We just came back from trek and oh my goodness it was like the most hard, incredible, revelatory time for me :) it was physically incredibly hard, spiritually challenging as the battle is more full on up there, and I fell back in love with Jesus again... There is something about having taken an 18 hr bus ride over trecherous roads, a 2 hour 4wd ride over even more trecherous roads and then a hike up steep mountains and up rivers, ending in darkness then being helped by the other girls (my leg was stuffing up) along these big wide open
fields in the Himalayas with snow capped mountains all around and starry skies, across a 2 log bridge (not falling in)... There is something about that that just is so romantic... And funny! It was so lord of the rings, even at a couple of points up the mountains where it was so steep that if we slipped we would probably just fall and keep falling... Jesus so loves me :)
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| getting off the bus and onto the 4WDs |
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| sometimes the bus would run out of power halfway up a hill and would have to reverse, slowly and back around the corner on the edge of the cliff, then go fast to make it all the way up! |
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| we stopped in a little village for noodles before starting the hike. on the way back down, revival broke out in this village and the whole village came from their houses and the fields, some with their harvesting baskets still on their backs, asking for prayer. they went through the fire tunnel multiple times they were so hungry for Jesus! |
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| the kind of view I had most of the bus trip |
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| bridges like this are all over the mountain, some over chasms that go way deep! |
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| this was taken later on the trek, most of the snow had disappeared off the mountain! |
There was one point where we were sitting in the kitchen/dining/living room of this tibetan family we were staying with, and I just felt so dry and far from God as I felt like I hadn't felt his presence or heard his voice in so long. This was partly due to the spiritual atmosphere of the place. One of the YWAM girls prayed with me and just soaked me in his love... Something broke and I got so hungry for the word again, just soaking in it and resting in his presence, getting so much of what he is teaching me through this whole thing.
We slept 11 of us in one room, 6 of us in the living/dining/kitchen and another 5 of us in the prayer room of their house (they were not Christian) We found out later that this family who had given their home for us were sleeping in their potato field so we could sleep in their house. the dad would have slept there anyway to protect the newly planted potatoes from the wild pigs, but it was just so humbling for us to realize that this family of 4 with two little girls were sleeping out in the field where it was so cold that we were even freezing in our sleeping bags inside, and there would often be frost overnight.
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| the pump where we got our water - no electricity or running water here... and no latrines either. yes. we went in the fields... |
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| the daughters of the family whose house we stayed in - so cute! |
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| 6 people slept in here, along the benches, 2 to one bench, 3 to another and 1 on a small bench :) |
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| 11 people slept in here! 6 on the right, 5 on the left. It's a storage room I think |
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| We came back from the nepali church one day to find new meat hung up to dry in our bedroom! |
Some highlights of the trip:
The team split up as some of us were not able to make an extra trek to another village. I was with the group that stayed behind. The first morning, we went out to sit in a field and just worship for a bit. As we worshipped with one of the guy's backpackers guitar, a family of villagers came and watched us. They asked us through our translator what we were doing and the they asked if we could pray for their brother who loved down the mountain. They must have heard about the healings that Jesus had already done the night before. So we prayed for their brother. Then we found out that the lady had back pain, and so did the man with her. So we prayed for their backs and they both got healed. We asked if they wanted to know about Jesus and they did. So we shared the complete gospel with them, and gave them bibles. They wanted to read about Jesus before saying yes to him, because we explained very clearly that they could worship no other gods if they wanted to worship Jesus. So they were very happy and went away with their bibles.
During the first night of the Jesus film, during the film a few of the guys went to pray for a lady who had cancer and was dying. She had 7 little children. As they prayed, this beautiful lady started getting hit with the Holy Spirit, she started laughing and the tumor on her body went soft. The guys knew something was going on! The next day a few of the girls went to visit her, she accepted Jesus, her husband said he wanted Jesus too and they walked all the way to church that Saturday (nepalis have church on Saturday's). The people whose house we were in were actually also medical doctors and the husband went to see her the next day, tested and confirmed she was completely healed, and the whole village was talking about it!
On the second night we did the Jesus film, I got to pray for a girl who had a sore leg. She got healed, then the next day my own leg got healed as I was hiking back down the mountain! Jesus is so good! There was a man who got healed from a bad back because his ox had stepped on him in the field while working. There was another woman with cancer who we prayed for and she was originally not able to walk. We saw her on the trek down the mountain later on, she was trekking down too!
It was so great for our combined iris and YWAM team, as some of the team had not experienced God healing people so much before. One girl had a lady come up to her to pray for her elbows. Before she finished saying 'in the name of Jesus', she was healed and grabbing her other arm to lay it on her other elbow. Then she grabbed her friend to pray for her! This story was repeated a lot. The deaf were healed, people came to Jesus, we grew closer as a team and closer to Jesus.
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| to get to the church and the area we showed the Jesus film, we would walk along this track and then down the middle of a stream (stepping carefully on the rocks), also crossing a couple of streams on the way! |
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| One of the ladies we prayed for who had cancer. She had previously not been able to walk, but Jesus is in the process of healing her! |
More updates later!
