?The King will reply, ?Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.?       Matthew 25:40

As I write this ministry update, I?ve been in Western Nepal on an 11-day ministry trip. Although I traveled to Senegal, Africa, twice as a pastor, this is my first international ministry trip as the director of Love & Truth Network and Transforming Congregations. Both ministries exist to equip churches and Christian leaders on how to restore lives damaged by the hurt and devastation of relational and sexual brokenness.

As a concerned believer in the Body of Christ, you?re a vital part of the hope and truth that we share at Love & Truth Network. Our ministry within the church is rooted in the unchanging truths and of the Scriptures and the transforming power of a God who never stops fighting for us.

Together, we are making a way for hurting and hopeless men, women and young people (many who fill our churches) to find real answers and compassionate support in breaking the chains of relational and sexual idolatry that have led to shame, addiction, secrecy and isolation. Your prayers, partnership and financial support are essential for Love & Truth Network to increase our influence in an environment of hostility toward God and Biblical sexual ethics.

I was first drawn to the country of Nepal when I learned that it is one of the most sex-trafficked countries in the world. Young girls are frequently kidnapped or lured from poor mountain villages and tribes with the promise of a better life and a job that will provide for their struggling family, only to be enslaved and forced into one of India?s countless brothels. Men from Europe, America, and all around the world frequent the sex-slave industry notorious in India and Thailand, to live out their perversion on innocent victims who have been sold into this nightmare with no way of escape.

According to the website www.sevenwomen.org: ?Over ten thousand women and girls are trafficked from Nepal into India every single year, across what is  considered to be one of the world?s busiest human trafficking routes.? This site also states that, ?Nepal is considered a ?source? country by people smugglers.?

Another website, www.3angelsnepal.com, puts it this way: ?It is a life full of disease where she [trafficked girls] stands a high chance of contracting an STD or even AIDS. Murder is common, as is abuse and beatings. To her captors, she is a mere commodity, with a short shelf life.?

It?s estimated that girls can only survive 6 years in this hell. Many don?t live that long. Those who do bear deep emotional scars, as well physical disease; their minds and hearts bear wounds that can only be healed by the Great Physician and His sons and daughters who are called to be Jesus to the broken, abused and outcast.

The culture of Nepal is friendly and relational. People are highly dependent on one another and the idea of personal space that we require in the United States is not even thought of in Nepal. Still, I learned over and over again as I preached and taught in churches and traveled to various villages where Ganesh and his ministry team shares Jesus, all the brokenness, emotional hurts, abuse, sexual sin and shame are buried deep in each person?s heart.

When men and women saw from Scripture that we are called by God to bear one another?s burdens (Gal 6:1), confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), walk in the light as He [God] is the light (1 John 1:7), many shared with me, as Ganesh interpreted, that they have kept all the wounds of their heart and struggles with sin inside. They have not trusted anyone else to know, but now they see from their own Bibles that God calls us out of isolation and secrecy so that we might be healed.

With so much shame and relational and sexual brokenness, Ganesh sees firsthand how desperate Nepali men and women are for the ministry of Living Waters; inner healing through the power of Christ, mediated through whole-enough brothers and sisters.

Ganesh and I have grown in our friendship and brotherhood in Christ over the last three years. In 2018, Melissa and I invited him to visit us in Phoenix. He was excited to attend the Living Waters Training in California while he was in the U.S. Unfortunately, immigration would not grant a visitor?s visa.

Undeterred and at great personal cost, Ganesh attended Living Waters Training in Thailand later that year. He experienced teaching, small group safety, community and healing prayer for the deep hurts he was carrying, which until then he had no idea how to handle.

Ganesh left his Living Waters experience knowing that churches back in Nepal needed this ministry. Brothers and sisters were in great need of experiencing the freedom that Jesus brings through transparent, confessional rhythms of walking with Jesus and with one another; the primary themes I preached and taught in Nepal.

Living Waters is a 20 week intensive discipleship and inner-healing ministry accompanied by a large workbook that has not yet been translated into Nepali. So, Ganesh translated the mini version of Living Waters, CrossCurrent; an 8 week program accompanied by a much smaller manual.

Ganesh and his ministry team asked if I would come to Nepal and teach concepts and topics out of the newly translated CrossCurrent material.

Let me just take a moment here to communicate how incredibly thankful Melissa and I are that God brought us into the ministry of Desert Stream/Living Waters. This 40 year old, international ministry is an example of what God can do with a confused and broken man or women who repents of sin and rebellion?even sexual sin, whether heterosexual or homosexual?giving their all to Jesus to be used for His glory and eternal purposes.

