From the East to the West

from the east to the west

पूर्व देखि पश्चिम सम्म

In November of 2018 we started the “From the East to the West” photointerview project. Our team travelled to Nepal to capture the stories of believers, starting in the East and making our way to the West. Over the last decade, there has been a growing number of Christian missionaries and individuals that have had a personal encounter with Jesus.

Our vision was to capture people’s testimonies and share their hopes for their communities.

We believe that there is power in our stories. With that vision, we created a Nepali and English magazine. We put together people’s testimony in the Nepali magazine with the hope to encourage the believers in Nepal that God is moving in their nation, and for it to be a tool to share the Good News.

Their interviews are full of stories and dreams for the future. Our purpose behind creating this English version is to give a glimpse of what God has done in Nepal. Through reading these stories, you can partner in prayer with them to see even further growth in what they are trusting God for.

To see Nepal reached with the Gospel, From the East to the West Crew

Thai Raj I was in the communist army for 5 years and fought for one of those years. At one point, my wife became very sick. Despite receiving operations, and many treatments, she was still not healing. Eventually, I ran out of money due to hospital bills, so I moved to India to work, where I also became ill. I moved back to Nepal due to my sickness and spent all of my money on witch doctors to try to get healed.

At one point, I was healed but all my animals got sick and died. I felt as if I had been left with nothing. Then I got sick again, and was bedridden.

One night, I had a dream about Jesus, and in my dream, I thought to myself, “I will believe in Jesus. Whether I die or not, I will believe in Him.” When I woke up from this dream, I told my wife and parents that I believe in Jesus. They told me that if I were to be healed, then I was allowed to believe in Jesus.

I got completely healed after a week of becoming a Christian, and then walked five hours to get to church.

My wife also became a Christian, and now I have decided to start a new church because my home church is too far away.

Bachas One day there was a team coming from Perth to the Ilam base, and I took them to a small village to give out Bibles. Some people didn’t know what the Bible was or about Jesus Christ, so we put my mobile number inside the Bible. Soon after, people started calling me and I was able to share with them. We talked about what they read and what they are studying in the Bible. Now from that village, we have been able to send 2 ladies to do DTS in Kathmandu and one even stayed on for ministry. It is awesome when teams come here to help us with ministry like Bible distribution. Now, about 15,000 Bibles have been given out. There is now one church planted in there, and we are now praying that God will open other doors for ministry like church planting.

Ministry involving new friendships over tea and talking means I can now share the Gospel.

Dependra My brother got involved with YWAM in India and I came to know what YWAM is through him. In 1995 I did my DTS, and after that, I joined a ministry for 6 years in India, which was mostly church planting with teams. Twice I was beaten and taken to jail. I was studied by police and they threatened me, and then they kicked me out of that village. 3 years after the incident, still teams could not go there. Now 5,000 have become believers. In 2002, I got married in the same place where I was threatened and beaten by the police. At first when we came back to Nepal, it was very difficult. We had no finances or family in the land.

Here in 2009 we pursued this place called Napalta as it is a good central place for church planting, and we have been here almost 15 years. We have been praying and many families and staff have joined the church planting groups and we have now 10 churches planted here.

What is it that we [teams from YWAM Perth] helped a lot with?

We have good connections with the teams that came here from Perth; they have helped a lot. It’s good, they were putting the sand, cement, and other things for our school building. They had given a lot of manpower, and society has been impacted by the Perth team. The Bible distribution was one of the biggest things I’ve done with the Perth teams. Almost 15,000 houses, and we gave 1 Bible to each house. And then sharing the Gospel too.

John

I was born in the Western part of Nepal, a place called Humla. I was the first son of my family. From a very young age I used to see different pictures of gods and even pictures of demonic things. I always had issues with my health and demons.

My father really wanted me to go out and study because I was the firstborn and I came from a very underdeveloped place. My dad found a Tibetan man who was into business. He told us that he knew a really nice place that I could go to study and have a good education. He took me to a monastery in India where all the Buddhist people live and asked me if I want to go to this ‘monastery-schoolmonk-study’. I said ‘ok’.

I thought it was really peaceful. I joined the monk-study and stayed there for 12 years and I saw so many things. In the end I got angry, depressed, and unhappy with myself and realized that something wasn’t right. I had so many questions in my mind and thought that I needed to get out. So I ran away from the monastery. I went to different places to find peace because I always felt lonely, angry, and left out.

