Jay mashi means “Victory in the Lord” (and other tales from Nepal)

It has been two full months since my team and I returned from our life-changing trip to Nepal. As usual, I cannot believe time is moving so fast! My new job in Seoul started the Monday after we returned, so I hit the ground running and haven't slowed down for hardly a minute. Such is life in the big city, I guess? And let's be real. Busy is how I like life to be. Sweet sweet adrenaline. More on that another time, today I want to tell you about Nepal!! 

The TL;DR (aka Summary of Nepal Missions)
Our Team of ten spent January 30th to February 6th in Nepal. We were privileged to minister to one church in Kathmandu, two youth revival services, and one Native Missionary Training Center in Hetauda.  We were able to minister to a total of 406 people and 27 local pastors.  During our services, 16 fell under the power of the Holy Spirit, one woman's legs were healed of pain, two people with headaches and one man with back pain were healed, and we saw countless manifestations of the glory of God.  Thirty-one youth responded to a call to full-time ministry.  Themes of forgiveness, God's love, greater things for Nepal, and being mighty warriors went out in the preaching of the Word, testimonies, and exhortations.  We also had the privilege of visiting the house of a local pastor and ministering to several local families.  And to top it all off, we adopted a puppy to be a guard dog for one of the local churches and we attended a Nepali wedding and danced the night away celebrating what God is doing in Nepal!

That's the ministry update that our team is able to send out recounting the events that happened on our trip. Praise the Lord! You all know how hard it can be for me to be concice, so this time our team leader did it for me!! YAY! Haha... but for real...

FYI: most of these photos were taken by the exquisite Hannah Love Yoon, our trip photographer and legit photography journalist (that's her real job -- we were hecka blessed to have her as a member of our team, not only for her photog skillz but for her presence as a powerful woman of God. Check out more photos here.)

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

It is very hard to narrow down my thoughts about our week in Nepal, what it meant to me, and how I saw God moving. A few years ago, I was telling a testimony of a mission trip and I talked for over two hours... true story...
I want to share every meaningful moment, day by day, because so much happened in such a short amount of time! If you have a spare 3 hours, I could talk your ear off, but I'm learning not to do that! (I see you smirking. I know. It's a process.)

To begin, I must tell you Jay Mashi! Jay mashi means “Victory in the Lord” in Nepali and it’s the most common way to greet fellow Christians. Nepal is only about 1% Christian and there is a lot of persecution from people who feel threatened by this strange, new faith. I can tell you with absolute certainty, God is moving powerfully in Nepal. That was my favorite part of our trip was along those lines, meeting fellow Christians around the country, who are doing work that I can hardly fathom. More on that in a moment...

Our host for the trip was a powerful man of God named BP. Uncle BP and his wife, Auntie Tara, traveled with us the whole time and truly felt like family after just a few days. I asked my prayer partners to pray that we had a strong and fast connection to Uncle BP and oh my goodness, did we ever!! Auntie Tara is one of the sweetest people in the world. Uncle BP teased us, played jokes on us, fed us, and treated us like his very own nieces and nephews the whole time. On one of our road trips through the mountains, we stopped by the road to use the restroom. While we were away, he pulled out a bunch of grapes from under his seat (purchased as we left the city) and snuck over to a bush. As we walked back, he offered them to us like he'd just found a grape bush on the side of the road and "picked" them then and there. ...we kinda fell for it for a minute. WINNING. We felt (and were!) very very loved! Nepal would not be the same without them! We spent a lot of time with their daughters and son-in-law while we were in Kathmandu, spending evenings in their home, eating, and even going to a wedding all together!

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Speaking of road trips through the mountains, OH MY GOODNESS NEPAL IS BEAUTIFUL. We stayed part of the week in Kathmandu, the capital city, and part of the week in Hetauda and Sirlahi, so we were in the van a lot driving from place to place for revival services and to meet with pastors at different churches. Two of our days included 8 hour van rides through the mountains, which make up 77% of the country's topography. We prayed over our drives and BY GOD'S GRACE we didn't have a head-on collision, get rear-ended or side-swiped, fall off a cliff, and not one person threw up in the van (though the same can not be said of the puppy - more on that in a moment!). PRAISE THE LORD. From our viewpoint in our van along those long winding roads, we saw a lot of beauty. Roads are dusty, hills are alive, skies are wide, air is crisp. My soul sings!

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Fun story. During one of our stops along the mountain roads, Auntie Tara walked across the road and started talking to someone about these cute puppies that were lounging about in the sunshine, then she picked one up and walked back to us with the biggest smile on her face. She adopted the puppy! I was a little concerned at first, I mean, how can we just pick up a puppy on the side of the road and take her home?? Is that how it's done? Well, yeah I guess so! One of the churches we would be visiting in a couple of days is relatively new and needed a guard dog, so she decided to adopt a guard dog for his church! I tentatively suggested we call the puppy Philly (after our church, New Philadelphia), and the name stuck! Hooray!!
We piled in the van again and headed out, Philly the puppy napping at Auntie's feet for a long bit of the drive, then, bless her heart, she got carsick! We had prayed that none of the people in the van would be sick, but we sure didn't anticipate the puppy! Poor thing! It was pretty funny, though, to stop the van and air out the puppy and clean off the van mats. Crazy life experiences, right?

