Our family is pictured here with Carmen and her family. Carmen's family lost everything in the earthquake. They lived in a village in Sindhupalchowk, one of the hardest hit areas of the earthquake and today there is nothing left of their village. One of her only family members left was a sister who lived in Kathmandu so they moved into the city from the village to stay with her sister. My wife met them one day while leading a group through the shopping area at Boudanath. Bounadath is the largest Buddhist stupa (in the world? it is huge...)
Carmen had been calling my wife 3-4 times a week and this past weekend we were finally able to get together again. Their full story involves sicknesses (her husband's leg was hurt in the quake, and unsanitary living conditions left him with parasites. His pills - $1 each for six pills are practically unaffordable for them). Their little boy has a fever, most likely due to viruses caught through unsanitary water filtration. They have 2 sets of clothes that they wear/wash alternating. Carmen has recently bartered one of her earrings to obtain vegetables for her family.
Carmen was sponsored through a full education and speaks/reads English and Nepali. We spent several hours with them this past weekend getting to know them and sharing our testimony and the Gospel. If there is one thing that we have found it is that the Holy Spirit truly has comforted us so that we may share that comfort with others. We did not live through the earthquake, but we have experienced trauma, stress, anxiety... the emotions that came during the birth, illness, and passing of our son. We shared our story after listening to their story - and told them about the grace and love of God that comes through Jesus Christ. We told them about how good God was, and shared Jeremiah 29:11... that God had plans for them that contain a hope and a future... but that all of God's plans required them to first seek His face.
We explained how we could help with some vegetables and maybe some clothes/shoes for their family, but that their real need was not just for material things... they needed forgiveness and guidance from God through Jesus Christ. We explained if they accepted the forgiveness of Jesus, then he would walk through the hard times and struggles with them. He would uphold them, support them, and guide them along the way. We challenged the idea of Hindu and Buddhist gods who are vengeful and spiteful and contrasted these ideas with a loving God who would come to set us free from our sins.
We walked out of the coffee shop and to a vegetable stand, where we bought them all the vegetables they could could carry home (about $3.50 USD) and made plans to return with some shoes and a change of clothes for them later this week (probably another $10-20 USD).
After all this, they said they would return to the vegetable stand to pick up their produce, but first they needed to walk around the stupa. The heartbreaking part of the story is that after sharing the Gospel of Jesus with them, we walked beside them as they spun prayer wheel after prayer wheel lifting up empty words to gods that don't exist and spirits that seek their harm.
Please pray for Carmen and her family as we continue to seek to influence them with the Gospel. When we return to meet them again later this week, we hope to include a Nepali Bible with the other small things we are able to provide for them. We don't often get to provide such full explanation of the Gospel and we hopeful that as promised, God's word will not return void.