KATHMANDU, Nepal – Midwestern College student Bethany Collier* kept watch in an open field on an April midnight here, surrounded by five companions, huddled together nearby in their sleeping bags.
Participating in the college’s Fusion missions program, she and her friends arrived in Kathmandu four months earlier to multiply disciples among the women of Nepal. They never imagined that, during their trip, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake would shake the Himalayas, shatter cities and kill more than 4,000 people.
Yet the earthquake struck on April 25, forcing Collier and her friends to sleep outdoors and take turns keeping watch that night. During her watch, Collier reflected on the previous day and prayed.
“That really was one of the sweetest times of prayer that I’ve ever had,” she said, “just believing in the truth that God is our refuge more than I ever had before. Even when the earth isn’t trustworthy, God is trustworthy, always.”
Like her colleagues, Collier’s feet were firmly planted amid disaster not only because of Fusion’s intensive training, but more importantly because of her confidence that “though the mountains be shaken,” God remains faithful (Isaiah 54:10).
Multiplying disciples
These student missionaries with the Fusion program witnessed the faithfulness of God soon after they landed in Nepal in January and began teaching Nepalese Christian women how to make disciples. According to Katlyn Reese*, a Midwestern College student and the Fusion advocate leading the group of girls, the team’s success hinged upon these women sharing their faith.
At one of the first villages they visited, nearly 12 hours from Kathmandu, Reese doubted whether any of the women understood what they were teaching. But they returned a month later to find a surprising harvest.
“It turns out that many of the women had shared with hundreds of people,” Reese said.
According to Collier, a 17-year-old believer faithfully shared the gospel with her friends and family, and she brought three or four new believers to the training.
“About a month after we left that village, a whole new church had been planted,” Collier said.
Weathering a disaster
On the mid-morning of April 25, Collier and her friends sat around a table in their Kathmandu apartment, chatting and passing the time. Some of their teammates had just returned the previous evening from villages where they trained other Nepalese women to share their faith. So the six of them were together that morning when an alarm sounded and when their second-story apartment began to shake, with cups on the table rattling and doors slamming.
Immediately, Collier grabbed the table, looked up at Reese and her other team members and cried out, “Earthquake.”
“We didn’t expect that,” Collier said. “So when I said, ‘Earthquake,’ everything we had been told to do in an earthquake went out the window, out of our minds, because it was so sudden and so scary. … Finally, we all collapsed in the hallway with our arms over one another, and we all began praying aloud.
“It was very, very loud,” she added. “It sounded like a freight train or thunder, because of all the buildings shaking. And the earth was moving.”
According to Reese, the thunder of the earthquake continued, it seemed, for a long time. Eventually, she alone was speaking, confessing in her prayers that God was in control.
“In that moment, I was pretty sure that the apartment building was going to collapse on us because we were told that that would probably happen in an earthquake,” Reese said. “I was terrified. My voice was trembling as I was speaking, but it was a precious thing because I thought, ‘I will be with Jesus and the Father soon because of what He has already done.’ And that was a great thing.”
When the shaking finally stopped, the girls stood up, grabbed their go-bags—containing passports, cash, food and other supplies—and went to a hotel parking lot. They encouraged and prayed with some Nepalese women, sharing how they could find hope amid the disaster. But they also planned, deciding how they should proceed until they heard from their host missionary.
That night, they slept in an open field. Reese took the shift from 3:30 – 5:00 a.m.
“We were the only foreigners there, six young white women in a field. Everybody thought it would be pretty unwise just to go to sleep in the middle of that field…, so we just all lay down together with sleeping bags and ground pads and had about an hour-and-a-half shifts with each person.
“At one point, it started raining,” she added. Fortunately for them, tents were set up throughout the field for a Hindu festival. So they were able to take cover under the tents with a crowd of Nepalese who were sleeping outdoors that night.
Reese took watch from 3:30 – 5:00 a.m., after the rain had passed.
“I was just waiting for it to end so I could go back to sleep,” she said. “I was really tired. But I was very, very thankful that we were keeping watch, because there were some strange characters walking around.”
For the next few nights, the girls set up camp in their apartment parking lot. But unable to contribute to the recovery process— both because the Nepalese government wouldn’t allow citizens to do so and because Baptist Global Relief had not completed their assessment of the disaster—they soon returned to the United States a week earlier than they had expected.
Returning home
Looking back on their experiences, both Collier and Reese thanked God for the training they received through the Fusion program.
“The goal of Fusion is to turn Christian adolescents into biblical adults,” Reese said. “Christian adolescents are told what to do. They are told how to act and things like that. But biblical adults live according to the Word and abide deeply with Jesus. … It is out of the joy that we have in Jesus that we are able to do good things and to bear good fruit.”
She added that, because of Fusion’s training for emergency situations like the Nepal earthquake, the team was able to make wise decisions even amid the chaos of the situation.
“Overall, the thing that helped us the most was being able to think clearly and think well even though we were stressed out during this time,” she said. “The training that we did in Fusion during the (fall 2014 semester) prepared us a lot for that. It really helped.”
At the end of May, Reese, Collier and their teammates celebrated with other Fusion participants who traveled the globe to share the gospel. The ceremony was solemn. Members of each fusion team wore the native dress of the country where they had worked, and first-time Fusion participants received a sword—reminding them to base their lives on God’s Word and the Spirit’s guidance.
During a formal dinner after the ceremony, the Fusion teams shared stories about what God had done during the previous four months, stories of God’s faithfulness in redeeming men and women around the globe.
“It was really, really wonderful,” Collier said. “He is indeed drawing people to Himself all over the world.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: * denotes name changed.