By Beth Copeland
There is this inexplicable thing that happens when meeting fellow Christians in other countries. Even though you’ve never met them before, you are instantly family. As brothers and sisters in Christ, this incredible connection goes beyond culture, skin color, and language. The love of Christ brings us together in ways that only being part of a family can do. This feeling of family began on this trip with the group I travelled with. Our group was mostly from South Africa, with a couple of Americans thrown in, including me. There were people of all ages. Most of them I’d never spent much time with before. Many of them I had never met at all. Yet, as soon as I stepped off the plane in Kathmandu, jet-lagged and exhausted after 24 hours of travel, I was welcomed as family. It was as if I had known them all my life, and they immediately cared about me.
When you travel with someone, you get to know them in ways that are not superficial. You eat all your meals together. You spend time together, jammed in the back of a tuk-tuk on a hot day. You are together when you have a migraine or a bout of “Delhi belly.” You see how people handle a sudden change in plans, or when the showers are cold, and the air conditioning is not. You have stretches of time with nothing to do but share about your lives, hopes, dreams, and sometimes fears. And God puts us together in perfect ways. For example, the person with whom I shared a room in Bhutan (whom I had never met before this trip) is not a morning person, nor am I. She joked about how we’d wake up, mumble “good morning,” and not say another word until breakfast. It was a perfect match. I was so thankful for the kindness shown to me and for my acceptance in the group when they all knew each other very well, and I was an outsider who was the last to join the team. God allowed me to spend time with them and get to know them in a way that we would never have gotten to know each other any other way.
While spending time together as a group was a tremendous side benefit, the real reason for the trip was to encourage those we met with in the countries we visited. However, as often happens on these types of trips, we ended up being the ones encouraged through the example of brothers and sisters who are giants in the faith. Most of them are quiet, unassuming people. But spending time with them one sees how God has raised an army – albeit a small one in these countries – of believers who show the love of Jesus with abandon. There was the pastor, shunned by his family for becoming a Christian, but he followed the call of God to start a school for Dalits – a member of an upper caste serving those of the lowest caste is unheard of in their culture. Yet, he chose to follow the words of Jesus to show kindness “to the least of these.” One man we met grew up in an extremely poverty-stricken area. He was able to get an education, and he could have left for what most people would think of as a better life. But he chose to stay where he grew up and serve this community with a school to educate children and provide jobs for some of the residents. There were others we met who were serving through ‘business as mission’. We saw them providing jobs and opening their homes to adults and children living around them to build relationships.
We were able to share in their worship. We had an opportunity to hear their music and experience the exuberance of their dance, which is an integral part of their culture. If you’ve never worshipped in other countries or cultures, there is nothing like it. I think it’s so special because it’s a taste of heaven when we’ll worship with every tribe, tongue, and nation. In unguarded moments, some of them shared how the loneliness and isolation, that comes from being a minority Christian, takes a toll. Still, they continue to live out what Jesus commanded us, which is to love God, and to love their neighbour as themselves. But perhaps the most incredible aspect is seeing what people in restricted countries, or where they are a minority, must do to navigate their worlds. It requires an effort and creativity that those of us in Christian-majority countries don’t have to worry about in the least. They are constantly aware of who can hear what they are saying or see what they are doing and who they are with. It must be exhausting. The people we met welcomed us into their homes and showed us hospitality. And even though we may only have been together for a few hours, when we left, there were hugs all around and prayers and long goodbyes as if leaving family.
On this trip, we had the opportunity to see some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the world during prayer walks and through views out of our hotel windows. But the most spectacular thing of all was seeing first-hand the breadth, width, and depth of the body of Christ and how God has knitted us together. This trip showed people living out the command of our Lord Jesus, who told us, “…by this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.”
