In the wake of the horrifying natural disaster, God has used the Church’s witness to prompt a surge of new Christian believers in the majority Hindu nation.
Nepal (MNN) — It’s been just over two years since a major 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated Nepal. The quake killed 9,000 people impacted eight million lives. Over 600,000 buildings and structures were damaged. The rebuilding process is still ongoing.
Deepak*, a program director in Nepal with Global Disciples, says that in the wake of the horrifying natural disaster, God has used the Church’s witness to prompt a surge of new Christian believers in the majority Hindu nation.
(Photo courtesy of Global Disciples)
“In fact, we had a weekly newspaper which said that after the earthquake, many people had turned to Christ, and the journalist brought to blame the Christian organizations and churches for doing evangelism after the earthquake. But it was comforting to us because everyone has seen what Christians have done. So we just want to praise God.”
Through Global Disciples, Deepak leads Nepali churches in evangelism training and church planting. There are currently at least 70 programs, and they have six local staff members.
When Deepak first started off in ministry, there weren’t as many local resources for evangelism programs. But as a pastor of a local church, the Lord stirred Deepak’s heart to specifically reach young Nepali believers and encourage them in witnessing and prayer.
“So we as a church decided to organize the discipleship program in Nepal and we encouraged all our members to pray and help as much as they could. Since the program was in the village and many people didn’t have money, they brought food like potatoes, onion, garlic, chicken, whatever they had at home,” he shares.
“The news spread around in other villages and many other pastors also heard the way we were training our young people and sending them through local resources. Different leaders from different parts of Nepal began to call me and ask me how we were doing our ministry. So it was not difficult for me to tell them since it was all done by local resources, through the help of the congregation. I was invited to share the way we were training our young people and doing church planting.”
As Deepak traveled around Nepal and shared their training module at other churches, many other Christian leaders adopted the evangelism and discipleship training methods. The multiplication has been inspiring and the Church movement has grown in the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
“We have a plethora of churches in different parts of Nepal where the leaders come together and once a year they organize training their young people for 10 days, some train for 20 days, and then they send teams to villages for outreach where they get many opportunities to witness Jesus. As they meet sick people or demonized people, all these young people are excited to pray in the name of Jesus and cast out demons.”
Training taking place on a Nepali mountaintop with Global Disciples. (Photo courtesy of Global Disciples)
However, the Hindu villages they go into aren’t always open to the Gospel, and some are even hostile to witnessing efforts.
Deepak shares the story of one village, and how God moved. “They wrote a sign board saying ‘conversion prohibited village’, which means they decided that no one should change their religion. They found a man who was a Christian and the whole village came and they forced him to return to Hinduism, so he had to do that. But after a few months, the man who took the initiative in doing this, he ended up believing in Jesus, because he also needed Jesus! So, it is like we have many opportunities.”
As God continues to multiply and bless the Church in Nepal, please commit to praying for Deepak and other Christian leaders like him.
Deepak says, “Hindus in different places are united now against the Christians. So you can pray that God will give boldness to the Christians to witness in the name of Jesus so we can see the multiplication of churches on the mountains.”
*Name changed for security purposes