Everyday Radical

How the Gospel Reached the Lhomi People of Nepal

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In this episode of Everyday Radical, David Platt and Austin Huang talk with Noah Lhomi about how the gospel reached his remote village in Nepal.

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SPEAKER_05

Welcome to Everyday Radical, a podcast where we help the everyday Christian follow Jesus and make him known everywhere. We pray that today's episode encourages you to do just that. So let's dive right in.

SPEAKER_00

I remember when I first landed in the States, it was at DC. That's like the my port of entry, and just getting completely lost because I didn't realize you can't just borrow a phone from a stranger. I tried to borrow a phone from a stranger to call my ride, which was like another Liberty student. I went to school at Liberty. I came for film school. I got full scholarship to go to film school, all that stuff. But all of those things kind of took me back to Nepal, which is what we did the project on Secret Church, because I've been working on retelling the story of my own faith. But now that I've been here for almost a decade, it feels like a different human. Like when I look at back my own life, it's it's just crazy. Like I even I get on like I look back at it and even I'm like confused how the Lord has been so evident in it, you know. It just felt normal. Like those kind of faith felt very normal when I was in Nepal. Now I long for this faith. It's like I've become so comfortable here in the West. Yeah, it just it's just so hard. Like uh one of the hardest seasons for me, generally in faith, was when I was working at a church, you know. You would think, especially coming from a third world country with 10-footy window, no gospel access, you would thrive working at a church. And yeah, but those are some of the seasons where I realized it has to be every day. Like your faith is not how do I say it? Like your faith can't be what it was. Like I couldn't live off of the breadcrumbs that I had 10 years ago or 15 years ago, or the persecutions that I walked through. So now I'm like trying to pursue that faith again, you know. So I'm like longing for those faith. Like every day on here, living here. So like how do I not like go find trouble to get persecuted for that's you know, so but you know, you are yeah, ask us to run away if this persecution. I mean, obviously, like certain line along that, but still like hungry for that kind of faith. So I guess we could I don't know, yeah, talk.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well faith. So yeah, let's step back. All right, so we're talking with Noah Lomi.

SPEAKER_03

Noah Lomi from well, uh at Secret Church, we highlighted hard to reach Nepal and specifically uh your story, your family story, the family of the the story of faith that led to your faith in Jesus. And so man, not everybody who's listening to this has uh heard that story for sure. So yeah, take us back. Even before you coming to Jesus, what are the what what was happening that would eventually lead you to Jesus and your and your family and your village?

SPEAKER_00

So the easiest way to the way I describe my village is so that people have cultural context. It's like a third world part of a third world country, right? Um, so then you can kind of picture how um geographically how hard it is to reach. Yeah, uh, I was talking with Steven Um, and it was like some of these places are actually hard to reach because they're physically hard to get to, right? I grew up my childhood was no internet, no electricity, no running water, no roads. We still well, we have roads right now, but you can ask the guys how those roads are.

SPEAKER_04

That's hard it was uh they're relative roads.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they're like you won't fall off a cliff kind of road. Yes, yes. So you can kind of drive and seasonal, so it only operates during fall and winter, and that's like present day. Yeah, so growing up, I'm 32 now, I'll be 32 tomorrow, but I'm 32 now, I guess. Uh so growing up like early childhood, you're just in a whole different world. Um just we I remember shaving pine cones for just to have a candle situation in the house. Like that's how I grew up. So like the fact that I'm like now just living a whole different life. Yeah, I describe it as like I always have made like a crisis, midlife crisis, because my parents still live there in the same village that I grew up. They still cook and fire, they still go collect woods. So it's a it's a very different world. Um so but all of that started because this missionary from Finland back in the 70s decided that he was gonna go to Nepal. Originally he wanted to go to India, more in Darling area, something like that.

SPEAKER_03

And then like North India.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Northeast India, and then he and his friend just trekked across Nepal while he was trekking along that trying to figure out a people group. He just met some loamy people in the 70s just hiking down the mountain during winter because we always migrate. It's so cold during the winter. People just leave the villages. There's no insulation, there's like the houses are built with rocks. Straight off the ground, you just collect rocks and pile, it's like a shed. Um you have traveled to Nepal, so you kind of get that cultural context, right? Uh so when they were hiking, they met these loamy people, and the missionary's name, his name is Olave. He talks in one of his interviews that he had the Holy Spirit confirm that these are the people group that you'll be working with. Wow. And that's in the 70s, and he's he was on track to become a doctor, and the Lord just wrecked his life with like just in a good way. And he's just in his late early 30s, he just decided that he wants to be a missionary. And he, I think he was engaged at that time, got married in Nepal. His wife came from Finland, they got married in Nepal.

SPEAKER_03

They didn't get married in Finland and then moved to Nepal. They got married in Nepal.

