Hello Dear Family and Friends of Iris Nepal:
Thank you for your care, your concern, your prayers, and your love and kindness towards us. We cannot do what God calls us to do here without your partnership in prayer, in encouragement, and in support. Every testimony that you hear or read about, and every good thing that God accomplishes through us at Iris Nepal is a return on your sacrifice of prayer…
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:10-12
The last month or so, we have seen an increase in persecution/opposition both here in Kathmandu and at our Janakpur base. We have had a few incidences with police, a few with angry Hindu radicals, and even death threats. There is no real revolution without opposition, so it is just additional confirmation that we on the verge of revival here. We are all fine and God is keeping our hearts full of courage and His perfect love is casting out fear. Two specific instances are described below:
• A few weeks ago, we went to Pashupatinath where Hindus cremate their loved ones who have died. We have an amazing relationship with the Sadhus (Hindu holy men) who live there. They always want us to lay hands on them and pray to Jesus for peace. They testify that they have never felt true peace in their ritualistic, religious existence, but, when we pray and Jesus encounters them, they feel peace that many times overwhelms them. When we arrived there this time, the Sadhus were all so happy to see us. One of them told us that he had been praying to Jesus to send us there soon so we could pray for him. We all prayed over the Sadhus again and they all got encountered by the love and peace that only Jesus can give and they were so happy. We got to share a lot more about Jesus and how He loves them and how He wants them to seek Him themselves and worship Him alone. One angry Hindu man obviously didn’t like us praying for and ministering to the Sadhus so he went and got the police. I (Joel) went with the police to their station where they questioned me about what happened. They made me call the rest of the team who were involved to come and took all of our information, told us to stop doing what we were doing, and released us. We have been back since and still prayed for the Sadhus, mourned and prayed for those who were mourning, prayed for the dead to be raised, and prayed for the sick. God is good and He has very clearly told us to boldly take His light into that dark place.
• Two weeks ago, Pastor Dinesh, our pastor in Janakpur, received a death threat on his phone. He has since received other death threats and has been told to pay the equivalent of $8000 before this Friday. Our Head Iris Nepal Pastor, Dinesh, went to Jankapur last weekend to encourage Pastor Dinesh and his church and had a very good time encouraging and teaching about persecution and fear verses love. Please pray for Pastor Dinesh and his family's protection. Pray that these death threats will go away and that the police will catch those who are responsible.
Iris Children’s School
The school has successfully and joyfully completed its first term! The students are so happy and love everything about their new school. The teachers are doing great and growing in their knowledge of new teaching strategies and their understanding of the teaching/learning process. Please pray for growth in both the students and the staff and pray that everyone would let love win in every situation.
Iris Children’s Home
The kids are doing amazing! We have seen an increase in their spiritual growth in the past two months. They are growing in spiritual gifts, growing in the knowledge of the worthiness of Jesus and worship, and growing in kindness and love. They are writing their own worship songs that God gives them in times of prayer (http://clementchen.bandcamp.com/track/the-fathers-delight-feat-world-race-iris-fortaleza-ywam-awaken-ekballo-project) and God, through His Spirit, is giving them prophetic words to strengthen each other and those around them. They regularly pray for their Hindu friends at school and see God do amazing things. We welcomed a new son into our family last week. Bijay, a young boy who was abandoned by his mother, has a congenital heart defect and will have surgery this week. The other kids have accepted their new brother with complete love and he already feels like family. Please pray for his healing. Pray also for sponsorships for the 8 children who are currently not sponsored.
Iris Banquet House
The Banquet House feeds anywhere from 50-120 people every Thursday morning. Every week, people get saved, healed, and delivered as they encounter the crazy, life-changing love of our beautiful Jesus. Our Banquet House church on Saturdays is growing as more and more of Kathmandu’s poor and downcast accept Jesus as Lord of their lives. The Iris Nepal kids are the main prayer and worship ministers during church. We have a long worship time followed by a prayer/ministry time for those with needs. We then share a short, simple teaching where responses from the congregation are encouraged and end with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper (a full meal of bread, beans, and juice).
Gethsemane Prayer House
Under the guidance and vision of Clement Chen, an Iris Nepal missionary, the Gethsemane Prayer House is growing. He is in the process of moving to a new, bigger and better location which will better serve the new staff that are coming.
Outreaches
Last month, while praying with a visiting Kona Awaken YWAM team, God gave us a clear word to visit a very small village called Silla in the Far West of Nepal. Here (with permission) is Jesse and Tanya Gellatly’s (Iris Global Missionaries) summary of what happened:
In faith, we responded to our assignment that we received straight from heaven and we ventured out on our journey across the country not knowing who or what would be ahead waiting for us. The village of Silla was on the heart of the Father and that is what mattered. We were unfamiliar with that area and did not know anyone there. To us it was just a dot on the map. Our mission this last week actually begin a week earlier than this in the prayer room. We were seeking God’s heart, releasing our worship to Him and waiting in His presence. He simply spoke the word “Silla” to one of the ladies on the team and no one knew what it meant or had heard of it before. Later we googled it and found that it was actually the name of a village in Nepal. It was nowhere convenient to get to but that did not matter because that is where He was sending us. We made preparations and set off a few days later on an estimated 25 – 30 hour drive west across Nepal, almost to the border of India.
It wasn’t too long into our trip that unexpected delays and challenges began to confront our team. When this happens it is easy for people to become discouraged and question if we really heard from God or to give credit to the devil for opposing and delaying us. Instead, we chose joy and resisted these other responses. We looked for the beautiful opportunities God had hidden inside of these challenges and made the most of them. It is so important to embrace the whole journey in life and not just think about the destination. As we were driving, our roof rack which held all of our belongings came loose and nearly slid off the top of the van. We stopped in a town to get it fixed and a bunch of young street boys came around and watched us. They were all inhaling strong glue to get high. One of the Nepali men from our team confiscated it from them and we ministered to them. We prayed for a lot of people at that mechanics shop for various reasons, including the mechanic himself. Eight of the street boys prayed to receive Jesus with us.
Challenges continued to face us and as we embraced them God turned each one around for His glory. One of the young men on our team had become extremely ill and we stopped at a village where there was a few Christians who helped us to get him to a small local hospital and they were able to hook him up to an IV. We did not think that he would be well enough to make it to the village and we left him there with someone to take care of him until we would journey back and pick them up on the way. While we were waiting for them to drop him off at the hospital we just worshipped the Lord together in that village. Many people came and gathered around to watch us. The worship time turned into a healing service as God moved and person after person requested prayer and God healed many of them right there. Almost all of them were Hindu, but now they knew and had experienced the love of Jesus and could not deny that He was real and powerful.
We arrived at Silla by the third day of our journey. We parked the van in a small village on the road, unloaded our belongings and began our hike up the mountain to find the village. The hike was not too strenuous and we arrived by late afternoon. There were no Christians in the village and many of the people had never even heard the name of Jesus before. We didn’t have a place to sleep or any food but soon two families had opened up their homes and offered to cook for us. The women stayed with one family and the men with another. We ate dinner by 9pm. It was Nepali dahlbat which thank goodness we enjoy because it was the only type of food we would eat for the entire trip. We mostly all slept on the floor side by side in a very small dusty room. We killed off the spiders and termites that we could see before passing out, exhausted from the long journey. Unfortunately we were told that we could only stay one night because we had arrived at the start of their sacred Hindu festival where people come from many surrounding villages to worship their demon gods there.
The next morning we woke up, got the guitar and just started worshipping the Lord. As we worshipped some of the villagers joined in our circle to observe. Others stayed on the outside, a bit skeptical of us still. We prayed for one another and for those who had joined our circle. The Holy Spirit was moving and villagers began to request prayer for specific needs. One woman and her teenage daughter both suffered from tormenting dreams and fear every night. God healed them from pain in their bodies and we encouraged them that the tormenting dreams would not continue. After our worship time, the people we had left at the hospital showed up at the village and the young man who had been ill was already feeling much better. The village extended our invitation to continue staying with them despite their Hindu rituals because they had seen God’s love in us and people had been healed after receiving prayer. We played with kids, looked for ways to serve, and showed the Jesus film in Nepali there. The spiritual atmosphere of the village had already become much lighter and God’s presence was obviously there now pushing back the darkness.