Hindu people persuaded me to go back to Nepal when I was 17 years old. I felt blind, I didn’t know anything because I was in a Buddhist monastery for my whole life. All I knew to do was mantras, praying, and many other evil things. When I arrived in Nepal, my father saw me and said, “Wow, my son is back.” I heard that my dad became a Christian pastor and reads the Bible. I never liked Christianity because I assumed that it was simply just “Western culture.” I didn’t know what being a ‘Christian’ meant. Then I saw a bunch of YWAMers in Nepal doing all kinds of things: serving street people, and doing a lot of good work. I was shocked, I and became curious and interested. So I went to do a DTS and I learnt so much mind-blowing things about the Bible and I knew that all the questions I had about life, myself, the world, and God… the answers would be found in the Bible.

Ramesh

How did you become a missionary?

I got the chance to go to a new church and hear about DTS. I did a DTS and after I got married I came here. We are working with the Tharu people group. We are sharing the gospel by going door to door and personally sharing with people. We came here and I hosted a DTS team from Kathmandu. They shared the gospel with my family and my sister became a believer. There are 7 of us in our family.

There are 105 households in this tribe.

This community has no good education and no finances like other tribes. There is only one believer in the tribe and including us, there are 3 of us. I want to win this community for Christ. They are easily influenced by alcohol and other bad things. I want to implement positive change. I want to implement positive change and transform people.

In 1993, I did a short term Christian training for one month. During that time, I met my wife. After this God told us to go and be a missionary. I didn’t know what to do, but I came to Nepal. I worked with Campus Crusade for Christ and then we joined YWAM. This is the 25th year we are working in Nepal as missionaries. Now I have six children and four of them are adopted. After serving in Kathmandu for 17 years, we moved to Birtamod. When we left Kathmandu to move, it was very hard for us to serve in this area.

There was nothing here. This area was like a jungle and we lived in a rented house. And we started a new church here and ran a DTS. We are still getting so many opportunities to work with the youth, children at risk, at the prison and doing anti-human trafficking work. When we came here all the churches were in disunity. The churches would all teach something different. Some people did not like us in that time because we went to different churches to talk to the pastors.

Every month they had a combined youth fellowship, where only around 17-18 young people used to come. Now every month we gather at least 150 to 250 young people there. We have twenty three churches with one common platform called Birtamod Area Community Church Fellowship and my wife

Zoell

is the chairperson for the churches and the women’s fellowship. The churches came together in unity.

We want to make a center for children at risk. We have one son who we are fostering that is at risk, as well as two daughters. In the future we want to see something for them to do and be a part of. We are working in the human trafficking realm and are working on building a house for them. We want to start a model church for everyone to come to feel like home. Children at risk are affected by human trafficking in this area because oftentimes their parents want them to go to other countries for work. Fathers and mothers will leave their families and small children, leaving them orphaned while the father goes to another country for work and the mother goes to another man. When they are kids, it is not as much of an issue, but when they are older, their own relatives can abuse them. We don’t want to see that kind of thing. If they want to come, then we just take them home to show them unconditional love until they are married. We are a safe home.

Dal Bahadur

I grew up in a fairly poor Hindu family. I joined the communist army when I was a bit younger because I wanted to fight for my country. I was in the army for two years, but after experiencing two big battles, I decided to run away. After running away, I struggled with some kind of seizure problem. In hope of getting healed, I decided to go to a Christian’s house and receive prayer. They told me that I would get healed if I believed, so they decided to pray for me, and I believed. I got healed and decided to become a Christian and start coming to church.

Unfortunately, the Communist Army persecuted our church a lot and sent us letters asking us how we got money to start a fellowship.

I answered them, telling them that they are fighting us physically but our battle is actually a spiritual one. The money we got to build the church was from our community of believers who give sacrificially. I eventually got advised by my pastor to get pastoral training. When he asked me this, I didn’t believe that I could do it because my occupation was simply being a driver. I switched jobs many times because I had debts, and ended up in the Middle East.

My bosses constantly ripped me off, they never paid me my full salary. So I ran away from these employers and started working under the table.

This landed me a few months in jail because you are not allowed to work unofficially. I was

mistreated in jail; I was malnourished, I was beaten and I suffered a lot. I tried pleading with them, telling them that I am not a criminal, but some people were lying to them, saying that I was a thief. One night, I had a dream of Jesus, and He told me that He would take me back to Nepal. Despite being forbidden to pray to Jesus in that Muslim nation, I still prayed. And I was released 22 days later. When I arrived back in Nepal, I still had a lot of debt, but I still decided to help start a church, and participate in ministry activity. Despite the new laws against proselytization, it’s not as hard to do ministry as when we were a fully-communist country.

