NEPAL WITHOUT ORPHANS
"The realities are overwhelming."
"He walked 8 hours and then rode a bus for two days to come to the seminar! This is passion about Nepal Without Orphans!"
....others rode buses for over 16 hours....
Would you do this for the cause of the fatherless?
The earthquake alone - caused thousands of additional orphans in Nepal. The church is setting the pace, and doing what it can. There is clear knowledge that the orphan situation needs the church, yet there are all sorts of legal barriers set in place to hinder this from happening. Being in Nepal and working with these leaders, we have seen the passion to make a difference. They gathered together with us to move forward the national movember of Nepal Without Orphans. Below is our report from working with these leaders for the last three days.
Butwal, Nepal
May 15-17, 2016
Leadership from across the seven states attended the May,
2016 Nepal Without Orphans seminar held in Butwal, Nepal. Pastor Tek Prasad Rijal coordinated the event
for the purpose of mobilizing the group of leaders to carry the family based
care message out across the country to the churches and others serving
orphans. The leaders who convened
together were senior pastors and congregation leaders representing thousands of
churches across the country.
National church leaders conducted critical sessions, such
as: The Role of The Church in Orphan Care, Biblical Perspective on Orphans,
Counseling, and The Heart of Jesus for Orphans and Children.
Lynn and Ruby conducted a planning session for mobilization
with the leadership along with training related to topics needed in building an
orphan care/family based strategy. The
topics included: The Father’s Heart,
Impact of Trauma, Family Based Care, Building a National Movement, and Capacity
Building.
The key foundation of strategies for a WWO movement was
emphasized with leadership – Activating, Connecting and Equipping. This foundation encompasses four cornerstone
with a center guiding point being God.
The four cornerstones then extend from the guiding point and they are: child, family, church and movement.
This is not the first NWO gathering of this type in Nepal –
Pastor Tek Prasad Rijal has been bringing leadership together since he first
heard the call for a World Without Orphans in 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand at the
4/14 Conference. Since that time the
WWOs Activating team conducted a Nepal Without Orphans National Conference in
2014 in Kathmandu, Nepal where 110 leaders gathered and were encouraged to take
the message out to their teams. And
other regional meetings and conferences have been held across the country since
that time.
The milestone with this seminar of May 2016 is that it
brought together ALL SEVEN states with representation from key leadership. Through this seminar, there were many
different stories of outcomes from the previous work that has been done in
Nepal. One such story came from Pastor
Inda. He shared his journey.
Nepal does not have a foster care system. In addition if you have birth children you
cannot adopt. Adoption is only permitted
if you do not have children. Pastor Inda
heard the call to become a home for an orphan and the only option he had was to
open a legalized Orphan Home. This would
be sanctioned by the government and allow him to care for children in his home.
He followed the lead and he and his wife
are the parents of seven “foster children” and two birth children. He shares that this was done as a direct
result of him attending the 2014 WWO Conference in Kathmandu. What a blessing to hear this result – nine
children have become part of a family as a result of one small intervention.
Our prayer is that the group of leaders who came to the May
2016 Seminar will go forth with the message and as a result – more children
will soon wake up each morning to their new mommy and daddy. There is a national movement and it is mighty
– Nepal Without Orphans
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