DISPATCH: Sunday, Jan 29

It was a rest day for the team. This included a challenging cross-city journey to Higher Grounds, the Christian coffee shop and bakery beloved by those of us visiting Kathmandu from North America. Traffic was worst than the usual gridlock as protests continue over rising fuel prices. (Last week the city was shut down for one day by a strike over fuel prices.) Megh made the trip to Higher Grounds with us as we enjoyed our first real coffee since leaving home and some delicious sweets.

It wasn’t all play and no work today, though. We met with Megh to go over our trip to the Rolpa district in the country's distant Mid-West. Megh, Dave and I will be making the long drive starting early Monday morning, while Brandy and Marissa stay in Kathmandu to work with our Project 1:27 orphans, who are under the care of Pastor Tej’s SARA (Savior Alone Reaches Asians) ministry.

In Rolpa, we will visit the village where Climbing For Christ is funding the building of our second Nepal church. Megh made us aware of this remote location last January during Mission: Nepal 2011. He told us the story of how the fellowship began with a divinely appointed meeting in 2007 between him and his wife and a woman from Rolpa, who was in Kathmandu working as a laborer in the brick-making factories that dot the outside of the city. Megh asked where she was from and in the course of the conversation shared that he was a Christian. The woman had not heard the Good News until that day. After that, Megh invited her to worship at their church. She brought her husband and two children and they accepted Christ. She attended Megh’s church in Kathmandu for two years before the family returned to Rolpa. In the meantime, others came to work in the city and also came to know Jesus.

In July 2009, Megh made his first trip to Rolpa. There were seven believers then. “When I went there nobody could go to that area because it was totally Maoist,” he said, referring to the civil war that waged between the government and Maoists from 1996-2006 and was still felt in some areas for years afterward. (Today, the Maoists have gained a good deal of control of the government.)

There are now more than 75 Christians in Rolpa, including the former Maoist leader from that area. Megh proposed to Climbing For Christ that a church be built there and after praying over this God provided the funding through our membership. Land was purchased in November (see Mission Moments) and we are visiting to encourage the church and initiate construction of the building. We will also baptize five new believers during this scheduled three-day trip.