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

As you read in our missions summary, we held several services during the week. We held services at a church in Kathmandu, two youth revival services, and a Native Missionary Training Center in Hetauda, which is the church where Philly the puppy lives now! We met so many people and saw the Holy Spirit move in power everywhere we went. It's incredible to see what God does when people have GREAT FAITH for Him to do great things! Supernatural. People shaking, falling, joy, healings, speaking in tongues, and other powerful manifestations of God's glory. Experiencing God is a unique experience every time!! I've never personally fallen (what some call "being slain in the Spirit"), but in Nepal, it happened to people in my arms several times. I've never experienced anything like it, and from the expressions on their faces, it had never happened to them either! The Word of God was moving, living, breathing in the services. There we were, vessels of the Lord's anointing, empowering other vessels of the Lord to be the light in the darkness! Because there are so few Christians in Nepal, these powerful girls, boys, women, and men that we met have such a powerful role to play in the future of the country!! It was such a privilege to spend that time in worship together.

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

I mentioned that the highlight of the trip for me was spending time with local pastors around the country. Of all the powerful things we experienced, this was maybe the biggest blessing (and most eye-opening) of the trip. My church partners with NPWM, which stands for Native Partners for World Missions, so we spent a lot of time connecting with men and women from several cities around Nepal. Each pastor that we met runs several different ministries and has stories that are larger than life. Pastors shared about planting churches and Bible colleges, directing films, starting political parties, and small businesses. They spoke of graduating from college and immediately adopting 15 orphans into their home. They spoke of walking for days to reach villages that don’t have roads, just to share the gospel. They spoke of trekking ministries in the Himalayas.

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

They laughed and joked with each other and you could palpably sense the brotherly love these pastors have for one another. But even as they joked, there was a lingering heaviness to their ministry stories. They spoke of being imprisoned in a latrine for months at a time for sharing the gospel where it’s illegal... only to get out and tell more people about Jesus again, risking more jail time in a literal toilet. The spiritual climate in Nepal can be very hard. The darkness is real. Even while we were there, we heard that Christians in a village a few hours away were kicked out of the village. Their land and everything they had were taken from them. The persecution is real... but the joy that these pastors carry is so much brighter than the darkness! They carry the light of Christ with them wherever they go.

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

A big part of our role in Nepal was to pray for and encourage Christians in area churches. If you've ever been in a place where there is a lot of persecution or hatred toward your faith, you understand how important it is to be filled up so that you can continue to pour our love and hope and joy. We had the immense privilege to pray with the Holy Spirit over pastors and their families throughout the week!! Kim, another member of our team, pointed out that these men and women are rockstars of heaven, and we were so humbled and honored that they wanted us to pray for them. We loved to hear their stories and pray for them, and they wanted to know about us too! They asked us about our current jobs and our future hopes and goals, then they’d pray for us! Every encounter was mutually edifying and built us up in our faith. God used them for us, and He used us for them! By this, the name of our Christ Jesus is glorified.

HEY LOOK I got a photo *with* Hannah Love Yoon! 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Throughout the trip, I kept having intense surges of emotion in my spirit while praying or looking up and out over the hills. I thought I would be undone in an emotional sense, but I didn't have that one giant overflowing emotional outburst... I felt a little like a water balloon that keeps getting filled up. Mmmm... slowing falling more in love with Nepal. On the last big ride through the mountains, the skies finally cleared and we got to see a perfectly clear view of the Himalayas stretched across the horizon. To try to capture them in words or even photographs cannot do them justice. STUNNED. GOD, YOU MADE THAT. I kept just looking up and thinking "God made those. His hand crafted them, crag by crag. Each boulder is there on purpose. He knows each avalanche before it occurs. Jesus knows these hills. Jesus knows the paths that go through them." Humbling barely begins to cover it. I couldn't help but pray. I lift my eyes up to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

I was torn up as we left for the airport. I cried as we said goodbye to our host pastor, Uncle BP, his wife Auntie Tara, and his daughters. It’s amazing how fast people can feel like family. When Uncle BP runs for Prime Minister of Nepal someday, he is going to have a powerful campaign staff from South Korea!! It blows me away every time I go to a new country, just to meet other believers. We may not have anything in common – no language, no history – but when we are united in Christ, we are one. The Cross of Jesus Christ bridges cultures. We have brotherhood, we have shared traditions, and most importantly, we have a shared eternal future together. God is doing BIG things in Nepal. He is using powerful men and women all over the country to act out His sacrificial love and extravagant grace. He’s moving in politics and business. He is healing and empowering. He is caring for the orphan and the widow. His church is growing. It needs our prayers! Nepal is so beautiful. The pastors there are doing such powerful work. God took our team of 10 to encourage, pray for, and lift up powerful ministers of the Gospel in Nepal! In return, these pastors encouraged, prayed for, and lifted us up, sharing their mighty testimonies! That’s what God does! He brings us to a place of undeserved privilege, sets us in community to strengthen each other, and together we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing His glory. Amen!


Truly, every member of our team has 1,000 stories to tell. I wish I had time to share all of them! Someday, we can all sit around in heaven and revel in the goodness of our time spent sharing the gospel together in all the ways and all the countries here on earth. Then, time won't be too short, and neither will our attention spans. But, alas, for now I should let you get back to work, or cooking, or watching the kids, or staring out the window pondering how beautiful springtime is, or whatever else you could be doing while you read this. Thank you for taking a moment to know what has been on my heart, and I pray that this testimony blesses you and sets you free. God is so good. He has so much in store for us to share!

Photo Cred: Hannah Love Yoon 

"Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory."

Romans 5:2

Myanmar/Nepal Missions Recap 2015 by the incredible and 

incredibly talented Joel Kim, media pastor from New Philly.

For more of the AWESOME photos from our trip photographer, Hannah Love Yoon, check out Flickr and Facebook (srsly. go look.)