My name is Suire. I am 35 years old and from southern Nepal. There are six members in my family, and we are from a Hindu background. My mother, father, one brother, and two sisters. My father suffered from alcoholism.
Because of my father’s alcohol addiction, my mother left my father and our family when I was only five years old. A year after she had left, my mother brought me along with her to go to central Nepal. She didn’t have many opportunities for education and dreamt of being able to give the opportunities that she never had to her children. She wanted me to grow up to as a good man with good morals. I moved to Kathmandu when I was five years old, when my mother brought me along with her. My mother enrolled me in a really good school.
When I was 11 years old, my father had spent all of his money and belongings on drinking alcohol. After he had burnt bridges with all his family members and ran out of resources, he was left with emptiness and desperation. That’s when my father made a decision to take his own life. When I got the news that my father had left this world, I was in deep sorrow. I travelled to my village where my father had passed away and attended his funeral. In Hinduism tradition, when a male loses a family member, they have to fast, just eating fruits for 13 days. I went through the process and was deeply broken knowing that I lost my father and never had a chance to spend any quality time or to talk about life with him.
Losing my father at a young age, I went through a very tough phase. A year after my father had passed away, I was in 6th grade. My friends at school started telling me about drugs and started pressuring me to try it. Influenced by my friends, I also started doing drugs. I started taking marijuana pills and other different types of drugs. Having witnessed what my father’s alcohol addiction had done to his life had broken her heart, my mother was traumatized by the history of the family. She was devastated seeing her son follow the same broken path and started seeking ways to get me out of this drug addiction. She had felt very defeated with life. I was not listening to or following her caring advice and she was suffering through all of this. One day, in the midst of all of this, a friend visited her when she was at home and shared the Gospel with her.
When she first heard the Gospel, it spoke to her. She had been seeking love and freedom from the trauma that she and her family had gone through, and when she heard the Gospel, she saw the light of God’s love. She decided to follow Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior. From that moment on she started following Jesus and felt that He was the answer that she had been looking for, for a long time.
My mom kept going to church and being discipled. She had a lot of hope in her heart that God would bring her son out of darkness. She shared the Gospel with me many times, repeatedly. I was in my youth and enjoying the bad influence from my peers. Whenever my mother shared the Gospel and invited me to church, I did not respond positively. I would get frustrated and run away from home. I would talk back to my mother, and I would ask her to go to church alone and not bother me with any of that.
When I was fifteen years old, I thought of seeking employment outside of Nepal in order to make an income, so I went to South Arab. I was in South Arab for 3 and a half years, and then returned back home. After I returned, I met this beautiful woman and fell in love with her. She was a believer. When I went to ask for her hand in marriage, her family denied it because I was not a believer. Her family strongly discouraged her from marrying a non-believer man. Despite this, we got married.
Now we had been married for six years, and I was addicted to drugs more than ever. My family, along with my mother, continued to pray for me and for my transformation. Around 2015, I faced a lot of things that started changing my life drastically. My friends started betraying me. My best friend, while I was riding on his motorbike, tried to kill me. He attacked me and severely injured me. I escaped, but I hardly survived that event.
I was seriously wounded and covered in blood. I had fallen unconscious, and when I woke up from this injury, I could see bruises and cuts all over my body. I couldn’t believe that I was still living. I took a taxi and went to a police station and filed a case against the person who had tried to kill me. From there, I went to this person, and we had a big fight. He was getting ready to flee from his home when another person who saw us fighting called the police. The police came and took him, and he was imprisoned.
After this, I decided to visit my cousin because I was seeking comfort from my family. While I shared about my day with my cousin, I had a strong feeling and sense taking over me that I wanted to overdose myself and take my own life. I felt that my life had come to a dead end. My cousin listened to me and stopped me from committing suicide. She spoke words of encouragement and comfort to me.
My cousin was a believer, and she was sharing how Jesus loves and saves sinners like me. After hearing that there is a God who loves us despite how sinful we are, I broke down. The words hit me differently this time. Perhaps it was about time I needed to understand the significance of unconditional love and grace that surpassed my understanding.