In the midst of all that God was doing, opposition grew stronger against us and during the Jesus film an angry Hindu man had come to the owners of the house we stayed at demanding that we must leave the village. He interrogated our Nepali Evangelism leader and was not happy at all about our team’s presence there. This village was a dark spiritual stronghold in that area where many other villages came to do their worship practices. One of their main Hindu priests from the neighboring village told the people of Silla that he refused to come for the ceremony until after they made us leave their village. The people had become divided. Many argued for us to stay because they had experienced the love of Jesus and had been touched by His presence while others demanding that we leave because we were messing up their ability to perform their demonic idol worship rituals. We decided to leave the next day which is one night less than we had hoped to. We would go back to stay at the village where we had stopped to drop the young man at the hospital and see what more God might want to do there. So we slept that last night in Silla and only had the next morning to pour out what more we could of God’s love before saying goodbye. In the morning we were invited for breakfast by the lady and her daughter that we had ministered to the day before. They had prepared tea and food for us which was a special treat because we had not been used to having breakfast. Both of them were still healed and they had slept very well with no tormenting dreams in the night! The teenage daughter prayed to receive Jesus and plans to connect with the team later when she comes to visit her sister in Kathmandu.
Although the whole village didn’t get saved while we were there and we were forced out from opposition, we are not discouraged. We had the privilege of introducing these people to Jesus and many encountered Him while we were there. It is God who sent us there and I have faith that we were preparing the way and plowing the ground for a greater harvest and transformation that He has destined in His heart for those people. His presence, witness and light is now there where it was pure darkness before. He will send the rain and the seeds will sprout. That village which is a stronghold of Hindu Idol worship will become a stronghold Righteousness and true worship and will be an influence for Jesus to the other villages even more so than it has been an influence of evil in the past. Many Holy Spirit filled leaders will come out of that village whom God spoke to us about and highlighted to us while we were there. After finishing this please take time to pray with us for the village of Silla.
Prayer Needs
Please pray for us as a season of growth is coming at Iris Nepal. We pray regularly, as Jesus commands, that the Lord of the harvest would send out workers. He is answering that prayer and we could potentially have up to 15 new long-term staff added to our number by the end of the year. Pray that we can stay unified and together with one heart and one mind. Pray for us as leaders that we would truly lead with the humility and servant heart of Jesus and that we would be willing to lay down our lives like the Good Shepherd. Pray for Pastor Nelson, who has an auto-immune disease called Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). He seems to be getting worse even though we are believing that God has healed him. Pray that the healing that we are believing for manifests in his physical body soon! Please pray for financial provision. As God grows us and calls us to invest in more things, the need for support increases.
You can also get regular updates, photos, and prayer requests on the Iris Nepal Facebook page.
We love you all!
Love, love, love!
Joel and Tammy DeBortoli
Nepal Base Directors
Iris Global
www.irisglobal.org/nepal
If you feel led to financially support what God is doing here in Nepal, there are now 3 ways to do so:
- You can send or give your support to our home church in CA with a note saying ‘Nepal’:
Mt. Shasta Evangelical Free Church
1030 W.A. Barr Road
Mt. Shasta, CA 96067
(530) 926-2700
Email: efc@snowcrest.net **
Or: - You can send your support to:
Iris Ministries, Inc.
P. O. Box 493995
Redding, CA 96049-3995
530-255-2077
Email: irisredding@irisglobal.org **
Or: - You can now give to Iris Nepal online by going to Iris’ website:
https://www.irisglobal.org/
At the top is a “link” for Giving Center”. Click on that link.
There are some “tabs” to have “Automated Monthly Donations” or “One Time Donation”, “click” on one and follow the directions.
In the comment box, please write “Support for DeBortolis– Nepal”. If you are sponsoring a child, please write “Iris Nepal Child Sponsorship” with the name of the child.
You will need a credit card.
If you choose “Automated Monthly Donations, the amount you choose will be deducted the day of each month that you designate.
**For #1 and #2, please indicate specifically on the check or in a note exactly what you want the funds to go for.