Awkward obedience

“What in the world?!” was the daily echo from our lips for the first few years of life in the rural Himalayas. It often felt like somehow our plane did not land in a different country, but rather another planet. 

• Muddy dirt roads on the edge of cavernous cliffs
• Monkeys sneaking into our house to steal the fruit off our table
• Power outages that would last for days
• No hide and seek after twilight because of the prowling tiger
• Pray about Mr. Cobra before venturing toward the river
• Children playing ball on rooftops without fences
• Milk stored under the bed until it turns sour and becomes a delicacy offered to guests
• Women carrying loads of grass/animal feed five times their size up steep mountains
• Buffalo wearing bells jingling their way to the higher plains every spring—by the hundreds, and at night—led by Muslim nomads.

Embedded in the village, we were an anomaly. 

No westerner had ever lived in this particular part of the world, and we received a lot of stares and curious questions. 

“Char bachee?!” (four children) would echo behind us from fellow bazaar patrons. Giggles as we dodged cows and motorcycles. My watchful, mother-eyes were always alert for the cheek pinchers.

To be called here by God was both costly and priceless.

To be trusted in this place, though, is a sacred privilege.

The children of God in the “land of the gods.”

The land of our calling, like many of the unreached places in the world, held deep significance for the gods of this earth. Each summer, before the monsoon rains would begin, we would witness Hindu pilgrims clad in orange passing by the hundreds. Sometimes they would ride in cars, most would make the journey on foot, and a few would crawl on their knees, hoping for greater forgiveness and reward. We would grow to have respect and compassion for these souls, who clearly understood the need to be forgiven. 

Our first home

In our first home, we would often wake to tapping on our bedroom window, inches from our sleeping heads. All social boundaries seemed utterly absent as people tried to figure us out. Over time, we grew more comfortable with our new home, and the village grew comfortable with us. 

We loved the wildness. We loved the little shop that sold chips and candy just feet from our front door. We learned how to elbow our way to the front of a line, alongside masses doing the same. More than once, my mother-glare landed on anyone who shoved my children. 

Endless needs

The medical needs would vary from children with sniffles to people literally dying on our doorstep. 

My husband saw a huge variety of patients with things like schizophrenia, a dislocated arm, eye infections, depression, unhealed gangrenous wounds, hepatitis, a cockroach in the ear, infertility, and diabetes. As we developed trust, the word began to spread, and people would walk for hours to be seen. Normal medicine seemed to have abnormal efficacy. 

We knew God was in this, “stretching out His arms to a people who did not call on His name” (Isaiah 65:2).

These were our neighbors who became our friends—friends who would teach us to put pepper in chai, chili in everything, then would laugh as the water poured from our eyes and noses with each bite. 

These Friends who would teach us to dance in wide circles of men or women with laughter and joy. We were clumsy and awkward, but grew ourselves into “pukka” (solid) neighbors over time.

The baffling wisdom of God

Sometimes it would baffle us that this was God’s plan—to transplant His children from places where they felt competent and articulate, to the far reaches of the world where they would feel like ever-dependent children in language and cultural comprehension.

Occasionally, though, the veil would tear and we would glimpse the glory of His ways.

The story of Sangeeta* and Abhishek*

This story does not highlight the efficacy of the physical care or medicine that was given, but rather the strategic trust that the clinic earned for a kind of holistic care that wraps around both body and soul—an incubation zone for seeds of eternal life.

One such veil-tearing day, a strong and gentle local woman, Sangeeta, came into our bustling clinic. Her symptoms were not remarkable. She was seen, provided with necessary medications, and offered prayer. Actually, prayer is the reason she had come in the first place. She had heard that the clinic was the place where she could come for true healing through prayer.

“The one who really needs prayer is my husband, but he cannot come here!” Sangeeta pleaded with our staff for someone to return to her home with her.

Our team of brothers made plans to visit and minister to Abhishek, a frail man who had been sick for eight years with an incurable illness. Though he had been a wealthy landowner, he was now just skin and bones, utterly paralyzed. This grief was multiplied in the accumulation of debt, which resulted in sending their 14-year-old son to the city for labor work to help with the medical bills.

When our brothers arrived, they found Abhishek actively dying. When a Hindu dies, at least in our “sacred mountains,” he is fed specific things to carry into the afterlife (a kernel of rice, a tiny nugget of gold, etc.). Abhishek had already swallowed the amulet to prepare for his going, expected at any moment. Though he did not want to die, he especially did not want to anger the gods he was about to face.

But Abhishek did not have the strength to resist. Our brothers prayed boldly. As they prayed, Abhishek’s heart became soft and his legs became strong. By the end of the visit, this man was walking for the first time in years. In barely a week, Abhishek was visiting relatives to tell them that there is a God who loves them, who has power over illness and sin. 

Not only was Abhishek visiting local relatives, he was climbing mountains to visit his extended family members who were scattered in remote villages only accessible by foot. He came to our clinic, all smiles, and asked for people to come with him because he needed to tell his family about this God who heals, but he didn’t know where to begin.

The couple’s young son, Deepak, was called home, and though he was glad for his father’s recovery, he was angry that his parents had chosen to follow this Jesus. From Deepak’s perspective, this decision disrupted everything in his life and community. He often went out before dawn in a rage against his parents. 

One misty morning before the sun rose over the mountains, Deepak encountered a “bhag,” or tiger, just feet away from him, ready to pounce. In the Himalayas, there is a keen awareness that everything in life is spiritual, so Deepak immediately recognized his need to call on a strong God.

Instinctively turning to the God who healed his father, Deepak cried from his spirit, “Jesus, if you rescue me, I will serve you with my whole life!” 

The tiger retreated and walked the other direction, and Deepak ran home with newfound confidence in this powerful God of his parents.

Abhishek and his son Deepak now minister together in their village, which had never encountered the gospel of life and light. They have opened the first place of Christian fellowship, and both are often found telling friends and neighbors, through tears, the stories of the rescuing power of Jesus who “has delivered [them] from the domain of darkness and transferred [them] to the Kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13).

His work, not ours

The privilege of this work came to an abrupt end last fall when my husband was denied entry at the airport, trying to come back to our home. 

His visa had been flagged. Our world, which had seen the joyful fruit of surrender, turned upside down, surrendering that fruit to the true Gardener. 

My head swims with the stories: surgery on a pet monkey who had been attacked by a dog; the old Hindu priest who, in place of money, brought his cobra to the clinic, sending my husband to stand on his desk when he briefly escaped the basket; the shopkeeper who regularly talked to me about her marriage and whether my husband could help her husband. 

The memories are jewels of immeasurable value. We take tremendous comfort that though we are again transplanted, we belong to “a Kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28).

I continue to marvel at the simplicity of obedience. God invites us to participate in His extravagant grace, but only one trembling step at a time. Often, when we try to step out in faith, we stumble at the cost or the bigness of the task. But at the end of the day, the task is His, not ours. We simply show up. And somehow, He delights to use those who show up.

Our current team carries on without us. They come with severe health concerns, and the Lord has met and sustained them. They come lonely, trusting in the provision of Christ. They come with queasy stomachs on windy roads. The darkness threatens, but can only chase them to their knees. They know the King of this unshakable Kingdom. Their joy is before them.

An invitation to costly joy

Our expulsion has stirred in us a desire to walk with and spur others on in this journey. If you are looking ahead and can’t see where your foot might land, but you are stepping forth in faith, we would be delighted to pray with you. 

This journey is not for the faint of heart, and yet, maybe it is for the faint of heart, because truly His strength is made perfect in weakness. 

Indeed, as sojourners for the gospel, we are called to lose our lives in order to find them. But don’t miss those last words because of the weight of the first. Yes, losing our lives is full of heavy cost and sorrow. But what is on the other end of the sentence? To find them, meaning our very lives. Come find life. 

We welcome you to the greatest adventure this beautiful world has to offer. Life. Multiplied. Furthering the Kingdom, where the King Himself does the heavy lifting. Including lifting you often. We cheer you on!