HEY Friends!!
So first thing's first - my apologies for not sending many updates from overseas. Internet was more limited and very SLOW in some places....but nonetheless, I'm BACK!
NOTE: If you are on facebook you got to see a couple of stories and pictures that were posted throughout the trip but if not click on these links to see pics and read stories from this summer: Nepal A / India B. --> throughout this post are hyperlinks where I have attached some pictures from Facebook- Check em out!
This summer was very challenging in many ways. Long days, hot food, and hot air! I was challenged as a leader, a person, and a Christian and still I wouldn't trade it in for anything! I fell in love with Nepal and India!! The people, the culture, the sights, all amazing. And God blessed me with an awesome co-leader, Chris Biddix! He has done several trips with Teen Mania and is soon to be on the mission field full time! He has an incredible love for nationals and it was inspiring to see him in action! So grateful that I got to lead with him for 2 months this summer! I think my trip would have been drastically different had I not been paired with him. We had great ministry and both our teams in Nepal and India had so much fun!!!
Our team name for Nepal was Freedom Truth Seekers (FTS) because we believed that God was going to use our team in Nepal to share the Truth with the nationals, and we know that Truth brings freedom!! But how do we find this Truth to share? We have to seek it out!
Ps 119:9-11 was one of our scripture memorization verses and I believe it fits perfectly with this! We had about 23 students and they were all amazing! Some were as young as 15 and it was simply fantastic seeing them minister with such confidence!
Nepal......is absolutely beautiful. The people there are so welcoming and considerate. They actually have a saying there "guests are like gods" which explains their tremendous hospitality towards us foreigners! (at the same time it sheds light to their worship of many gods...)
Although the sites were amazing, I want to highlight our awesome global partners (ministry we worked with while in Nepal). Global Partners are our connections while in country. they set up ministry sites for us, they provide our housing, sometimes they translate for us when we are lacking translators, and most importantly they are connecting us with local pastors and making sure we are having effective ministry. We were able to minister in three different cities: Kathmandu, Pokarra Valley, and Chitwan - three completely different places in Nepal but all offering awesome ministry. Our main Global Partner in Nepal was Deepak! He was an amazing man whose heart was completely towards his people learning about the saving grace through Jesus Christ. Him and his wife served us throughout this whole trip and they sacrificed alot to be with us every step of the way. He was out on ministry with us and very involved. What touched us about Deepak was that for 10 years Teen Mania had not been on a mission trip to Nepal because of political issues within the country, they felt it was unsafe to send a team there. For 10 years Deepak has been emailing and calling the Teen Mania contacts asking them to send a team to Nepal. He prayed during this years nonstop because he knew his people's heart were ready to hear the mesage of Jesus Christ! This was so encouraging to see his tenacity in getting a team of students here to share the gospel! His involvement was remarkable and I can't imagine myself praying for ten years straight to see my people set free!
I have plenty of stories to share from Nepal but will share them through my blog. Here is a video one of our students, Carly, made of our time Nepal. She captures some pretty awesome moments.. and some funny moments!! Here is a glimpse of what we saw in Nepal. Enjoy this video!!!!
In India, Chris and I had a whole new team the second month (with only 4 students carried over from our Nepal team). So we cast a new vision for them....and came up with HOLY DELINQUENTS aka. HD! For the India trip our project directors wanted the project to read the book of ACTS. Inspired by this, we decided that we wanted our team to cause trouble for the gospel - Acts 17:6 ""These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here," We used this scripture and much more from the book of Acts as our ammo and motivation for ministry.
What made this team unique is that we had what was called the C-gappers, simply meaning they signed up for both Nepal and India so all but 4 had different Team Leaders for the Nepal trip and we had now integrated them all into this team and that posed as a challenge at first. We also had about 5 more days of ministry before the group for India arrived so there was little time to get familiar with each other. We gave them a day of mourning for their friends who left, their old team leaders, but then we pushed from there on out - nonstop ministry and nonstop fun! It was a great group! We also pushed this new team to learn additional scriptures than what the rest of the India project was learning! =) They had already been on the field for a month and most were beginning to get homesick, so Chris and I had to keep the momentum up and constantly keep them as well as each other accountable as to why we came on this trip! It was tough but we grew close through it all!
