Introducing CompassionAsia

As I write this, I am sitting in a small prop plane looking out over the majestic snow capped mountains of Nepal. I just left our children's home in Bhaktapur, Nepal. For the past three years the Lord has been dealing with me to start a compassion arm of our ministry. It began at the children's home as I wept at the realization that these children now have a future and a hope.

To this point our ministry has focused on church planting, but Rick and I are hearing a call to serve the poor. My dream is to help meet the practical and physical needs of those who cannot help themselves. We are forming CompassionAsia as a funding organization that will work with our church-planting partners to develop a ministry of compassion. ChurchAsia has been laying the foundation through local church planting, but through CompassionAsia we can strengthen the church by finding a need and filling that need. These two ministries will work hand in hand.

My desire is to develop humanitarian outreaches in the areas where we are planting churches. My heart is to help the young ones who are the future of these developing countries as well as equip our pastors and leaders to provide for their families.

Sophia Primary School

Compassion ministry is most effective when it flows thru the local church. The churches we have developed in South Asia are now strong enough to partner with us in meeting the needs of their communities. One of those churches is in Nepalgunj, Nepal, and is home to Sophia Primary School. Pastor K B Basel and his wife Sushila are the founders and directors of this school. Many of the students are the children of our pastors from the villages where there is little or no opportunity for a quality education. Our experience has taught us that pastors in these remote areas tend to migrate to the city for the sake of their children's education. By providing a quality education with room and board we not only educate the children, but we also serve the need of the village pastors who have sacrificed much for the sake of reaching the lost.

Bhaktapur Children's Home

All thirteen of the children in our home are healthy and happy. My heart is full of love for them and for those of you who are helping. At the same time, I am burdened for other children I have seen on the streets of Kathmandu, sniffing glue to ward off the hunger pangs. They are so young and have no place to go. Two of our boys were in this condition when Pastor David found them in a garbage heap foraging for food and sniffing glue. If he had not rescued them, they may not be alive today. They are now teenagers, love the Lord with all their hearts and know that they are loved.

On our last trip to Nepal in March and April of this year, while walking in the city of Kathmandu, I saw four young boys sitting against a wall. One of them had a paper bag that he was breathing into. I realized there was glue in the bag and that he was breathing the fumes. I saw his eyes roll back into his head. He could not have been more than 9 or 10 years old. I am weeping now as I relate this scene to you. I saw several gangs of these little boys all over the city. Dirty, hungry, without hope. My heart breaks for these little ones who are not as fortunate as the two brothers we took into the children's home. My vision is to have a home large enough to care for more of these children.

The Rehabilitation of Exploited Children

A particularly heart-rending practice has evolved out of the extreme poverty of the Nepali villages. Unscrupulous men from the large cities of India travel into the rural villages of Nepal and offer employment to young, uneducated village girls. The families are told that the girls will have access to education as well as employment opportunities in India. The men offer them jobs to work as house servants. The families are given small sums of money, usually fifty to one hundred dollars, and the girls are taken to Bombay or Delhi where they are forced into child prostitution. There are Christian organizations in India that are helping to rescue some of these exploited girls, but to our knowledge there is no facility to rehabilitate and relocate them back in their homeland. I am determined to fill that need.

Dalit Laborers

Twenty percent of the people of Nepal live in extreme poverty. Formally called the untouchables, they are now classified as dalits. They are landless, uneducated and many times in debt to landowners due to unfair loan practices. Unless we give them a legitimate trade they will never break the cycle of extreme poverty that has been in place for thousands of years.

Self-Supporting Pastors

Most of our pastors are farmers. They are capable men who are eager to learn but have little education. We have been amazed at how well they have done with some small investment projects we did with them as an experiment. A one thousand dollar investment has proven sufficient to generate enough income to support a pastor's family.

To be honest, I feel overwhelmed by the challenges the Lord has set before me but my heart compels me to move forward by faith. I'll be sharing more with you later about how you can join with me in this vision. Thanks for your hand on my shoulder. - Bev