That song keeps going through my head – especially as I reflect on my most recent trip to Nepal.

This story begins in May of 2007 when I first met Prakash: a very shy student in a basic discipleship class I taught as part of a 12-week Christian leadership training course for rural pastors and lay leaders. Eventually, however, he took his turn in participating in my classroom activities.

Four years later when I met him – with another student of mine – he was a much more assured young rural pastor at the leadership meetings of the Nepal Baptist Church Council (NBCC).

And during my most recent trip to Nepal in March, we met again: 7 years after our first meeting in Kathmandu!

He is now one of the 10 rural development workers chosen by NBCC to participate in a special training program carried out by its Mission and Evangelism Department. This project will provide financial resources and skill development so that they and their rural churches can move out of poverty to become self-sustaining.

When Prakash came to Kathmandu for the first training session, he rode a bus for more than 12 hours from his village – only 175 miles away! It is traveling difficulties within the country like this that hinder remote villages to be self-sufficient.  And yet even living so remotely, his strong faith energizes him to walk to even more remote villages in his surrounding area of ministry responsibility!

Among the income-generating training skill choices of horticulture, animal husbandry, or small business, he chose goat keeping. The goal of this training is to give him, and the nine others, skills to be used that will go beyond their own financial needs to make a difference in their rural communities.

It truly was a humbling experience for me to meet with the nine who were able to come to the first training session. I was able to describe more in detail how this project would work.  It allowed me to meet Prakash again! Thinking back to the very first time I met him as compared to meeting him seven years later, I thought of this promise:

“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”. Phil 1:6 NIV)

Certainly, I had seen evidences of God working in his life.

And, you can have a significant role in what God is doing in this young man’s life and the lives of the other nine – let alone the hundreds of unnamed villagers!  Your gift of $100 would provide Prakash with a goat, or a piglet for one of the other nine.

“Supporting Workers Fight Poverty In Nepal” is the name given to this training program project on the IM website. http://internationalministries.org/projects/118

You may go there to read more about the project. With your giving and praying, you can be a part of what God is doing to make a difference to rural communities socially, economically and spiritually in Nepal.

Meeting Prakash again, for which I am very grateful, was a wonderful testimony for me to see the faithfulness of God working in this young man’s life.

And so I keep on singing:

            “He who began a good work in you

     He who began a good work in you

Will be faithful to complete it

He'll be faithful to complete it

He who started the work

Will be faithful to complete it in you ...” Jon Mohr

May you be confident He is working in you and join me in singing this song!

Carole