The following morning, my wife came to my cousin’s place and told us that while I was still staying at my cousin’s, the police had invaded my home looking for any evidence of drugs that they could find. My friend who had tried to kill me had ratted me out to the police. The police were not able to find any signs of drugs in my home. This news was so scary for me because I was involved in smuggling drugs in my past, and the person who had tried to kill me had knowledge of this. When the police came searching my home, I was afraid that the punishment for smuggling drugs would cost almost two decades of imprisonment. I was afraid of this happening, and I started having suicidal thoughts again.
My aunt came the next day and offered to help me. She suggested that I go to a Bible training center, but even the Bible centers would not accept me because of my past. I wanted any help that I could get. My aunt also suggested a rehab center. I had experienced many rehab centers where they used physical and mental torture to course-correct addiction. This had left a bad taste in my mouth so I refused to go to the rehab center that my aunt was suggesting. Seeing me deny her request, she told me that this rehab center was run by Christians. I knew Christians from my family – my mom, her friends, my cousin, my aunt, my wife and her family – they were all believers, and they always had been so good to me. I viewed Christians as kind and polite people. At that time, knowing that it was a Christian rehab, I wanted to give it a try. I remember fearing this rehab center less than other rehab centers that I had experienced. I felt that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me and leading me to give this rehab a try because I had witnessed a lot of kind and compassionate behavior from other believers.
I did not want to delay this process because I wanted change in my life. The same day my aunt told me that it was a Christian rehab, I went and enrolled myself. While I was walking in, I noticed some unusual writing on the wall near the gate. At that time, I didn’t know it was a Bible verse. The writing on the wall said, “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” I felt that someone had prepared to welcome me to this place, and it felt like home. I felt that I was finally home.
I was betrayed by my friend. I had disappointed all of my family and caused so much trouble and pain for them, gone away from righteousness, and was running away from imprisonment. You have no idea how it felt to walk into a place that felt like home after going through such devastating events. My wife was there to witness me walking into the rehab center. Many years later, my wife reminded me how I walked into the center. She told me that as I walked into the rehab center, I had both hands up and I fell on my knees at the entrance gate. I had completely surrendered everything. I was weeping loudly and crying out loud to this father figure that had welcomed me home. I was beaten up by life and defeated. I had no hope, stamina, courage, or fight left in me to live. I had just fallen to the ground on my knees, completely broken, weeping, surrendering, heavily burdened with the weight of my past, anxious and unable to imagine what was to come the next second. I had given up on myself. I was ready to close the chapter that I had been living.
I went inside the rehab, and after a few hours I asked for my last dose of drugs. Usually, in rehab centers, they give you a last dose of the drugs before you start your treatment. I approached the staff there and asked for my last dose of drugs. I was strongly craving it, and my body was responding negatively to the withdrawal. The response from the staff shook me. The staff told me, “Here, the last dose of the drugs is prayers.” For a moment, I felt like I was in the wrong place, because I was still craving my drugs. Drugs were all I knew at that point. They were familiar to me and safe place. They would numb down the pain I carried throughout my life and take me out of reality and give me a sense of safety.
At the Christian rehab center, they did not give me any drugs at all and I struggled with my cravings. I would get mad at them and talk back, but this is how my treatment started.
It had been 15 days that I was without any drugs, which felt like a very long time. I could not eat any solid food because I suffered from indigestion, so I was only drinking juice for 15 days. The strange thing that I was witnessing throughout these 15 days was that they would have morning devotion every morning and Bible study time. They would have a prayer time inside this rehabilitation facility.
After 15 days, I could finally start eating solid food. I felt hungry, and I wanted to eat finally. And the brothers there began to rejoice, reminding me of the words they told me when I was first there, that the dose here is prayer. I looked around at the people I was surrounded with, and the lifestyle and culture there, and I looked at myself. I suddenly realized – oh, prayer worked in my life.
During our daily devotions, one day a visitor man came, and he looked like a drug addict just from his appearance and he looked like he was going through some challenges. Another brother there asked this man to come in front of the group to share from the Bible. I was shocked. I thought and asked myself, how could a man like this be sharing from the Word of God? To my amazement, he was a pastor.
