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A Home for Hope

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:21-23

This home dances with the melody of sewing needles bending in and out of dyed fabrics, scissors laid across patterned threads snipping in their proportioned measure. There are hands forming and shaping these articles into something beautiful, memoirs of their redeemed significance. From dust and ashes women of beauty rise, sewing clothing to cover a body that once only knew exploitation. This is their song of hope.

Each morning as a team, we’ve walked the flowered backroads that lead us to our ministry’s place of restoration and prevention for woman in Kathmandu. Treading past fanciful windows rimmed with elaborate metal-grating, clouds of earthy dust quake up below our feet. In every step we take and place we wander to, we are bearers of The Story of redemption and peace.

Our unique gifting as individuals and quirky personalities unify us and equip us to offer ourselves to the women’s home. Paint and measurements, a love for children and hard-work mingle together each day we’re here. We scatter across the buildings corridors upon arrival to fill empty cracks of need etched into textured brick structure. Our own written dialogues of Love here collides with women’s testimonies of bravery and sacrifice.

Worship songs serenade in the stairways while some team members dash walls with fresh coats of paint. Their arms reveal the aftermath of their giving, splattered by drips of pure white chaos. Other’s have began remodeling a beautician room for the women whose heart is to cut and reshape hair and still more are forming accesible pathways of crimson stone along the backside of the building to the storage rooms. We have come to fill simple needs.

There are other’s working near us. The women are given the option of a variety of trades when they arrive to abide within these safe walls. Some will dress hair and paint nails, type away upon computer keyboards, or fashion skirts and dresses to be sold in the markets. We have had the honor of sharing space with the seamstresses. Like busy bees, they bustle away at their work, pouring their hearts into a tangible artifact of their newfound hope.

Periodically, laughter bubbles up amidst the intentional cutting and shaping of the fabrics these women are sewing. Their children are passed around among our team members laps, tiny faces lined by matted hair and eyes brimming with exuberant joy. In this home, children are given a chance in life. They are removed from cycles of abuse and no longer live in smoke-clouded, alcohol strung-out bars and restaurants with their mothers.

It’s nothing profound, but spending our time alongside these women and children of value, serving and loving in unison, has been a precious and simple gift to me. Hope is tangible in this place. For the ones that could never dream of a future and only survived each day for its own needs, they’re now freshly receiving God’s destiny for their lives. I feel this hope-presence has been etched on my own heart in the few days we’ve been here. Just to be with the women each day, dwelling in the beautiful grace they’ve been shown, is everything.

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” Lamentations 3:24

A little life update…Brooke and I are both doing really well and have been safe and healthy. We’ve been serving by these woman in their hope home, as well as going on outreach to the bars to talk with women currently being sold in sex slavery. Tomorrow we will be traveling 5 hours into the mountain side to serve at a pastoral convention in the villages there. Please be praying for the women we’re ministering to in Kathmandu and for our travel. Blessings to you from us crazy sisters in Nepal!

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