I’d applied to teach in Japan and looked into the Peace Corps when a friend of mine said, “What about this organization in Nepal? They need teachers.” And I said, “Great! Where is that, exactly?”
Hey travelers! I’ve got a special treat for you. A friend and fellow gospel laborer graciously volunteered to write a guest post for Silk Road Mission! M.C. (name changed for privacy and safety) spent several years serving and ministering in one of SRM’s stomping grounds: Nepal. They’ve given some great insight into serving there and what it was like during the large earthquake event in 2015. Enjoy! (Kenneth See)
Author’s Note
I grew up in small-town Nebraska, attended college in Nebraska, went to grad school in Nebraska (but didn’t finish…I was one class short!), and then ended up spending just over five years living and working overseas. To be fair, it had been a dream since I was about ten years old, though back then I envisioned a grass hut in the jungle somewhere, preaching to people with interesting piercings and no running water. The reality was quite a bit different. I’m also going to be deliberately vague as to what I was doing and who I was working for because the work is still going on and I want to protect the ones still there.
Life Before Nepal
I grew up in an extremely legalistic church—we actually had the word “Fundamental” in our church name. And while working through the baggage of that has been a lifelong process, one of the things that church did extremely well was missions. We supported dozens of missionaries all over the world, and every November we would have a missions conference in which any of the missionaries home on furlough would come and share their 3-hour slideshows (I exaggerate slightly) and tell us what God had been doing in their ministry.
I was enraptured, in particular by a family that was serving in Papua New Guinea. I saw them as giants in the world of missions, when in reality they probably were what any of us “missionaries” are—people who answered God’s call to GO. For some people, GO means their calling to an office or a classroom close to home, but for others, GO means go a little farther.
The path overseas was not a straightforward one. Some people seem to know exactly what they want in life and how to get there; that’s never been me. What I do know is that there were a few formative moments over the years that have nudged me toward the path I eventually took.
The first was a college roommate who introduced me to anime, which led me to a Japanese language class and a budding interest in Asia in general.
The second was a missions trip to Costa Rica. I’d been on short trips before as a high schooler, but this time I went as an adult sponsor. It was a life-changing two weeks, to the point that a friend of mine joked that she wasn’t sure they were going to get me on the plane to go home. There was such a sense of community and shared purpose I’d never felt before that I didn’t want it to end.
As to how I ended up in Nepal specifically, well, I had nothing to do with it. Or at least very little. I had just finished my teaching degree and was looking for something that would take me overseas. I’d applied to teach in Japan and looked into the Peace Corps when a friend of mine said, “What about this organization in Nepal? They need teachers.” And I said, “Great! Where is that, exactly?” So, it was obviously a match made in heaven. But I applied and basically told God, “Whatever comes through first, I’m going to take to be Your will.” Everything else fell through pretty much immediately and I ended up in Nepal!
Life in Nepal: Initial Reaction
There was a sense of adventure to being in Nepal that never really left me for the three years I lived there. I used to hop on my motorcycle in the mornings and start humming the Indiana Jones theme music as I drove down the road. Things were new and exciting and scary all at once, and even something as simple as going to the grocery store could turn into a day-long ordeal that ended with you back home covered in road dust with nothing to show for it. We used to celebrate if we accomplished one thing a day.
Life in Nepal: Culture Shock
The funny thing about culture shock is that it never really goes away. You can live somewhere for years and there will still be something that catches you off guard or simply isn’t the way you’ve always done something and it sets it off all over again. What is perhaps most surprising is that when you come back to your home country, you experience it again, but in some ways it’s worse because it’s supposed to be home. Someone once described living overseas as a square peg learning to live in a round hole…your corners get shaved down so you kind of fit in to your new surroundings, but then when you come back to your square hole, you no longer really fit properly there, either. But was it worth it? I think so.
Life in Nepal: Pros and Cons
My most favorite thing was the people, and by that I mean both the locals and the community of our organization. The Nepali people are, on the whole, the friendliest, most welcoming people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. And one of the things our organization did really well was build community. I had closer relationships with the people I worked with than I have ever experienced before or since.
My least favorite thing was how hard it was to get anything done. Sometimes it was a strike in which no one dared drive or they’d be beaten up and their motorcycle set on fire. Sometimes it was a shortage of cooking gas or a lack of electricity. Sometimes it was the stomach upset that would set in after eating out at what you thought was a safe restaurant, but now you’re in the hospital with a bacterial infection. Rolling blackouts, rampant corruption, and spiritual warfare were all at work on a daily basis.
The Earthquake
Nepal lies on the edge of a tectonic plate that’s pushing into Asia at large, so earthquakes are fairly common. When I first arrived, we were instructed to create “earthquake kits” and store them somewhere accessible, as there’s a history of a strong quake every 70-80 years, and the year I arrived was year 80…I’d never felt an earthquake before living there, but most of the ones we felt were fairly small.
