Network Ministry Initiatives: Mission in Nepal
The Anglican Communion Network recently sent its Director for Mission, the Rev. John Cruikshank, to visit the Anglican Church of Nepal as part of an ongoing missionary partnership between the Network and the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia. Cruikshank joined three others.
The ACN mission team met with 50 lay pastors and lay leaders for training, worship, and prayer in Kathmandu, Nepal, for a six day retreat. The pastors represented congregations from all over the country, many of whom serve in distant mountainous regions where travel may require walking for four days to reach their village parishes. Nepal is a very poor country where the majority of people struggle for the basic necessities of life – food, shelter, health, and the welfare of children.
In the 1950s, there were no Christians living in Nepal; now the estimate is somewhere in the 800,000s out of a population of 27 million. The majority of Nepalese are Hindu or Buddhist. The explosive growth of the Christian faith in Nepal can be explained best by the testimony of those who have experienced it firsthand. The following testimony of Pembadup T., a 50–year-old pastor, was told to mission team member, the Rev. Dr. Robert Sanders, associate rector of Christ Church Anglican in Jacksonville, Florida:
In my village, there are 106 families. I was the first in my village to become a Christian. It happened in 1984 when my wife got very, very sick. I called the shaman (Hindu spiritualist) and also the Buddhist lama who repeated their spells, said their rituals, fell into trances as possessed by spirits, but nothing happened. I had heard about a Christian in the next village. By this time, I had sacrificed six goats to human dead spirits and other offerings as directed by the shaman, at great economic sacrifice to me, but nothing happened.
I carried my wife to the nearby village and found the Christian who prayed for my wife in the name of Jesus. She was instantly healed. I decided to become a Christian and to give up being a Buddhist and not to rely on the Buddhist shaman. At once, the people in my village said they would drive me from the village. They tore my clothes and beat me, demanding that I deny Jesus Christ and return to my original religion. I refused to deny Jesus Christ.
They then said they would kill me and report me to the police. I prayed constantly and the police did not come to the village to apprehend me. Then, the villagers took all my food and gave me human feces to eat and urine to drink, threatening to burn my house. I continued to pray. When some of the people who were leading this persecution became very sick, they also went to the shaman and the lama, made the sacrifices and required payments, but nothing happened. Then, they came to me and asked for prayer. They were healed, and they also decided to follow Jesus Christ. Then, there were two Christian families in the village and both were persecuted. Slowly, slowly through further healings, the power of God, and the faithfulness of believers, others became Christian. Now all 106 families in the village are Christian.
Testimonies such as this can be heard all over Nepal as well as in the other five mission deaneries of the Diocese of Singapore – Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Representatives from each of these deaneries will be leading workshops at the New Wineskins for Global Missions conference that will be held April 11–15 at Ridgecrest Conference Center in western North Carolina. Those interested in Christian mission initiatives in these countries are encouraged to attend this conference, held once every three years. To register for the New Wineskins conference, go to www.newwineskins.org or call 724–266–2810.
Posted 3/2/07