The Name Above All
the amazing testimony of Gyalsang, Sherpa Buddhist
Pastor Charles Schmitt and a team of 18 others, mostly from Immanuel's, recently returned from a mission to Nepal (October 28 – November 9, 2000). While in Nepal they came upon the following amazing account of the conversion of Gyalang, a Sherpa Buddhist. They also met with Barnabas, the Nepalese evangelist used by the Lord in Gyalang's conversion. He verified that the following account was true. Though some of this account may challenge our Western thinking, the most important point in the account is the POWER OF PRAYER, and how things in the spiritual realm are eternally changed when God's servants PRAY IN JESUS NAME!
The Gospel first came to Nepal, but 50 years ago, in 1951. After ten years there were only 25 Christians, but today there are close to 500,000 who call upon the Name of our Jesus! There are many tribes and people groups in Nepal who are yet unreached – just like the Sherpas once were. But our Lord Jesus is able to invade these remaining people groups, just as He did the Sherpas. The promise of our Father to His Son Jesus is: “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” (Psalm 2:8). For this reason Jesus has then said to us: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest fields.” (Matt. 9:37-38).
If you are interested in helping – in prayer and financially – to reach out to the yet unreached peoples of Nepal, please contact Pastor Charles Schmitt, c/o Immanuel's Missions, 16819 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20905. Thank you.
I'd like to share with you the amazing but true account of how God lovingly reached down to me, my family and our Sherpa people in perhaps the only way we would have listened.
Father is from the Tamang group, so when he displeased his family by marrying Dolma, a Helambu Sherpa, his family gave him a home where only one other house had been built. It was on the least desirable land around, a hillside near the temple where ghosts and demons were said to live. It wasn't surprising that Father usually held out his big, curved Gurkha knife in fear as he entered the house, and like others in the area, he drank a lot of millet and wheat whiskey. After seven years, I was born.
In 1983, when I was ten, Mother and I went out daily to graze the jomos and protect them from the wolves and snow leopards. One partly cloudy day in May of that year we were out with the herd, Mother in front and the stragglers and I bringing up the rear. At midday I lay down in the grass to doze a few minutes. I felt I woke up, but I could neither see nor hear because it seemed that two black shadow-men kept surging back and forth in front of my face. Mother said she heard me shout and came running. She couldn't shake me to consciousness, and splashing me with cold water didn't help. She called others who were also grazing animals nearby, but in the evening she had to carry me back to the shelter, still unconscious. It was too dark to go for a witch doctor, so Mother and Father slept, one on each side of me, on the shelter floor.
During the night the shadow-men spoke to me in Sherpa, “Don't worry, We want to use you. We want to show you the Buddhist Way. Your parents are very afraid, so tomorrow they will want to call a witch doctor. Tell them to not call such a person. Tomorrow you will be better, but from now on you must sleep alone.” Having said that, the shadow-men left and it was morning.
The following night the shadow-men returned, wanting to take me somewhere. It took some time and was as if I had left this world. Then we were in a dark, unnatural place where no other living things seemed to exist. Then we went on to another place. The shadow-escorts retreated and there in front of me I dimly saw a Buddha image. A voice spoke, “From today I want to use you. I'll teach you about my way.”
The shadow-men emerged from behind and took me back through the dark place to the world. They said, “From today you are not to mix with others. Stay alone with your parents. Whenever your father and mother enter the shelter they must first cover themselves with incense.” After that, every night for three years, I slept with a butter lamp by my head. While I slept I had to go to the place to learn the Buddhist teaching. My father was amazed as I reported all I learned: it corresponded precisely with what he had learned from the Khamba Lama years ago. As directed, we bought the religious dress, drums and bells. Father was further amazed that though I'd never been taught, I could play the instruments.
After some time of receiving teaching and witnessing such wonders, the shadow-men took me to the Buddha image, but this time a plate (similar to a computer screen) was attached at the knees. Letters were etched on it, and a voice explained the meaning. I couldn't even read Nepalese or write in straight lines. Nevertheless, every day I wrote clearly and neatly in a notebook the messages from Buddha's “screen.” I could always read what I had written and from these writings. I could also tell Father and Mother amazing things, such as their present thoughts and their past sins. I also gave them instructions concerning how they could atone for those sins: They had to buy strings of 108 seed beads and go through them saying the traditional Buddhist chant. At one point we were given ten days to go to Kathmandu in order to buy Buddhist idols. Every Saturday we had to perform a special ceremony. As time passed we had to carry out more and more rituals. I was given a list of 35 gods' names. Each night all of us had to prostrate ourselves three times for each of the gods, saying that god's name as we bowed. The Dalai Lama was number 35, the lowest in rank among the gods. Then one day my notebook said, “After the Dalai Lama bow down to Yesu.” I didn't know that Yesu is Sherpa for Jesus. In fact, I had never heard of Yesu (Jesus) before.
Every Saturday we opened my notebook for teaching and week by week, month by month the name Yesu rose higher in rank. With the name of Yesu came teaching about this unknown God. We learned of Adam and Eve and the first sin, Yesu—the Son of God—and his crucifixion and resurrection, and much more. We were also told that God will come to judge the world.
