N E PA L
I
left my heart in Nepal last year with a tiny, six-year-old boy named Sina. His school had been destroyed by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu that killed 9,000 people the previous week. As I walked into the school courtyard, I found the scene depressing. Most of the seven buildings had caved in. The classroom walls had collapsed. And the children’s books and posters lay ripped apart and scattered on the ground. I had been asked by the emergency response team of Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) International to fly to Nepal to lead our communication efforts there. So far, all I had seen was devastation: hundreds of buildings lying in ruins, frightened villagers sleeping in makeshift tents or on the ground, and families huddled together, grieving. But as I continued to assess the school’s damage, I was suddenly hit
with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude. If this earthquake had occurred on a week day, 400 children would have been in these buildings! I was sharing these thoughts with my friends when a group of children ran over to us. They greeted us with warm smiles and asked what we were doing at their school. We explained our mission and then asked them about their experiences with the
earthquake. One by one, they shared their stories, each more heart wrenching than the last. “What about you?” I asked a small boy who was holding hands with his grandfather. He smiled at me and then shyly looked at the ground. “Sina had been playing with his cousins at his aunt’s home when the earthquake struck,” his grandfather informed me. “Bricks and wood
I Left My Heart in
Nepal 1
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