On the same day, this man started sharing about what God did in his life. That made me think deeply, and it made me desire to experience the transformation that he experienced in his life. To me, that was something very powerful. He had suffered from drug addiction for 35 years, and he was even HIV positive, but the Lord had transformed him. He shared from Isaiah 1:18 at the end of his message. He shared that even though your sins are red like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. What a great comfort that was to my soul! As he was inviting us to raise our hands and confess our sins and kneel down before God if we wanted to give our life to this God who can wash our sins, with a heavy burden on my shoulder, I came to the front, excited for this new gift that Jesus was offering me – to forgive all of my sins, all that I did in the past, and also all that I would do in the future.
I gave my life to Jesus at that moment. As I prayed, I was in tears, crying out, asking for forgiveness for all the hardships that I brought to my family, to myself, and to the dear ones who always suffered because of me. I even asked for forgiveness for being a son that never thought of his heavenly Father who was so forgiving and so loving. That day, I said, “Lord, here I am. Take me and use me to do whatever You want to use me for.”
After three months of my treatment I experienced the Lord starting to open doors for me to go to a Bible school. I got an opportunity to go to a Bible school in India and spent 2 years there learning the Bible. I got to learn more about my loving Father who took away all my sins and gave me a purpose to start everything again – a reason to live for.
After finishing two years in this Bible seminary, I came back and decided to move back to my own town, where I was originally from. I started helping a local church there, and during that time, I met with one of the leaders from Nabin Lahara, Brother M.
Coming back from Bible school, I always wanted to serve God, but I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I was helping in my local church, but there were very limited opportunities for ministry. They would only meet on Saturday and not the other six days of the week, so what I would do was stay at home, pray, and wait for Saturday.
When I met with Brother M, he shared with me that they were doing door-to-door evangelism. He took me to the ministry field one day where he was sharing the Gospel with the people from one village in Nepal. I experienced something that was very different that time. The response that I got to hear from these people who were hearing the Gospel made me think a lot. When Brother M asked people, “Have you heard about Jesus?” they would ask, “What’s his last name?”
This made me think – have people really heard about Jesus? Are there still more people in our country that need to hear about Jesus? I began to walk with Brother M and he started discipling me. Brother M taught how important it is and how urgent it is to reach these people with the Gospel who have never heard. He also began to teach me how we can disciple a person who comes to faith from these new villages. It was during those days that the Lord began to convict me that He has called me for this very reason. I felt the calling to be His instrument – to carry the Gospel to the unreached, to disciple them, and to continue to plant more churches, multiplying more disciples. As I began to see the Lord using me for this very purpose, I was reassured that this is the vision and calling that the Lord has given me in my life to carry as long as I live on this earth.
By the grace of God, in this very short duration of three years, I saw more than 50 churches being planted throughout the region where God had guided my path. God has taken me to the most wonderful ministry areas, and He has blessed me with 15 faithful brothers who have the very same vision – to reach the unreached people groups, plant churches among geographical gaps, and disciple them to continue to multiply the disciples of Christ.
The Lord has also blessed me with two kids. My oldest son is 7 years old, and my younger son is 3 years old. The work that the Lord has started has been very fruitful. God has put together an amazing team that I have been serving with in the southern region of Nepal. He has convicted me to entrust the leadership to these few faithful brothers in Christ. I feel that I have served my purpose in this region, and very recently God has put a burden in my heart to go to another province in the far western region of Nepal. I am praying that the Lord will open the doors and also help me to be led by the Spirit to see the geographical gaps and unreached people groups in that region. I believe that this is my next step that God is preparing me for. Please continue to pray for my family. Please pray for the work that God has already started and also for the work that God is putting in my heart to start.
My favorite part about my faith is that I always have light in my life. He’s been a tower of refuge where I can run and hide. Being an ex-drug addict, I know one thing – that recovery is a journey, not a destination. There may be a time when I can feel low, but I know for sure that I have a tower where I can run to and hide myself. My tower of refuge – that’s Jesus to me!