It was now 1985. Two months later Mingmar (Gyalsang's brother) wanted to quit his job at the cheese factory in order to reopen our house as a lodge. He asked me to look in my notebook for guidance in this matter. I bowed down three times and began to read, “If Mingmar wants to open a lodge that is fine, but don't sell alcohol. When the lodge is opened followers of Yesu will meet you.” Mingmar happily opened the lodge, and six months later the disciples of Yesu came.
On that particular day Mingmar spotted three foreigners on the less-traveled trail from Sing Gompa to Big Syabru. He ran out to meet the young men, asking them to stay at his lodge. They were wet, cold and tired, so at my brother's invitation, they decided to stop for the day.
Actually, Jon and Dan had been praying earnestly for the Helambu Sherpa people for two years. (It had also been about two years since the name “Yesu” first entered my visions.) They had been sent to Nepal by Gospel Recordings to learn Nepalese and then make Gospel message tapes for evangelism in the lesser known languages and dialects of the land. Knowing that there were not yet any Christians among the Helambu Sherpas, they had contacted a translator working with that people group with the hopes of making a recording.
Arriving at the lodge, the three men changed into dry clothes and ordered instant noodles and hot lemon drinks. As usual, they bowed for a prayer of thanks in Jesus' name. Mingmar noticed.
“What religion do you observe?” Jon asked.
“Buddhist,” Mingmar answered, giving his full attention. “Is that all right?”
“What's really all right is what saves your soul,” Jon told him. Then Jon continued, telling him about God, creation, sin and finally about Jesus—his life, death and resurrection, which had made the Way for us to God.
“The things you've told me and the things my brother has told me differ not even in one area!” Mingmar exclaimed.
“Where is your brother?” asked Jon, “Can we meet him?”
“He seems to have gone crazy,” was the reply. “I can take you to where he lives in the jungle, about a three-hour walk up the mountain from here.”
Jon, Dan and Jay were thrilled and curious about what Mingmar had told them and they wanted to meet me.
Just two weeks after this Jon and Barnabas, a Nepalese Gospel Recordings worker, came to us. Recently the name of Yesu had moved up to second in rank on the list of gods we were bowing down to. It had been exactly three years from my first vision to that afternoon when Mingmar and the two arrived about 5:00.
Barnabas began by telling how Yesu was born, loved, was crucified and three days later, rose again. They also played a gospel tape in the Tamang language for us. Most of the evening I sat quietly, intent to hear every word, but finally I was so excited that I jumped up and got my notebooks. Flipping through the pages, I found and read some sections corresponding to what we had heard. (During a later visit from Jon and a Nepalese co-worker, I read from one of my notebooks the complete accounts of how sin entered the world in the Garden of Eden, and of Yesu's life, death and resurrection. Jon, amazed, said I had confused Pilate's name with Caesar's in the part about the trial, but everything else was just as recorded in the Bible, God's message to the world!)
That night the shadow-men came as usual and escorted me to the Buddha image. A voice came, “Today my kingdom is finished in you and you no longer need to serve me. You must do what the men say and follow Yesu.” I had no power to question. The dark men took me back. It was my last vision. Morning came and I felt as if a heaviness was gone.
Jon told us that God doesn't want us to bow down to the idols—as we'd been doing. Barnabas explained more about why Yesu had to die in our place, how he fulfilled all of the requirements of righteousness, ritual and law. He also clarified that believing in Yesu means entrusting ourselves to Him. Barnabas and Jon played a cassette tape in Tibetan as they flipped through a corresponding set of forty pictures. These went over some Old Testament stories and told of Yesu, and they also showed what new life in Christ is like. Though no one suggested I do it, I yanked the charms and beads from my neck and we told Yesu we would follow Him. Mother had been out milking the jomos, so Jon and Barnabas gave her the Good News, too. She also wanted to follow in faith and by herself she prayed a beautiful prayer: “From now on you are my Lord. I don't know much, but you are my Lord.”
Leaving the Buddhist way, the way of our ancestors, was a struggle at first, especially for Father. After Jon and Barnabas had left I saw him light some coals and incense in a pot, bow down three times, then sob uncontrollably. I hated to hear him cry and went to him, telling him the words I'd heard from the Buddha image in my last vision, two nights earlier. He calmed, and when peaceful again, agreed to stop doing the rituals.
By now, the weather was getting too warm for the jomos so we had to move the shelter higher. Before doing that we burned our religious things, including most of the notebooks, I saved only the smallest notebook in which were the messages about Yesu.
During the monsoon of 1993, my mother went to be with the Lord, Yesu. Mother is perhaps the first Helambu Sherpa standing before the throne of God in praise. Father composes Sherpa and Tamang hymns and leads in worship when the believers from our area gather. Mingmar and his wife, Karmu, have been able to go to Bible school in Pokhara. God has helped me learn Nepalese and made it possible for me to record Gospel message cassettes in Sherpa and do the translation of the New Testament into that, my heart language.
If you are a believer in Jesus, I ask you to pray for us, the Christians in Syabru. Pray also for our people who don't yet follow Yesu. Just as it was impossible for me to become a follower of Yesu and yet I have, please pray that others in Syabru will also follow Him. One day you may hear that according to God's will, everyone in our village has begun to follow Yesu, the Name above all!