How do you see the church is growing in your area?

Before, we thought that maybe God was not with us, not with me. But now I’m realising people are coming, accepting, seeking healing, asking for miracles, and God is working! We have seen many miracles, wonders, and people start changing. I have seen God anoint people, and they have started to speak in tongues and prophecy. I see miracles coming. Since the civil war, there have been 3 to 4 churches in this district, out of 45,000 households. Now there are 97 churches here.

How do you see the future of your community?

People to continually follow Jesus, not backsliding. For people to find out why they are here, what the meaning of life is, and who they are, and that they continually trust God.

Bed

My dad has been a Christian for 18 years. He came to know the Lord during the civil war. He then planted this church and it has been around for 12 years. During the civil war, the communist party came and persecuted my father because he’s a Christian. They came and broke the church windows many times.

Miracle that happened: One day we were about to run our church service.

One man called me the day before and said that he wanted to bring one sick person to the church. I told him to take the man to the hospital first, then bring him to church. The next day came and they brought in the sick person. He looked like he was dying and he couldn’t breathe well. His body was so cold. We were scared and thought maybe they brought us a dead body to test us. He had been like that for 17 days. We told them that we could just pray in the authority that Jesus gave us. Within 5 minutes, we saw his heart start beating. Then after 10 minutes we started to see his tongue moving. After 20 minutes he started to speak.

We prayed more. 1 hour later he got up and started to eat. Meanwhile, our church service was running.

2 hours later he got up and started walking around.

Now he is still doing well and is a believer.

My church then did Bible distribution with a DTS team from YWAM Perth. After reading the Bible many people came to believe in Jesus. Even with the new law, they didn’t feel that much change. When people are curious we are telling them the Gospel. This year around 65 people came to the Lord after they heard the Gospel.

Tara

I grew up in a Hindu family. After marrying my wife, we both got sick, and depended on the witchdoctor. Twice my wife got pregnant but had miscarriages, despite visits to the witchdoctor. We decided to leave Nepal for India, where I could work for my family. The third time my wife got pregnant, we lived in a very remote area. As she was going into labour, I carried her three kilometers to the nearest road, trying to get transport to the hospital but no one stopped for a long time. Then someone stopped and took us to a hospital, but again our baby was miscarried.

A few days after, a Christian visited us and told us that Jesus would solve our problems if we believed, but I couldn’t.

Then he invited us to a house fellowship, after which a woman proclaimed, “I am touched by the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit said to me: “trust this woman”.

I prayed, and afterwards my wife was healed - the pain was gone! I went back to the fellowship every week, interested in reading the Bible. My wife and I realised we were really believing and trusting in the real God. Then my first daughter was born, alive and well.

Kshitij

Why did you start to do ministry in Kohalpur?

After I handed over the ministry in my hometown, I felt I had to do something for the Mid-West and the Far-West. I brought my family and some staff to this district. Then around 1 year in, we were expanding.

Then we realised, we need to equip the missionaries to do church planting, to reach the unreached. Then I started DTS, to equip the locals and to send them where there’s no church, no Gospel. There were 13 districts that I looked after. Now we have around 19 staff and 3 bases in this region, and the staff members actually live with the community.

Communism ended 15 years ago and this place got more effect of it.

It effects the midwest especially, a lot. It still influences this region, more than others.

What is your dream for the district?

Recently, I felt to preach the Gospel, especially the New Testament, to every household. That’s why we started with this region. I want to take more manpower and send the church planters to them, and see the transformation. I am now looking after 4 different churches; I was looking after 10 churches, 3 from the previous YWAMers and then I started 7 churches.

In my trip so far, I’ve travelled to many parts of the country. Being here in Kohalpur is by far the furthest I’ve been. Can you tell me how you are sharing the Gospel in this region? What motivate you to do that?

I’m trying to preach the Gospel and take it to them. I have to find out what the place needs. Do they have local leaders? Do they have resources?

What are the practical things we can do? To do research about that place and that people group, that’s why I’m travelling.

Is there any villages that you’ve been to that has zero Christians?

From here I found out, about one day far, no road, there’s no Christian.

I have a plan, soon, to visit there. There’s a 2500 [person] population there; not one of them committed to the Lord. We are focusing there.

I’m trying to preach the Gospel and find out about that place that has no access for local leaders to go, with the practical things too. We are researching that place and that people group, and then having the students go near that location. I want to bring them to Christ. I want to see lives transformed. Often I remember what John said, that Jesus came to “bring life”. Salvation is the main thing, and through that they have received God in other aspects of life.