SPEAKER_00

She came to Nepal in Kathmandu and she was married. They were probably the first foreign missionaries married by a Nepali pastor. Wow. So, and there was only like two churches in Nepal at that time. And we're talking the early 70s, there were not a lot of Nepal was a Hindu country until 2008. So you're talking even I would say less than like 2% are still Christians to this day, right? So in the 70s, you can count Christians, yeah, far less than you can count them in like um on your hands. So when all of that happened, um because they chose my village, they and one of the so they the way they served the village was they were trying to translate the Bible.

SPEAKER_04

And because you did, guys, the Bible was not in your language.

SPEAKER_00

The Bible was not in our language, but the biggest challenge with that is all of our language was oral language. Nobody went to school, nobody knows how to read and write.

SPEAKER_04

So was it even written at all?

SPEAKER_00

No, like it's not written. So the the we call it the lamas, the priest of the Buddhist. I came from a Buddhist background, like my family. They all just everything is passed on orally. Only the lamas know how to read, kind of. They know how to read in a very like primary level reading. They all have the Buddhist scriptures, but they don't even know what it means. They can read. So all of the houses have those Buddhist scriptures that we just put in the house. It's like a family Bible kind of thing. And during like funerals, during all those things, the Lama comes and reads it, nobody understands. So it's all cultural.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, you've got this in your house, but nobody in your house can read it. Nobody can read it. Knows what it says.

SPEAKER_00

Collect dust and it sits on the thing. And we actually photographed one of the, I mean, obviously, we don't have it, uh, but the house that Olavi stayed in, they still had it. So we photographed last time when we're traveling there with uh the radical, like your team. So Steven has some of those photos and jaws, so uh you guys can look through it, but it's basically like Tibetan funds. So the challenge for Olavi was he had to learn Nepali, which is our national language, completely different, close to Hindi. My language is close to Tibetan, two different languages. Back those times, people didn't even really speak Nepali. Like my people didn't even really speak Nepali. My parents, my mom still struggles to speak Nepali fluently. So now Olavi had to learn Nepali and then learn Lomi to translate the Bible. Wow. And they did it. I mean, they dedicated their whole life, the rest of their life, to learn the language and actually translate the whole New Testament into our language. And most of the literacy stuff then started happening because the gospel came first. Yeah. So some of the earliest textbooks in our language, actually, I would almost say the first literature in our language is the Bible, the New Testament.

SPEAKER_03

Because there wasn't any literature in your language until Ulave, his wife, gave their lives to getting to even writing the language. Yeah. And then obviously putting scripture as the first thing.

SPEAKER_00

And on that process is how our pastor, who is the first believer from the loamy, became a believer because he was hired to help learn the language. So he was actually given a job first before he became a believer. He was translating the Bible. Wow, before he was a believer. He became a believer. And then my dad is the second oldest believer from my tribe. And he learned how to read and write because of the Bible. Because he never went to school. He never got to, and he learned more about lamas and priests, and he knew Buddhist religion more than he knew Christianity. But he became a believer because he was an orphan, just outcast by the community quite a bit, and very epileptic. He had epilepsy, so he always had just seizures. And for those time periods, it was possessed like they consider it demon-possessed. He had a lot of persecution locally, not even when he became a Christian, like as a Buddhist, because they believed it was demon demonic, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, almost like Mark V. Like, yeah, this guy's possessed. We're putting him on the side over here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. When I read all the stuff that happens in like New Testament with Jesus, there are actual families that have been healed from like paralysis. Wow. Like all of those lepros leprosy. Like yeah. And the whole family became believers, and they're still like they're still believers, right? Like so, we have a lot of those stories. So it's so faith was always easy, I guess. I would say in that sense, because it was what the Bible said, we saw it happen, right? So you live it out.

SPEAKER_04

Man, um like you're not reading the yeah, you're not. In your village, you're not reading the Bible and then thinking, well, that was back then, but now it's different. You're like, yes, that's the Bible, and that's what we see happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's why, like, when so when I first came to Liberty, it was harder because now all of a sudden I have to argue about the works of the spirit in that sense. Oh wow. It's like, oh, this doesn't happen anymore. Because you know, everyone's young. Jesus finished high school, we're at a Christian university, you know, we all want to like know how God moves, everyone's like eager to understand faith, right? But for me, it was like harder in the sense of like, wait, like are we just trying to figure out to justify our faith in a way, but for me it was to be to become a Christian in Nepal was it's not the it's not a fun thing, like you were you're like what we call it, um like it's not the easy route, I guess. You know, you're you're gonna be persecuted, at least from a cultural level, even to this day.

SPEAKER_05

So did did so around the time that your dad became a Christian, was Christianity like spreading a lot within your people, or was it still very it was like so bad.

SPEAKER_00

Uh like so there were only I think I would say the first week call it like there were like a couple waves of Christianity. So my dad, our pastor, and there were two other believers, just them for a solid five to ten years. No believers, and they were all uneducated except for our pastor, but even his education was like he knew how to read and write. That's his level of education that he had. That's why he was able to read Nepali, help translate into Loomi. And my dad helped translate the Bible a lot as well because he knew Loomi from like orally like very well, but he didn't know how to read and write. So he would proofread all the scripture in Loomi, and eventually he learned how to read and write because he had to proofread the scripture, right? Um, after that wave, the um Finland, uh the Free Church of Finland and like their like their organization in like just Finnish government in general, a lot of the time they really help with the literacy of Nepal and health sector. And they were very there were a lot of missionaries from Finland that just pour into our people groups so much. Even to this day, they've been doing it for the last 50 years, right? And they're still doing it today. But they started giving scholarships to loamy youth to go to universities, to go to schools, and that second wave of believers are the people that built my church in a way, like because they knew the scripture, they knew how to read and write, they understood, like they understood faith from not just purely having a personal experience with Jesus, like in a sense of like healing, or just considering like a different God, you know, it's like, all right, we used to worship Buddha, now we're gonna worship this other guy, you know, because a lot of people that didn't have a good understanding of who Jesus is, it's like there's a shifting who they are worshipping, you know, right? It's like a different God, yeah, it's like another form of God. Yeah, um, and obviously my dad knows Jesus in deep deeper level, because his his experience got in a way different level, but his time period people, most of them just it was just a different God, it was just shifting, right? That's why when persecution broke out, I mean, it's just like you're thrown into jail all the time. Like they get beaten up. I mean, the rule was back in the days in the 70s, Nepal was a kingdom, but most of the rules were governed locally by the local, like they have like mayor system, but they're all religiously elected in a way. Those are always like the lamas or like. Yeah, always the lamas, or in a Hindu-heavy community, like some of the priests, like basically all is the religious influential people, right? That's why, like, again, understanding the Bible is very in a way easy for us because like when we talk about the Pharisees and the Sads, like you kind of understand it. You understand not just the religious influence that they have, but the political influence. Like for us, like for my brain, at least, like learning about scripture was very and they they did a really good job translating it where they they have used a lot of loamy terms when they translated the scripture, so you just get it. Yeah. Um, so then when my dad became a believer, the second wave, there were so many people that were believers at that time, like a couple guys, but they lost their faith obviously through a lot of persecutions. So it was my dad, our pastor, and I think after that, the second wave of our leadership came in, and then they realized that, like, oh, we need to like do fellowships together. Christians do this in the cities, like they they come and worship together, they do this. We have to like kind of have our community mostly because life for us is very communal. If you don't have community, might as well consider yourself dead in that kind of lifestyle. We farm, we work all day, all night doing work environments, and then winter you just live off of potatoes, whatever you harvest all year round, right? Whatever you plant, whatever you grow, you have a couple cattles, you have a couple goats, couple chicken. It's like a um, it's like the um homestead, but not the fancy version. It's like the life that that's just life, right? It's not it's it's always great. The idea of homesteading is great until you have to do that for surviving. Surviving, yeah, totally. It's it's not out of abundance, it's out of necessity.

SPEAKER_03

So when it comes to persecution along those lines, uh like for your dad, for others who were coming to Christ, did that uh threaten their uh stability in the community? Like were people in the community uh because once yeah, I mean you just said the way I can't remember the exact way you put it, it was so strong. Like, yeah, you you die without community. Yeah, um you can't survive, you can't live, you can't because you need each other.

SPEAKER_00

But when you become a Christian, you get uh cast out in a sense is 100%, like not as much anymore. I think people have understood because these like the loamy believers have lived a different life for almost 50 years at this point. They have seen the actual difference that it can make when you follow Jesus. The people that really want to follow Jesus after looking at the loomis, they it's it has been an easier transition in a way. But again, like earlier, you guys were talking about like if somebody's hard, heart is hardened. I mean, nobody can convince that not torture, even if it's your own daughter, your own son. And those stories are common. It's almost like the whole church is made up of those stories.

SPEAKER_04

Of people who have been tortured, persecuted.

SPEAKER_00

Family, culturally, some politically. Um, so my dad got beaten up quite a few times, thrown into prison, broke his like teeth, backs. Um the children home that I grew up, he was the high school teacher, got persecuted from government, persecuted from like rebel armies. I mean, it's just like normal. It almost felt like that was the lot that were dealt, but nobody was in a way like scared about it, or nobody was um how do I say it? It was it was so normal that it wasn't even like a big deal, if that makes sense. It was like it was just like you just you would you would give your life for it. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_05

So it was heavily, heavily persecuted Christianity was there was y'all's normal Christianity. Expected. Yeah, and it was expectation, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It was like, oh, this is normal, like it was a normal thing. And but the thing is like some of those were like not all the time. It wasn't you were you're not getting persecuted all the time physically, but my mom got beaten up, you know, by our aunts, and people try to burn down our house. And Buddhist in Buddhist community, you can also do a lot of like what we consider witchcraft, right? But they do a lot of um what do you how do you describe it? They basically like do um spiritual chantings and stuff on like Thai things they can hide under your houses. It does affect each other, like a lot of the llamas can curse other people, individuals. Wow, seems to work.

SPEAKER_04

Um like spiritual warfare is real. It's there's cosmic powers over this present darkness that are at work.

SPEAKER_00

So when we rebuild our house, my dad found so many of those chants. There's like murder curses. Oh my god. Obviously, it didn't work on him because he found those. Yeah. Uh, and eventually people. Realize that we can't touch them spiritually at all. So there's still like law of the land where you can't just go beat up somebody just to beat up somebody for their faith, right? Um, because you know, like in big picture, we're still all semi-related, right? Like the whole village that I grew up is came from like one family. So no matter how much you're persecuted, at least right away, if they never gave up, you don't just go beat them up and like throw them on the streets because eventually the Christian number was getting bigger and bigger to the point the whole village almost turned believers. Wow. And that's when the rebel army in Nepal. And that's my time now. Like, so like our first generation of our believers, where it's just my dad, our pastor, and a couple of them. The second generation of the believers under church leadership, they build a church, like they built Ghana church from like nothing to like an actual building, like packing out for the village, like for almost a good decade, I think. And then so I was born into a Christian family. That's why my name is Noah, right? It's like uh my dad just named me, and in our culture, the lama names or somebody has to name something. Uh, but my name is Noah, never changed the name. And that was some questions that I used to get like, so what's your real name? And it's like, it is Noah. Yeah, right. It's the same, it's the same. But my dad named it because he wanted it to be a biblical name. Um, but the in my time, Nepal was going through a civil war, uh, and that was the early 2000s, probably started mid-90s. There was a civil war that broke out with this group called the Maoist, and they were in the terrorist list for quite a bit of time until like mid, I think like late 2008, 9, 10. I think they were still in the terrorist group list from the US at least. Uh but the civil war broke out where they started um basically trying to turn into like a communist regime kind of thing. And Nepal is a Hindu country, uh, a lot of influence from India, obviously. And for the Hindus, their king is a form of their gods, right? Hindu gods. Hindu has like millions of gods. So it's a very spiritually religious place. Obviously, communism doesn't mix, right? So, but the downside of all of that is all minor religions and specifically Christians were easy target. It's easy pickings, you know. We don't have protection from the government because we're a Christian minority. They're like, oh, you're got bought out by dollars, you know. It's like you're this or that, like, there's no protection for us from the government. Yeah, well, there's no protection for us from the Maoists. For us, it's like it's a Western ideology. Uh huh. It's you don't want that. You know, they they believe Christianity came from the US, right? Obviously, it's not, but you know, that's the belief that normal people have. So what that happened, what that caused was they there was one night where, and this time around, we're thriving. The church is huge. Like for the village, church is big. There's like Christmas carols, this like stuff happening all the time in the church.

SPEAKER_03

Um, but early so you're thriving, but vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00

Very vulnerable. Uh, we never thought we were vulnerable because we are big in number. I mean, and again, Christians are not saints, so people still try to defend as a group, right? Uh but when that early 2000s, like almost 2001, like the Maoist group, they came and during like uh probably a couple weeks before Christmas, they burned down our all of we I say burned down the church because it's a rock church, so you can't just burn down the building. It's like built out of rock. But they burned out everything that's in it, you know, all the Bible, everything, and broke the windows, the doors, and beat up like the youth and my brother. They were like early, like mid teenagers, like, but they were the church youth that ran the church. All got beaten up. Some people lost their teeth. My brother got bruised up on his head. Uh some people got shot. Thankfully, it's not it's like it's a bad gun. It's it's not like a bad target, basically. Uh so nobody got nobody lost their lives, but it scattered and basically killed the momentum of faith for outside, even to this day. Like well, it was so big to the point where the village was almost all of the village youth of that time used to come to church or attend in a way, like attend some sort of a house fellowship. Almost everybody. And then since that day, the church basically went downhill. Uh, from a numbers perspective, we're still obviously larger than what we used to be. Yeah. But from the faith side of just new converts in that village, almost plattered for the last 10-15 years. Uh and and that's the persecution that scattered all of the believers, mostly to the cities, Kathmandu. And that's where I ended up growing up. My so I grew up the first nine, ten years in the village. Okay. And then after that, I came to the city. So I have my parents, but then I grew up in an orphanage home because the schools were bombed, health was in the villages were bombed, the churches were bombed, so we just had to run away for our lives. Yeah, how old were you in that Aven? I was nine, or nine years old. Nine years old.

SPEAKER_05

And and you were already a believer at that time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I was born in the Christian family, right? Like, so obviously, believer young enough to understand who I am as Christian, but not mature enough to understand why this is happening. Like, it's like I thought my understanding of Christianity when I was younger was oh, we're like the good people. Oh God. You know, like it's like a that's I'm like, oh, I I didn't realize all these bad things happened to good people, right? That was your early understanding of my faith. And especially even like it was a better opportunity that we're in the city could because we get to go to better schools, better access to education, food, everything. But as a child, you're still separated from your parents. And that was very hard in a sense, because you don't when you're eight, nine years old, you don't care about your education. Like, why would I care about what I want to study? Well, I just want to play and be with my parents and go roam the woods and just swim in the river, right? Like, that's kind of still you're still young, too young to understand what life has dealt for you in that sense. But so the rest of my life, um, till I came to the US, I grew up in the children's home.

