year later.

That choice cost her, to the tomes of enduring physical abuse from family members, emotional blackmail and even suicide threats from her parents if Yashoda chose Christ over her Hindu faith. At times, she wavered, re-considered whether Jesus was worth so much pain and persecution.

During the recent Hindu festival, Dashain, Yashoda’s parents made a final trip to visit her at her at Makandu’s house. In an effort to reunite the family, Yashoda’s father invited her to return home. Once again, she could be part of their family, he promised. She would enjoy anew their love, their support. The condition, though, was non-negotiable: the young woman must renounce her faith in Christ.

“I cannot leave Christ,” Yashoda replied quietly, a cavernous sorrow filling her as her parents filed out the door without another word.

Yashoda’s Uncle Makandu attends a local university and has few resources himself. At times, the two wonder how they can make ends meet. Nonetheless, they have decided the cost of their faith in Christ is worth knowing Him, and they trust daily in His promise to remain always with those who love Him.

(source: ServLife News)