The beginning of the Church in Ghorahi

By: Peter Bisset

In 1973 INF opened a leprosy and TB clinic in Ghorahi. The initial team was 4 INF expatriate members (Betty Bailey, Dr Mary Turner, Patrick Paris and Alison Barlow) and 3 Nepali Christians (Martha Subedi, Vedi Subedi and Sukhlal Singh) form Ramghat Church as the start of Church. Many local people were interested and witness to initially. As 2 of 3 Nepali Christian were senior member of the leprosy control team evangelism went on wherever they went!

 For one month the team lived in the house of wealthy Tharu in West Dang and Christian Prayer' were held each evening attended by other members of the team, the Tharu family and other local people! Also on Christmas day an expatriate was wished 'a Happy Christmas by Nepali officer on Christmas day which leads to inviting the local government officer to a Christmas Carol (Hymn) and Tea party! However there was considerable opposition too.  One expatriate member was accused of making people christian and her visa was not renewed so she had to leave Nepal.

On another occasion one expatriate was told by the CDO that it was against the law for Nepalies to attend Christian Prayer and he must tell the Nepalies so- which he did! The same expatriate was asked by  a wealthy, educated mill owner if he preached Christianity to Nepalies! Another expatriate had a near fatal accident in fall from veranda and had to be helicoptor   to Kathmandu. One of the Nepali Christian reported to the zonal commissioner for evangelizing but a friendly lawyer spoke up for him and matter was taken no further. Another expatriate become seriously ill with TB and had to return home, and yet another become ill and it would be 10 years before he was able to return Nepal.

Form the beginning the Church- expatriate and Nepali met each morning to pray and study Bible toghter. These were timed to much blessing when the Ghorahi Church core values of openness, repentence, forgiveness, discipline and acceptance were established. The Christians read together through Genesis, and O.T. in Nepali as the O.T. had been out of print for several years. A local Nepali staff member joined us at one of the morning prayer times and we were reading the story of Noah. We asked him to read for us. He had never read (or heard) the story before and got more and more excited as he read! At the end, even though not a Christian at that time, he lifted his hand in the air and shouted out 'Praise the Lord' several times, in awe of what God had done those centuries before.

The church met on a Sunday early before work and a weekly bible study and prayer meeting was held. In spite of much initial interest in the gospel by quite a few people it was only in that the first local 'Dangalis'  were baptized – Nar Bahadur and Sita Shah – the present Ghorahi pastor and his wife. Many were held back by the fear of persecution from the authorities or their own families and communities.

From the  beginning contact and fellowship was established with the believers in Rolpa and Tukum and there are still strong links with believers in those districts and now also with believers in Salyan too. It has been wonderful to see how God has built the church in Ghorahi and out  into other places in Dang and Deukhuri over the years, including many Tharus now are coming to Faith.