Sunday, December 10, 2011
At Soma Cafe, at 12:15 PM
A couple nights ago, the New Abolishionists and I, along with our leader Brian, went into the highly touristy neighborhood called Thamel to do “outreach” at a dance bar. This outreach is a part of what the New Abolishionists are doing for their mission while here in Nepal. To me, it seemed like a grassroots rescue operation. We weren't just going in there sporadically without preparation, however.
This is an account of what occurred.
We met in the parking lot of a restaurant that is popular with Westerners. Brian Williams, who has been involved in rescue operations like this before, started off the night by giving us a brief training on the neighborhood and what we could expect. Being someone who is constantly in tune with his spiritual side, he told the group he had had a dream the previous night about a Nepali prince from the 17th century. The prince was seated on his horse, and had huge rice sacks hanging from his saddle. For some reason, in the dream Brian was riding a bus that stopped right where this prince was, and Brian was observing him through one of the bus windows. Brian then saw the prince reach down and grab a young Nepali girl and force her into the one of the rice sacks. The prince then said “There! I have another wife!”
Being disturbed by this, Brian jumped out of the bus and ran over to the prince and began to open up the rice sack to rescue the girl. He saw a policeman nearby watching what was happening, but not doing anything. He also saw other princes with girls trapped in rice sacks, and other rescuers trying to get them out. Some people who were “enemies” then showed up and prevented Brian and the others from rescuing the girls by pulling at them and by putting their hands over the rice bags. The struggle continued until one of the enemies pulled out a knife, at which point Brian awoke from his dream.
After telling us about the dream, Brian talked about a story from the Bible involving Joshua, to whom God had told to go into the land and said that anywhere his feet touched will be given to him, in God's name. Brian then prayed for God's protection and blessing, and told us to go out into the neighborhood to pray and claim the ground for Jesus. I considered this a very charismatic Pentecostal kind of activity, and I confess I was a little skeptical; but by now I was used to these kinds of things so I went along and participated to the best of my ability. We canvassed the dance bar areas with prayer, and contemplated what God was telling us or where he wanted us to go.
After a half hour, we returned to the parking lot and debriefed. One of the guys in the group said he saw a dance bar near a sign that had the word "prince" on it. There was one of the blue military policemen – who are ubiquitous in Kathmandu – nearby too. Both were references to Brian's dream.
It's not like we were all mystified with amazement and singing Cum By Yah together when we heard this. Brian himself mentioned later that he had been a bit skeptical about the point of the prayer walk. But this is the thing about faith in Nepal. They take it for what it is; they see a connection like this as from God, be it a big or little sign. And actually, at this point it was mostly foreigners in the group, with Brian and Rahul being the only Nepalis, so it took faith and agreement from all of us to decide on the next course of action.
We headed over to the dance bar near the sign on which was printed the word "prince."
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