Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
It has been a great blessing to serve in our neighborhood. Where we live, we are surrounded by schools and families’ homes. Due to the lockdown, there is a teacher who has had a hard time getting salary from a school. The principal of that school, who is also our friend, shared about how the teacher hasn’t been able to get a salary for the past 4 months. We were then able to help give 17 teachers from the school some bags of rice and oil. The day we distributed the food, we had good fellowship with each other and prayed together. My wife served us coffee and cake. It was a great blessing to see the teachers happy faces and make a connection with them. The principal shared with us that it felt like we are a big family helping each other in this time of suffering. It was a real heart-touching moment. We praise God to have such a wonderful neighbor. Please keep praying for our teacher friends who have given their lives to serve in this Christian school. They are sharing their faith in this Hindu and Buddhist community.
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
What a great God we serve to be able to visit a neighboring slum area last week! We haven’t stopped praying for these people and we were very excited to visit them, serve them, and share the Gospel of Jesus with them. We’ve been praying for these people and for ideas on how to reach them for a long time now. We asked one of our neighbors, who is a farmer and has lived here for a long time in our community, for help. The farmer accompanied us to the slum and introduced us to families there. Thank God that He has arranged this friendship with the farmer so that we could make a connection with the people in the slum. There are almost 25 families who live there, along with some married couples and some single people. We were surprised to find out that all of these families are from the same tribe (people group) which is a similar tribe that I come from, except they are from West Nepal and I am from the East. It was really fun to be able to communicate with them in their tribal language, which is also our mother tongue!
These people are making toys in their houses to earn some money because the lockdown shut down all of the businesses. Once they heard about the food relief distribution we wanted to do there, they were all so happy! When we hosted the food relief outreach, they all had big smiles and we were able to share Jesus with them. Everyone was so thankful for the food packages they received. We are hoping to be able to spend more time with them in the future and disciple those who have decided to give their life to Christ.
Rejected But Accepted
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:33
During the past couple of months, people have been suffering because of this lockdown. People are not able to work and so many people have lost their jobs. People are having a hard time being able to feed their families.
During this time, there are a lot of people who are helping. But the people who help just want to take pictures to show whatever they give, which makes some people feel uneasy. So, when we arrive there with food packages, they refused to let us take photos. They told us that if we were going to take photos then they wouldn’t take any rice from us. We respected their request of not taking photos and still loved to give the relief food. After a couple of days, we visited again to host a Bible study, and they were so surprised by us that they requested us to take photos with them! Our new friends have been coming to Bible study every time we are able to visit with them. Praise God! We seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Pray for this little flock that they may grow in His Word.
Thanks for praying for us,
Anand, Usha, Asher & Amos