SPEAKER_05

Um, and then yeah, so and you said at the beginning when we started that you honestly long for the faith that you had then. Um how did yeah, how did how did that grow in the time that you're in Kathmandu, you're growing up? Like how how did faith as a Christian, how is that different from what you're experiencing now?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I think in a way, when you're younger, I surprisingly, I grew up in a Christian bauble in Nepal, which is very rare. Yeah, because I went to a missionary school called Livingstone, which is named after David Livingstone, right? It's like a missionary school that this Korean missionaries started in Nepal. So I grew up in a I was born in a Christian household. We are super active at the church. It's church is kind of like a it's part of the lifestyle. Yeah. Because coming from a Buddhist background, your culture, your food, everything is part of a religion in a way. Like it's a cultural identity, right? The way you eat, the way you face when you walk, everything is cultural and religiously tied. So when Buddhist background people became Christians, they carry that not the culture of the Buddhists, but they carry the DNA of the lifestyle with you. And I think for the loomis, we had our own instruments, like loamy instruments that we Buddhist people use it for Buddhist reasons, we use it for our worships, right? Everything, like you don't become a different person, we don't give up our dresses that the ladies wear, right? You don't give up the normal human and then you just kind of become a different basically you follow Christ, but you don't give up, like, you know, all of yourself, whatever. So, like the faith-wise, I think for me, I guess like to answer your question, like because when I was young in my like formative years, I spent a Christian school in a really good Christian environment. In the children home, we had Bible study almost every night. You know, you have prayer every night, like quiet times, I didn't realize it's not a normal thing, you know. I don't practice as much as I used to when I was younger. And I think that's what I wanted to address was like I want that lifestyle because I didn't realize how much of that shaped who I am. And even so at such a young age, even when you are forced to do quiet time, which is not time out, it's like you literally have to go for 15 minutes, spend time with the Lord, read the Bible. That was just part of your everyday until you are now on your own and you realize the whole world is different around you. You know, so when I graduate till 10th grade at the missionary school, I went to a public school in Nepal. And that's when I realized, wow, like this is the real world. Yeah. And I felt so dry, and that's when I realized that this is not normal in Nepal. Like I grew up in a Christian family, a Christian culture, Christian community, with Christian children at home, with other people to share and grow with together. But when I was on my own, I was literally probably the only believer in like hundreds of students. Um, one of the first things, actually, this is it's it's a tattoo, so people have different opinions, but I had gotten Jesus as a tattoo when I was in the university, mostly to kind of encourage myself to be bold about my faith, to not shy away from it, because it is so easy to shut ourselves or hide ours hide, you know, in the mass. Yeah, if there's 300 students and you're the only Christian, yeah, you're not gonna be like, listen up, everybody, we'll tell you about Jesus. It is very hard. It's uh I felt that every day, and I think one of the reasons I actually started skipping school a lot was it was a very lonely journey because you're just on your own with no believers around you. We still had our church community and stuff, but school is where you spend most of your days when you're in the university, and that was a very hard journey. And so I actually got this tattoo when I was freshman to challenge myself to speak out about my faith.

SPEAKER_05

So cool.