We are so grateful for Andrew Comiskey?s ?yes? to Jesus and the way he has both modeled and called the bride of Christ back to a place of authentic transparency ? really, an imperfect but growing, integrated and undivided life.

While here in Nepal, I have had nearly all my meals with my Nepali friends. While eating together I have taken advantage of Ganesh?s interpretation skills. Out of the hundreds of Nepali brothers and sisters I have met, only Ganesh and one sister understand and speak fluent English.

One by one I asked to hear the testimonies of my brothers and sisters and how they came to surrender their lives to Jesus. Of course, this is always a highlight?hearing testimony of how God faithfully pursues each one of His children.

I was delighted to learn that Ganesh?s father had started this church planting movement in order to invite the poor and largely unreached people of Western Nepal to experience God?s family.

TESTIMONY ? GANESH?S FATHER:

When he was only 6 months old his mother died and his father didn?t take care of him. His father remarried and didn?t want anything to do with his son. So Ganesh?s dad was raised by his grandfather, a Hindu priest.

At the unbelievably young age (even by Nepali standards) of 14, Ganesh?s father became a priest in a Hindu temple. He faithfully served and was earnestly committed to his religion. 5 or 6 years after he married, around the age of 25 his wife became extremely sick ? very similar to the women in the Bible who had an ongoing bleeding sickness and was only able to be healed by touching Jesus? garment ( Mark 5:25-34).

They did everything older Hindu priests told them to do that was supposed to restore her health. They also sought medical advice, but nothing helped and she became weaker over time.

Christianity was nearly non-existent in Western Nepal at this time, but God had a man here who was sharing about Jesus and through God?s grace Ganesh?s dad met this man and heard about Jesus. This man told him that he and his family needed Jesus, but to have Jesus he needed to give up all other gods and his Hindu religion. This man told him that Jesus could heal his wife.

So, that was it? after counting the cost and making a very hard decision to give up everything they knew and had always believed, they gave it all up to follow this Jesus. She was healed and fully restored by Jesus!

Ganesh was a very little boy when all this happened. He is now close to 30 years old (his mother and sister made all of our meals).

Since Ganesh?s father was a Hindu priest for 10 years and his wife experienced a miraculous physical healing, God has used their testimony to open many hearts to Jesus in Western Nepal.

What began as a family of 7 following Jesus has grown to more than 1,200 Christ-followers, and the establishment of 35 churches across cities, towns and small villages and tribes in Western Nepal.

Ganesh?s dad shared that while many parents want their sons and daughters to become doctors or lawyers, or achieve some other position of financial security, he has only desired for his children to make Jesus their all, pouring out their lives in love for Him, rescuing lost souls and making disciples who do the same.

OUTREACH:

I had the privilege of teaching and sharing at Ganesh?s church. There were about 120 men and women packed in their small church building.

After that I spent a two day conference of pastors and leaders (men and women) from various districts of Nepal. I taught out of the Scriptures and CrossCurrent for these two days.

 The following day, Ganesh organized a youth conference and other speaking events. We also visited some of the surrounding villages and places where Ganesh and his team routinely minister to the very basic, practical needs of the people and also share the love of Jesus.

This picture is of a new, strong foundation, right alongside the original church building that Ganesh?s father started many years ago. Although it is currently still used for services, the old structure is in pretty bad condition.

During the summer rainy season flooding is a huge issue. Homes and buildings without a solid foundation and roof are not able to withstand the force of the rain and wind.

Ganesh, his father, and his ministry team have a vision for putting up a new, two story building to serve four purposes ?

?     A new worship area

?     Bible school to provide a 6-8 month program of theological and practical training for sending out young men and women to every province and district of Nepal

?     Providing a program and support for disabled people

?     To provide housing and care for orphaned and abandoned children (Ganesh and his wife have already taken in a dozen abandoned children that they care for and send to school)

Ganesh sees the launch of the 20-week Living Waters program as an integral part of their Bible school and broader ministry.

He has shared with me how his time at Living Waters Training in Thailand was personally profound, and also so much of what Nepali Christians need to break through barriers of shame, fear, deep wounds and mistrust.

PARTNERSHIP

I?m incredibly privileged to share and teach in many churches around the country and I?m very encouraged by what I see happening in many churches and other parts of the body of Christ.

Will you help us continue to share the true gospel and hope of life-change? Our message is being suppressed or ridiculed in every corner of culture and by many ?church leaders?. We exist to encourage and equip all churches and all pastors to love in truth, to believe in the more that God can do in all areas of restoring sexual and relational wholeness in the lives of His sons and daughters.