On Saturday, April 25, 2015, I was sitting at my desk at my home in Pokhara when I felt the house start to tremble. It intensified to the point where things started falling off my kitchen counter, and I remember running through various scenarios in my head like, “Don’t get under the table; it’s safer to be next to furniture than under furniture…should I try to get out of the house? The road is narrow and lined with stone walls. What about the roof? Would that be safer?” I eventually ended up on the floor next to my bed. I was able to walk but had to hold on to the walls to keep my balance as the floor rocked and rolled underfoot. And then I crouched by my bed in the “safe” position and prayed for it to end. I heard later that the quake lasted 50 seconds—it was the longest, scariest 50 seconds of my life. When it ended, my landlady who lived downstairs rushed up to see if I was okay and we commiserated with each other about how scary it had been, but since we couldn’t see any damage in the neighborhood we didn’t think a whole lot of it—until the calls started coming from Kathmandu demanding that we all check in immediately. And then we started to see the pictures from Gorkha and the surrounding villages, and hear stories about our coworkers helping to dig bodies out of the rubble in Kathmandu…we were incredibly fortunate where we were. Pokhara was about the same distance from the epicenter as Kathmandu but had virtually no damage. Add to that the fact that the quake had happened on Saturday, the one non-school day, in the afternoon when most people were outside…well, as awful as it was, earlier projections for an 8.0 earthquake were for casualties in the 40,000 range.
The quake didn’t directly impact our work in Pokhara aside from shutting us down for a few weeks, but it was definitely a contributor to the general stress level. One unexpected side effect was that the electricity was left on 24-7 to add the rescue workers, which meant we had constant electricity for the first time ever. We enjoyed it while it lasted, because that fall the border protests started with India and we ended up running out of cooking gas, petrol, and many other things as the blockade stopped all goods from entering Nepal. We’d wait in line for hours at the petrol station to receive our allotted 4 or 5 liters of petrol, and there were days when the only way to bathe was to heat up several kettles of water on the induction cook plate to take the chill off the tub of water in the unheated bathroom. There was a very memorable Christmas when we huddled under blankets around candles because the power hadn’t been on long enough to charge the inverter battery for the house lights. I put cinnamon rolls in the oven on Sunday afternoon, and with the intermittent power, managed to cook them completely by Wednesday.
After Nepal
The decision to leave Nepal was a long time in coming. I loved the work I did and the people I worked with and for, but life was incredibly hard. The school year in Nepal runs from April to March with a 4- or 5-week break in the fall for the local holidays. Which means all summer long when it’s 95 degrees and the monsoon rains are beating down on your tin-roofed classroom—or possibly dropping billiard-ball-sized hail on it (I still have the photos)—you’re still expected to be there all day every day, doing your job on top of all the other little stressors that pile up. The final deciding factor was that my organization asked me to sign another 2-year contract if I was going to stay, and I knew that mentally, physically, emotionally, I couldn’t do it. So I came home.
I spent the next year resting and thinking and taking some more grad classes (because you can never have too many?) before taking an extremely short-lived and ill-advised teaching job at a local high school. I quit almost immediately but without plans for the next fall, and was contacted shortly thereafter by a principal from a school in Taiwan who was in need of a teacher. It seemed like the right choice at the time, so I spent the next two years teaching at an international school in Taipei.
Final Thoughts and Advice
I think my advice for someone considering Nepal would be the same for someone considering any sort of ministry work, either at home or farther away.
The first piece is to know why you’re doing it. Are you doing this to make yourself look good? Probably not the right reason, and a good recipe for conflict and failure. Ministry is a crucible, burning away all the fluff we use to hide our own insecurities and pride. We don’t always like what gets revealed.
The second is to have a support team. This doesn’t have to be financial supporters (though that certainly helps), but have people both at home and where you’re working that are rooting for you, cheering you on, offering gentle correction when you go astray, and praying for you constantly. I think one of the main reasons my time in Nepal was better in many ways than my time in Taiwan was this reason—I had a dedicated team of people who were praying for me, reading my monthly newsletters, and sending me little notes of encouragement.
The third is tied to the second. I highly recommend getting a counselor who specializes in overseas workers and making a commitment to talk to them at least once a month. There is stuff that comes up when you’re working overseas—and particularly in ministry—that would benefit from a licensed counselor working through it with you. I’m not just talking about anxiety, culture shock, homesickness and the like. When you put yourself out there for God, sometimes it feels like you’ve just painted a great big target on your back. Knowing that spiritual attacks will likely happen and having a Christian counselor to talk it over with can be a game changer.
The fourth is probably the most important, so I hope you’ve stuck with me—you need to have a pretty good relationship with God. This is a work in progress with me, and I imagine most people, so don’t feel like you have to be Super Christian to be able to be a missionary, but there should be some forward progress in your walk with God. Are you reading your Bible regularly? Do you pray? Are you generally compassionate towards others, recognizing them as people made in the image of God? (definitely still a work in progress with me…)
If the answer to any of these is a flat-out “no,” then I might caution you to wait a while before jumping into the fiery furnace, or the modern equivalent. Try to figure out what it is you truly believe about God, the purpose of missions, and your own purpose here on earth. And if you then still find yourself dreaming of that grass hut in Papua New Guinea, then by all means, go wherever God calls you.