SPEAKER_00

And then, yeah, and then like, but on that journey is like how I ended up at liberty, mostly because I couldn't go to I couldn't afford because my parents still cook in fire, you know, like that's the reality. They still live in the mountains. Uh, so I couldn't afford to the children home only provide education to your high school. Okay, and after that you're on your own. But when you're from a village, your parents farm in farm to just eat your food, like just survive. You don't have and I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, right? So like you don't have money for it. Uh but the Lord had different plans, obviously. So when I was in the science college, I was going through my own spiritual journey, I would say, finally as an adult, like an early, late teens, early teens, like like basically going on my own spiritual journey, understanding who God is, right? I had all of these experiences of growing up in a Christian community, a Christian family, persecution, like dads, stories of like crazy faith, being almost killed for his faith, and still like going through it, right? They all sound amazing. And then here I'm struggling to be a Christian at a university where there's it's a science university, so there's a lot of dialogue that's obviously not Christian supporting, but I'm struggling about my faith and struggling about basically everything else in life. You know, you can't go to school, what you want to study, identity, everything else. And I think in that journey is where I started pursuing God deeper. Yeah, because I had kind of walked away from my faith. Not walked away, but just given up like pursuing it intentionally. And when liberty happened, all of that thing happened was because I had a confirmation from the Lord when all of this it's a it's a different tangent of the story, but the gist of this story is like it was one of those faith moments where the Lord said, I need to walk in it, and he's gonna provide everything else. He's gonna be there for it, right? And Liberty is the biggest Christian university in the world, and it's a private university, so you can't afford to pay for it. I couldn't afford uh less than like $3,000 a year to study engineering in Nepal. So forget about Liberty, it's not even in the picture, yeah. And to tie back to when I first landed at DC and drove to Virginia, I woke up and I was culture shocked because that's how I had never dreamed about the US. It's not you can't dream of things that's not reality generally, right? Because I had pictured the US to be like New York or LA, what you see in the movies. And I woke up in Virginia, like Lynchburg, Virginia, which is like a college town. Yeah, the houses are smaller than Kathmandu, and nobody's walking outside, and you're like, what is this? You know, and but in all of that pursuit, faith had been so consistent, and liberty was not easy, obviously, because I didn't realize I didn't have full scholarship. I thought everything was paid for. No, it was not, it was just tuition, uh-huh. Only a certain portion of the percentage of the tuition, right? But the Lord, I mean, that whole four-year journey, I was always ready to go back if that's what the Lord wanted. I was, I'm like, God, you brought me here. Nothing was possible without Him. So you have to sustain me if this is what you will, right? And if not, I am actually okay. Like I was so strong in my faith, like looking back, I was actually okay to give all of that up to go back every day, and that was that's what I kind of long for it right now. Is because life is a lot more comfortable now, and sometimes I'm like, am I okay to give all of it up? Like, I don't think like how I used to be able to give up everything. I don't have that much faith as much anymore, you know? And when I finished my degree in film, I obviously moved to Austin, but the goal was to pursue Hollywood and like be a filmmaker or whatever, you know, you start doing that and you realize it's all vain, you know, it's all vanity. And that's when I started working on the project, like this, my dog, of trying to like the Lord brought me here for a reason, he helped me finish through school, and and if I like almost give all of that away or like just put it aside, what am I doing? This is like the dumbest thing ever. Like, I had a realization once I started freelancing and working on big commercials and just spending 12 hour days on big commercials and realizing like this is this biggest waste of my time. I had a moment on a big set, and after that, I literally stopped pursuing that completely and did a 180 turn on how I wanted to use my skills, and so I'm on that pursuit of trying to find that faith again, and it's been like such a wonderful journey, but I still obviously long for where I don't have to. I felt like faith was so easy because of the circumstances that I never questioned it, you know. And I'm trying to be in that situation now, but I think life is a little bit different when you are married, have a kid. Obviously, we can all make excuses about our faith, right? Oh, I'll bury my dad and then I'll come back. You know, there's the stories of the parables of just I'll go do this and then you know, maybe I'll come follow you, you know. But there might not be time to do all of that, yeah. And that's when I kind of started pursing this story and all of the like connections with oh just getting to meet Seth and everybody just happened throughout that journey, trying to retell the story of the missionary, my own journey, just to encourage people that the there's no rush, but then there's always a rush, you know. Like it's like there's no rush to like go tell the gospel, but like it's also of the biggest urgency, and what do you call it? Like it has to happen. Like that is our greatest commission. You know, like there's no like what are we living for if that is not our purpose? But how do we do that with our gifts? You know, because we can't just give up everything we have and just like pack it and go because it's not gonna work that way, you know. We have seen we have seen different ministries, organizations, and stuff try that in different shape or form. We have the collective knowledge of Christian history to learn from it, right? So then what does it look like as a filmmaker in Austin? Yeah, what does it look like, you know, like somebody from Houston, you know, and obviously like David has like been super influential with like all of his stuff, right? But like what does it look like for somebody like him as well, right? It's like an everyday thing. So like for me, it's like that's where I'm at right now, is like, oh, like I would love, like I long for the faith where I didn't even have to question it, you know. It's like, oh, like it would be so cool to just be there. But I know that's not the reality, you know. So I still have to make an effort every day that I hope every day is that reality, you know.

SPEAKER_03

So good. So uh bro, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about well, I I'm just thinking about all the different pictures of faith that have formed the kind of faith you're talking about, whether it was uh a Finnish brother and sister or husband and wife, yeah, who did like leave behind a lot of comforts that would come with being a doctor in Finland to go and write a language and translate the Bible into that language.

SPEAKER_00

Two languages. It's two languages.

SPEAKER_03

You learn two languages, uh like that's yeah, what a picture of faith. Like and then I think about your dad, your family. Like that's a whole nother picture of faith. Yeah. To trust in Jesus, even when there's only a couple believers and you're getting regularly beat up or thrown in prison or ostracized or uh yeah, and uh things getting burned, and and man, that's another picture of faith. And then I just think about that faith. I love the way you described the uh just people in your village as they were coming to know Jesus were like, Well, yes, that's what Jesus does. He heals people, that's what Jesus does, he moves in miraculous ways, and we just believe that because that's what the Bible says. Like, man, yeah, for grace for you and me, Austin, for all of us to have. So, what does that picture of faith need to look like in each of our lives? So that's mine, like that's what I'm just processing over here. But I want whatever, uh whatever uh faith uh that is totally taking you at your word, trusting you, and willing to do whatever you call me to do, uh, I just want to live that faith. And I and the thought of what that looks like in your life as a filmmaker in the days ahead. Um, but it's a fight, isn't it? Yeah. To for that kind of faith. Because it doesn't, we get uh lured into the world, we get uh uh lured into comfort, uh just into a safe faith that makes excuses for not seeing the things we're not seeing in the Bible.

