Personal Testimony

My name is Tej. I was born and grew up in a Hindu orthodox priestly family. My father was an orthodox Hindu priest. Through him we children learned to practice Hindu rites and religion, but there was no peace in my heart as well as in my family. Once, my elder sister became seriously sick. We did not understand what was happening and what we should do about it. We thought that the gods were punishing us, even though my parents did many things according to Hindu rites in order to please our Hindu gods and goddesses. My sister was taken to the hospital but she was discharged soon after without any medical treatment. We had no hope for her except to cry out. Day by day we were facing more and more problem and challenges and this saddened us much.

During those days, there was not even one Christian in our whole province (District) and so we never heard the name of Jesus. We were crying and weeping for our sister, because she was dying. Some neighbors came to watch what was happening. Then a new Christian brother from India (Nepali-Indian) who had come to visit our neighbor's house came out and asked for my mother's permission to pray for her. He boldly stood up and shared about the love of Jesus and the miracles that he performed. We didn't have any other hope except to let him pray for our sister. This Christian man prayed for my sister and two hour later she began to show symptoms of recovery from her sickness. After two days, she was completely healed Praised the Lord for His great miracle. There was no limit to our happiness as we experienced God's miracle. After that incident, my family and I, except my father, who was away from home, accepted the Lord Jesus as our personal Savior. This happened in 1980 while I was a 12 year old boy.

My father came back home, and was enraged that we had become Christian. We faced intolerable persecution for our faith in Christ from our relatives, neighbors, Hindu groups and the government. Many times we (including small children) were beaten. My mother and older brother (aged 14) were left to die and later hospitalized. Two times, people came at night to kill us. Three times people tried to burn our house but they did not have the courage to do it. Rather, they destroyed some parts of our house out of anger. Two times, we were taken into police custody and beaten mercilessly. Somehow God helped us to escape from them. The brother who shared about Christ was also seriously beaten and left to die until he was forced to leave the country. Now, there was no one to comfort us except the word of God. We were continually tortured until 1991. Not only we were persecuted but also ostracized from the society for three years. We children also were not allowed to go to School for three years because of excommunication by the society. Many times we were heckled and pressured to leave country and go to the USA, accusing us of following the “American religion”. People from surrounding villages and cities used to keep on coming to watch, scold, mock and spite us. We became well known to them as ‘Christians’. My father could not do anything to change our mind from the love of God. As a result he sold all of our property including the house, got married to another woman, and lived far away from our place. By this time our family was totally broken into pieces. And we had no place to live and had to spend many nights under the trees.

Because of continued torture, our condition was becoming worse day by day. But we did not give up the hope that we had in Jesus. We became physically and mentally very weak but spiritually we were so strong in the Lord and we were even ready to die for our faith in Jesus. Persecution continued to increase. In 1986 and 1988, along with other believers, the police twice arrested me and put me into jail 8 and 6 months respectively. They burned even our small church building and Bibles. We were seriously beaten by the police. But we continually prayed for them and the government. We also shared the gospel among the police and one of the police officer accepted Christ As a result our punishment was reduced. We found nothing to comfort us during severe persecution except the word of God written in some tracts. We found some Bible verses (Matt. 10:28, 34, 36-38, John 15:19) that encouraged us a lot to bear persecution.

Even in the midst of persecution we did not stop witnessing for the Lord. During this time God did many miracles through us and some people were amazed in witnessing our torture and agony for the cost of faith in Jesus. As a result some of our neighbors including some who were persecutors accepted Christ. During the continued persecution; my mother dedicated me for the Lord's ministry as a tithe when I was 15 years old. This challenged me to give my whole life to God and to His ministry. With this challenge (in 1986) I was baptized at 12 midnight at a river in the middle of the jungle, which was about 10 km away from our house. Baptism during those days was illegal. I went to India in 1988-1991 in order to escape from the threat of killing by Hindu Areshes group.