I was born in a Hindu (Krishna Pranami) family. When I was in elementary school in Sikkim (which is now in India), I remember there was a government school teacher staying in our house as a paying guest. He was a Christian from the El Shaddai denomination, and always used to tell us about Christianity – love, grace, forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. However, my parents always mocked and ridiculed him and his Savior by saying that they were vegetarian and never committed any sins, so they wouldn’t need any forgiveness by someone who died on a cross some two thousand years ago.
What I didn’t understand was he never got mad every time they confronted him like that. Instead, he used to quietly go into his room and kneel down to pray.
Later, I moved to high school and started living in a school hostel. At this point I had completely turned away from my family gods and goddesses, as they didn’t make much sense to me anymore. Once I was sick and diagnosed with anxiety neurosis. The doctor put me on a number of medications and even talked to the hostel superintendent to allow me to have a little wine before going to bed. However, nothing worked and my condition only got worse. One day a classmate suggested that I should visit his church and his pastor would pray for me and I might get healed. In my desperation I went to his church the following Sunday. The pastor prayed for my healing and I was instantly healed and became free of that nervous breakdown sickness on that very day. After this, I received the healing but kept rejecting the healer until later in my life. However, every now and then when I felt I was going to have an attack again, I used to call upon the name of Jesus and that way I freed myself of fear and anxiety.
I generally didn’t like Christian people and used to compare them with life insurance agents – both talk about how to secure your future while living on this earth and also after your death. I always avoided them when they tried to hand me a track or engage me into some sort of conversation about Jesus Christ. I knew deep inside I was an atheist but still somehow I ended up going to kingdom hall every Sunday and practicing Jehovah’s Witness religion for a short period in my life and I thank God for rescuing me from that trap and that led me to search again for that inner peace and became Buddhist for some time of my life. But in all these religions I couldn’t find what I was looking for then decided to go back to my own cool religion of having no faith in any gods and goddesses and called myself once again an atheist and decided to stay like that all my life.
I came to Kathmandu (Nepal) in 1988, where I met Rita and got married in 1989. My wife was a very devoted practicing Hindu and she used to fast every Tuesdays and Thursdays. She visited a famous temple in Kathmandu every week asking her gods and goddesses for peace and prosperity for our family, but I continued to stay as an atheist.
A few years later we had a child, but we were still in a living hell. Things only got worse in every area – physically, emotionally and financially. We were alcoholics and fought seriously every night – we even tried to kill each other on different occasions. I tried to run away from them several times, but came back for the sake of our daughter.
Both my wife and I were seriously thinking about ether ending our lives or search for something meaningful and true to get out of that situation. One day I mentioned my wife about this new god I had heard about who was said to be still alive when I was a little boy; and also told her how I got healed completely from that sickness even though I didn’t believe in Him back then. That day I made a proposal with my wife that if she wanted to try this new God out, I would support her in it but she refused as she feared something terrible would happen if she stopped worshipping those gods and goddesses.
Then I suggested something new – to pack up all those idol gods and goddesses sitting in a little shrine in our house and put them away for a bit while we were checking out this new god called Jesus. I told her if He was also same as those idols, then she had nothing to loose. She could start worshipping those idols again; and she agreed to give Him a chance.
The very next Saturday we decided to look for a church where we could go and find Him and worship Him. After we got there found out this was a catholic church and the mass was over. We bought our very first Nepali new testament Bible on that day. On the way back we were having lunch in a restaurant and I felt some amazing and indescribable peace within me first time in my life, when I mentioned this to my wife I was surprised to hear that she was having exact same feeling at that very moment.
Around the same time I think it was in 1994, we heard there was an American preacher, Luis Palau coming to hold a conference at St Xavier’s school in Kathmandu and we both decided to go. We liked everything he was preaching about Christ, and the scripture that touched my heart and caused my turn around was Rev 3:20. This reads, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
At the end of the day there was an invitation for those who wanted to open the door of their hearts for Christ, Rita and I went forward and publicly handed our lives over to Jesus Christ on that day. Since then our life was totally different with this new hope we had in our living Jesus that He would go wherever we went and continue giving us that peace regardless of any situations and circumstances we would be in.
Of course we had many challenges after that even after we moved to Australia. Both Rita and I were healed in numerous occasions including Rita from a rare leukemia like disease and myself from a severe asthma. A few years later both Rita and I were baptized and mentored by a Four Square Gospel church in Sydney.
In 2001, the lord led us to Canada and we came knowing He would come ahead of us and provide everything we needed as we didn’t know a single person in Canada, not even a friend we had. But He is good and faithful and continues bringing me closer to Him day by day by allowing me to serve Him and the community, sharing the message of hope I have in my lord Jesus Christ.