SPEAKER_05

And I'm encouraged by you because he didn't name drop any of his big commercials, but I heard from Seth that there were some pretty big things that he was working on. And the fact that you said you would end the shoot day and you should be like, this is vanity. Yeah. Like because it's not it's not telling the story of Christ, yeah, it's lifting up this brand's name or this company's name. Like, this is just this is all just gonna pass one day. And so I I just think that's that's such a it's such an honor to sit down with you and just hear the story of like what God has done in your life, in your family's life. Um, like I I just believe that he's gonna use that, even this content, like us sitting down for the conversation for what you have created with hard to reach Nepal. Like, people are gonna watch that story and just come away with a newfound understanding of like number one, there is a need for the gospel to go forth in places like Nepal. But number two, like, yeah, like you just said, David, like the the story of the Bible is so rich and it's so alive and it's it's living and active. This word is living and active. And you're getting to, I mean, they're gonna see the life that you've lived and and praise God and say, like, the faith that you are talking about that you want to have back, like this is this is available for all of us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think like when you guys are talking about it, like one of the things that I got to learn from the missionaries, because we're in Finland last summer to chase that story, right? We're there with your team, and I was there too, and I was there actually for longer. I was there for 10 days, just spending time with them. The missionary, he just went to be with the Lord this December. Really? Yeah, and it was but I got to like I got to be in his presence. Uh, and I told him, like, because we worship a true God, we don't have an idol off him in the village, right? Or else he would literally we would have the golden calf. Oh, golden Olavi right there, right? Like that, that's that's how much of his legacy has changed the people group, literally and spiritually. And when I was talking to Maria, his wife, she was there too, and she was like, We never expected any of this to happen, you know? And because I asked them what does faith look like, and they're very gentle people and very private people. They never talk about like faith, because I feel like sometimes faith seems like doing something crazy outrageous that it draws so much attention, you know. Like for the general people, when they think of faith, it feels like oh, jump from a building kind of feeling, right? And for those people, even their neighbors didn't know what they did for 50 years, you know, they didn't know who they were. They just lived a very quiet life that was so fulfilling, and even they didn't know what to expect, in a sense. I asked her, I was like, How did you guys do all of this? Like we we didn't know it was gonna be this big, we didn't know God was gonna show up this heavily. We just knew we had to do the work, so we just did the work every day. We we would have been just fine if we never got to see any of that fruit. Because in his eyes, in the kingdom of God, you were faithful to pursue what you've been called to. The fruit might be like 100 years down the road, who knows, right? Like there's so many missionaries that lose their life that never get to see that fruit. Yeah, for sure they will get to see that in heaven, but in a lifetime, even we know, like so many people like France that have been kicked out of a place, they never get to visit their people again, they never get to see that, right? But that's the joy of true faith, is you don't do it to see the fruit of that while we're alive. And I think one of the things, especially younger generations, we're so spoiled for instant gratification, right? Amazon Prime, like I need my thing tomorrow, like right now, you know, everything instant. In that pursuit, I think we have lost a true art of pursuing Jesus, which is very slow and very quiet, but it's of the utmost urgency to do it every day. Because again, the reality of it is it could be our last day today, you know? That's true. And when I am in front of Jesus tomorrow, I hope not tomorrow because I still want to go see my kid, but like you know, when we are in front of him, what do we want to answer with, you know? And I think it's not a fear thing, but it's almost like for me at the right now, or like at least present day, I want that to be my biggest priority. And and I think that will push the next generation to do the same because if you what what's it for somebody to like gain the whole world and lose his soul? But the flip side of that is if we got Jesus, we have it all. So it's okay to not have anything that the world promises if that is what it's gonna cost you to pursue Christ, including your life, right? If it costs you your life, you still had the most important thing that you needed, and you have it, and you're gonna have that for eternity. So I think obviously it's not always easy to practice that, but it's very comforting to just do take big risks in the sense of career, very do countercultural thing, because as one of the normal things for immigrants like me is you come to the you come to US, which is I mean it's the dream for everybody in the world to make American dream is real. Like I know that for myself, right? But in that pursuit to go against the grain while being here is has been the biggest lesson that I learned. It's it's so worth it. It's so worth it to go back and it's so worth it to do jobs that are different than like it because like I think it baffles my immigrant friends that I do things that doesn't make sense to them. Wait, we can't think like this. We're immigrants. You have to hustle, you don't have that resource like everywhere. No, like I think this way because I'm thinking for eternity. I'm not thinking because I want a building in Camet. I'm not I'm not even living there. My parents are better in the village, you know, they are better off in the village, actually. They have been they have visited here. So I think to have that changed mindset is a cultural going against the cultural grain of what we're taught to go achieve, right? When you were earlier you were talking about like even to like speak and evangelize, you feel like you have to have certain credibility to go do that, right? And but that has never been the case if we look at the scripture, you know, we are always asked to decrease and like so that he can increase. You know, we're always asked to be on the background in a way so many times, and it's hard because our world present day feels like who has the bigger influence when you talk, but it doesn't like God has the biggest influence, and if he really wants to move your heart, he has used a donkey to like convey messages that what are we, you know? Like it's it's okay, you know, like he's gonna change the heart. Like we just are the messenger, and he's gonna make it happen. So, like, that's where I try to find myself to like okay, I don't need the best skill, I don't need the best connections, I just need the heart that wants to highlight Christ either in workplace or on set or on driving through a you know, yeah, like to get a food, right?