Ministry in India was jampacked. From about 6AM wake up to 12AM. Each ministry day in general consisted of doing a English program at a local school. Here we had to get creative on how to present the gospel and used bible stories, our drama, and small group discussion in order to share the gospel message. Then, we would have another school in the afternoon. One day, we learned that the principal from a school we visited loved our program and called other principals telling them to invite us to their school! So some days we had 2 additional schools in the afternoon.
Finally, at night we visited a village that was unreached for the gospel. Every village had a local pastor who was connected with the ministry we were working with and they would talk to us about the village. I can't share all the stories here but one pastor who worked with our project had been tied to a tree by a village he was working in for preaching the gospel.
These pastors risked their lives to have us come and share the gospel with their people. Many of them had been thrown out of certain villages, but they told us that when a group of Americans (and Canadians) come, it gains them a different access point and the people will listen to the message. Knowing that we were a part of an open door for the gospel to continue to be preached was a very humbling experience and privilege - many of us will never have to experience the persecution they have and will and that sobered us as well! (one of HD's scripture verses: Romans 12:3)
In the villages we would walk around and pray as well as invite people to see our drama. Then we would perform small skits, have someone share their testimony and then present our 15 minute drama called the JourneyMan. In the drama, the main character is searching for who created him and what his purpose is. Throughout his journey he falls into greed, pleasure, power, science and it all pulls him away from the Miracle Man - who represents Jesus. After the drama, either myself or Chris would share the gospel (called the "net"). Eventually, we let our small group leaders (MA's) share the net. At the end of the net we would do a response: Those who wanted to become believers, those who had questions, those who wanted prayer for healing. I will share more of these responses in my blog. Each village was different as far as response, but regardless of who raised their hand or came forward we would always send our MIGs out to talk with those who had gathered at our site and re-share the gospel with one of our global partners translating.
Story from the field: In a marketplace near a Hindu Temple we were able to do some ministry, meaning we had to be discreet and not draw attention to ourselves as guards were around and we would be without translators. Some people prayer walked, others had some of our global partners with the local India ministry translate for them. I walked around to monitor ministry and make sure our group was staying within the boundaries we set. I noticed one of our ministry groups (called MIGs) that had gone beyond the boundary so I headed down the street to get them. On our way walking back to the designated area, we began praying for a God ordained opportunity - this street was busy and tons of people were walking, we prayed that God would make it obvious to us who He wanted us to talk to. As soon as we ended our prayer it seemed like this woman appeared out of nowhere and tapped one of us on the shoulder asking for prayer. Her face was severely marred and one of her eyes was almost closed shut. We just began praying and speaking to her, even though we knew she couldn't understand. We loved on her and touched her face and I began to cry behind her back so she couldn't see. In that moment I was filled with conviction because of my discomfort in seeing her face as scarred as it was, and I couldn't imagine if my scars on my heart were visible and how people would avoid me. We all just began to hug her and prayed over her scars. And then I prayed, 'God I just wish someone could come and interpret for us'. Then we heard a man say "Are you all from America??" I looked up and saw an Indian man with his wife who clearly spoke English! God is so amazing. They were wanting to talk to us and take pictures with us but I asked if he, whom we learned name was Matt, if he would interpret for us. He agreed and we were able to talk with this woman we had been loving on and praying for. We found out that someone threw acid on her face and that is how she got the scars on her face. We also found out that she was Christian so we were able to pray with her and encourage her! This woman blessed my heart in so many ways - but it really encouraged our group that day that God answers prayers! And on top of that Matt and his wife were Christians as well and they were surprised to see us be as bold as we were right in front of the Hindu temple. My prayer for them is that they will both dedicate their life to sharing the good news wherever they are!
There are so many stories but this email must come to an end...What I am going to do is work on a video of this summer with pictures and stats, etc. Also, I am going to continue posting more stories of salvations, healings, and answers to prayer, etc on my blog. If you are interested in this please follow my blog found below!
Thank you all for your support and prayers!
Love,
Rhemma
Fun Tidbit: In both Nepal and India, Chris and I decided to have our team names be a secret to the rest of the project. So we let our students come up with funny alternate names and at roll call and group sessions we would just yell out our team acronym and some random alt team name.
(E.G.) FTS became,"Free the Snails!" and HD became "Hydrated Dolphins!"
We would eventually reveal our true team name the last day but it was a fun way to build team unity and it worked with both teams this summer!
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