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It is Saturday in Nepal, and hundreds of people dressed in their best churchgoing clothes crowd together outside a large hall in the capital city of Katmandu.

Saluting each other with folded hands and saying "Jai Masih" (the Nepali expression for "Praise the Lord"), they take off their shoes, making their way inside to squat on a carpeted floor just before 10:30 a.m. Except for a handful of expatriates, the Nepali Isai Mandali (Gyaneshwor) Church is filled with first-generation Nepali Christians who have braved social and religious constraints to follow Jesus Christ. Every inch of space is taken and those who are late reluctantly sit outside. At the first strains of a Nepali song, all 2,000 hands, young and old, lift in praise to God. This amazing sight brings tears to my eyes. Ten years ago an open church meeting of this nature would have been impossible. The days when government agents infiltrated churches as spies, and Christians were persecuted or imprisoned, are also long gone. Three decades ago, two Nepali Christians, Robert Karthak and Laxmi Prasad Neupane, climbed the Himalayan Mountains, crossed rivers, and walked 15 miles a day to visit inaccessible villages across this nation of 23.2 million people. Each time they stumbled across a village, they stopped to sing a few songs, share their testimony, and hand out gospel tracts to those who could read. They journeyed for 45 days, sleeping under the stars and wearing out five pairs of shoes, ever aware that they could be arrested by the police and jailed on charges of breaking the law and proselytizing.

It was not until many years had passed that Karthak and Neupane began to meet new Christians from some of the villages they had visited. "No one remembered us," says Neupane, an upper-caste Brahmin Hindu convert and director of the Inter national Bible Society in Nepal. "We did our work secretly as we could be arrested at any time, and prayed that God would pour out his Spirit. We are now seeing the fruit of the seeds which we sowed many years ago. God's Word never returns void."

"I was often called in by the police, and had to move several times as we were not allowed to have worship services," says Karthak, senior pastor of Gyaneshwor Church in Katmandu. "We could not declare ourselves as Christians openly, so we started in a small way as the constitution prevented us from preaching."

From 15,000 in 1970 to an estimated 400,000 Christians today, Nepal has one of the fastest-growing Christian populations among the 3.6 billion people throughout Asia's 51 countries, according to scholars in Christian missions.

"It is very encouraging to note that in about 45 years two percent of the population became followers of Christ," says Thirtha Thapa, president of the National Christian Society.

Nepal has always considered itself in a unique but precarious situation. Land locked, Nepal is situated between the world's two most populated countries, India and China. With a per capita income of $210 annually, it is one of the ten poorest countries in the world and has virtually no middle class. The majority of Nepalis are Hindus and Buddhists. In many areas, the two religions blend into folk rituals, festivals, and worship.

Katmandu rests in the shadows of the Himalayas and is densely populated; its streets are narrow and crowded. Life here is unhurried and most people are easygoing and leisure-loving. Tourists and trekkers come to Kat mandu to visit the innumerable shrines and temples that dot the landscape.

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April 3 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4