SPEAKER_03

So, yeah, it's kind of everyday struggle, but that's I the the way I would as I'm listening to you right there at the end, I'm like, the it's what's most important is the heart. Like success is uh, and I think, man, this is the word that's just stuck in my mind. You've mentioned it numerous times. Uh, success is faithfulness, is living full of faith, which is gonna lead you uh to live very differently from this world. I think, I mean, we've yeah, I mean, the subtitle of the book I wrote years ago, Taking Fact Your Faith from the American Dream. I'm writing that from the perspective of somebody who's grown up like with the American dream. You're talking about it as somebody who's like, yeah, all your immigrant friends are like, this is why we came here to experience the American dream. And you're like, no, no, there's there's a bigger dream. And the dream the bigger dream is to stand before Jesus and by his grace hear him say, Well done, good and faithful servant. So like full of faith, whether that's Olave and his wife Maria, uh, man, faithful, just faithful. And your dad, your family, the your church family there, just faithful. And I think it it's uh I don't just I just don't think it's an accident that when we were praying before this episode and just prayed for the Holy Spirit to lead us, and then said, Hey, why don't you just start by telling the story? And you could have started with anything, and where you started was I really miss my faith for the past. I think that's like the Lord just in this episode, this conversation. I know he's speaking it to me. I think he's speaking it to all of us, like yeah, don't settle for anything less than living full of faith. Yeah, and the kind of faith that takes God's word, does whatever he tells you to do, no matter what it costs, uh, believing that he's better, um, which is gonna involve spreading the gospel wherever he leads you, down the street today or maybe to the other side of the world. So, man, would you can you would you mind praying for us and just praying for everybody who's listening to this? That yeah, we'd be faithful. That's that's uh I just want to pray that over. I'd love you to bring that over me and all of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, yeah. Uh dear Jesus, thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity where we get to come together, use technologies to uh share the gospel, to share your good news, your testimony of how faithful and good you have been in my life, in our life, and in uh life of people that are tuning in this uh episode or wherever people however they're hearing, we just pray that you speak to all of us to pursue you with the uh the most priority and to love you and to honor you and to live this life that you have given us to glorify you in ways that might be culturally very against the grain, might not make sense to the world, but to do it because that is what is asked of us, Father God, and to uh give us strength and grace to actually do it with uh honor and do it with um love and kindness and not be boastful in our own strength or in our own uh in our own uh skills or on in our own experiences, even Father God, but to just point everything back to you that every day that we live is a day where you have given us that life. You have you're uh making our body function every day. And so it's not because we, you know, it's it's of our strength, and just to point it all back to you, despite our occupation, our where we work, what we do, just to honor and give it all back to you, because at the end of the day, you are the only one, the only one that deserves it all. And none of us are worthy of your grace and your salvation, Father God. And we're so thankful that we get to come together from different walks of life and still have you as our main common ground and common subject, Father God. And thank you for your faithfulness in our lives. And we pray that that uh goes to all the people that are tuning into this and just our our circle around us, Father God. In Jesus' name, we pray.

SPEAKER_03

Amen. And God, I just want to add on top and just pray specifically for Noah's family and for our brothers and sisters in uh loamy villages. God, we just we pray that they would know your nearness to them, abide in your love for them. And God, we pray for the flourishing of the gospel among the Loamy people. Please, God, please, please, please. We pray for awakening, for salvation among more and more people in uh Noah's village where Noah's family is and and and multitudes of other villages in the mountains of Nepal. Uh, God, we pray for the hallowing of Jesus' name across Nepal. And uh that you would you would bless your church walking through persecution uh toward the end, that you would be glorified, the gospel would spread, and your people would experience your joy in ways that are far greater than anything safety or comfort possessions in this world could ever touch. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_05

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Everyday Radical. We pray that it encouraged you in many ways. We do this every single week, so be sure to subscribe or follow to not miss the next episode. We'll see you then.