Severe Flooding in Nepal Presents Gospel Opportunities

Severe Flooding in Nepal Presents Gospel Opportunities

August 22, 2014
Nearly 300 people have died and more than 100 are missing due to severe flooding in Nepal. Heavy rain, which began August 13, has affected 25 of Nepal’s 75 districts, overflowing riverbanks and causing landslides. More than 22,000 people have been displaced.
“Most of the believers from two of our churches lost their shelters, household items, cattle, and food grains,” a ministry leader in Bardia, one of the four districts in Nepal most affected by the flooding, wrote to Christian Aid Mission.
The leader reports that he has “never, in the past 52 years,” seen this kind of flooding in Bardia. “All of the sudden, the Orai River changed its course, and within a few minutes entire villages were washed away without any time for the people to react.”
Before the rains began, the majority of the flood victims lived in extreme poverty. They now have nothing.
Many homeless families are living at the school run by this ministry—a school that recently received negative attention from a news channel in Nepal after it became known that several children converted to Christianity there. Converting someone to a religion other than Hinduism was illegal in Nepal until 2008, when it changed from the world’s only Hindu Kingdom to a secular state. The recent election of India’s Prime Minister, a Hindu Nationalist, has fueled Christian persecution in Nepal.
This crisis has presented local Christians with the opportunity to share the love of Christ with their persecutors.
International aid agencies are trying to help the victims, but aren’t able to communicate with and reach many regions that remain without electricity and are inaccessible to outsiders.
The Nepalese government is ill-equipped to respond to such a disaster. According to one ministry leader assisted by Christian Aid Mission, the government is calling upon “each able individual to contribute 100 rupees [$1] for the people in the affected regions.”
Indigenous ministries inside Nepal are in a unique position to reach out to their hurting neighbors in Jesus’ name, immediately, with help wired directly from Christian Aid Mission.
Among the most-needed items are food, blankets, and tents. Your gift will enable native missionaries to provide these basic necessities to those who have lost everything.