Changing Lives in the Katmandu  slums

RamPrasad Shrestha

Director of National Missions Commission Nepal.

 THERE is a slum by a river in the heart of Kathmandu in Nepal where children and their families have been living in filth and squalor for more than 20 years.

In fact, half of all urban Nepalese who migrate to urban areas and end up in slums are children. And the Bagmati river Slum where all the city’s human excrement, factory waste, rubbish and dead animals are dumped, must surely rank as the worst.

It is not surprising that those who live here (many of whom do not have jobs), including the children, are malnourished, uneducated and sick because of unsanitary conditions (such as drinking the poisonous water from the river) and poverty. The children here do not go to school because their parents cannot afford to buy school books, stationary and uniforms for them.

Into this devastation, enter Asian Outreach Malaysia and the National Mission Commission (NMC) of Nepal to minister to these slum dwellers the love of Christ.

The NMC has been feeding and teaching the children since March 2009.  Now about 80 children come to our slum center benefiting physically and spiritually. We also provide stationery, books and other educational materials to encourage them to attend school. Now about 75% of the children go to school.

We thank the Lord that a church has been planted in the slum through the education program and about 30 parents come to the fellowship. We now have three part-time teachers and several volunteers to teach the children.

One of the volunteers is Sarmila, who used to live in the slum. After she married she and her family lived outside of the slum but she never forgot the hardship she went through growing up in the slum. She has return to make a difference, faithfully ministering to the children because she understands their pain and suffering.

Please pray for these vulnerable children so that they might have an abundant life in Christ as we share our material blessings as well as the blessing of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 John3:18 “Dear children let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth”