Although Nepal has been a major focus of the ministry of Teach All Nations since its inception, we haven’t had the opportunity to be back in the country for several years. So, this trip was especially meaningful in that we were able to renew old friendships and see how the Lord has blessed and increased the ministry there over the past few years – even in spite of the pandemic. In fact, the pandemic was not only the reason that we were unable to visit Nepal for the last three years but also the motivation for this trip. The believers in the country were begging for us to come, saying that they were hungry for a time to get together for fellowship, encouragement, teaching, and empowering.
We concentrated our ministry in the two major cities of the country – Kathmandu and Pokhara. Peggy and Linda Easton (one of our board members and one of Peggy’s faithful ministry partners) hosted women’s conferences while Delron taught at the Bible college and led church conferences. In addition, we ministered in several churches and also released the Nepali version of Delron’s recent book Maximum Impact. Attendance at each of the conferences was between three and four hundred delegates, but the impact will be increased exponentially as each delegate will essentially become an ambassador, taking the message far and wide throughout the nation. In each meeting, we emphasized the necessity of being filled with the Holy Spirit and operating under the power of His anointing. One highlight was the time that Delron had all the people who had never laid hands on the sick and prayed for their healing to minister to those who had physical needs. As a result, more than a dozen individuals testified to having received a healing that could be immediately confirmed. We also equipped some ministers who work among illiterate tribes with solar-powered audio Bibles so they can provide the Word of God to those who cannot read it for themselves.
There were several sad moments for us during our visit as we spent time with the families of some prominent church leaders who had passed away since our last time in the country, leaving some serious voids in the top leadership in the Body of Christ. Yet, these losses only “added fuel to the fire” that has always been the driving force behind the ministry of Teach All Nations – to raise up a new generation of discipled leaders!
Please take the time to prayerfully read the following articles to understand the full story and ask the Lord how He desires for you to become part of the vision.
FRUIT THAT REMAINS
By Delron Shirley
Jesus told His disciples that He wanted to produce fruit in their lives and then added that He wanted that fruit to have lasting results (John 15:16) – not just a flash-in-the-pan reaction. I recently had the opportunity to see firsthand what He was talking about when He had that conversation with His followers; however, I have to share the backstory of how the seed got planted in the first place.
It all began in a previous millennium. Wow! That sounds like ancient history – and it was, in one way of looking at it. Actually, it was the mid-1990s – about three decades ago. I was in the Himalayan nation of Nepal on my annual missionary trip to teach the leaders in the emerging Christian movement that had begun to explode when the king granted religious freedom in the Hindu nation which had previously not tolerated any gospel ministry and had severely persecuted anyone who would dare to “take up the cross and follow Jesus” with even the simplest expression of faith as having a Bible in his home.
When the people of the country began to insist that they wanted to join the modern world with a democratic government, the monarch accommodated them by granting a new constitution which included the provision of freedom of religion. Acting upon that new freedom, I immediately responded by organizing trips into the country to share the gospel and equip the ones who responded to the message to take roles of leadership in the Christian movement that was being birthed.
The first thing I needed was literature in the Nepali language – no small hurdle since no one was working in the country because all ministry there had been strictly forbidden; so, no one was publishing in their language since there was no way to use the materials. I contacted organization after organization asking for literature and was met with one dead end after another. To my surprise, I discovered that World Missionary Press, a gospel publishing company that was essentially in my own backyard – about thirty miles away – and with whom I had a very close friendship, was producing Nepali-language scripture portions “by the ton”!
Armed with several cases of their literature, a group of six of us set out for Kathmandu. At the customs counter in the airport, I was questioned about the cases we were transporting into the country. I explained that they were filled with literature that we intended to distribute free-of-charge to the people of the country. I then ripped open one of the boxes and started handing samples to all the customs officers. I’ve always wondered if these might have been the same men who – just months before – had arrested a friend of mine for having Bibles in his suitcase.
Once we got into the country, we found high-traffic areas and began handing out the tracts. One scene that I will always remember was being caught in the middle of a huge mob of nearly fifty cute little brown school children begging and grabbing for “one.” Durbar Square, the temple plaza and city center of Kathmandu, echoed with the chatter of these children as they all reached for our gospel tracts! In a nation where two years ago, I would have been arrested for even owning gospel literature, I was allowed to freely distribute the little Nepali versions of the gospel pamphlet Help from Above. Before long, I saw a policeman approaching. When he asked what I was doing, I explained that I was just giving away free literature. His response was to ask for the box, which I surrendered. To my amazement – rather than arresting me as he would have done a few months before – he began to assist me in handing out the pamphlets. He explained that the crowd of people who had gathered was blocking traffic and he wanted to help disperse the people so that the traffic flow could continue freely. The people eagerly reached out to receive the tracts! Their eyes and hands demonstrated a sincere hunger and a humble appreciation for our witness. Our team distributed over five thousand of these tracts during our visit, and we could have easily handed out ten times that quantity had they been available. We saw only two or three of the pamphlets discarded. Usually, the people would stop and begin to carefully read the literature as soon as they received it. Buddhist monks, Hindu sadhus, Hari Krishna devotees, the guards at the king’s palace, and even a few Americans who were in Kathmandu to study Eastern religions received our witness. As we moved throughout the city and the remote villages, we could sense a real spirit of freedom and revival in the land.
Every time I was back in Nepal, my companions and I continued to sow the seed of God’s Word into the nation’s fertile soil. On one occasion, my sister and I were riding in a rickshaw, handing out pamphlets to the pedestrians as we passed them. One little lad chased us down the street, grabbing all the tracts before anyone else had a chance to take them. Finally, we asked our driver to have the boy stop. Unfortunately – or rather, fortunately – our little Nepalese chauffeur did not understand, and he interpreted our request as a wish to turn around. Now, we had two problems: the young lad was still trailing us and we were headed the wrong way – or, at least, what seemed to us to be the wrong way! Soon, our evangelistic venture was beset with what would seem to be a third problem – my sister was beginning to have leg cramps from sitting in the tiny seat which perfectly fit two Nepalese customers but not two Americans! We tapped the driver on the shoulder and had him stop so that she could get out and walk a bit to ease her leg. That is when it happened! That is when we suddenly understood why all the unusual events were beleaguering our literature distribution. When my sister offered a copy of Help from Above to a young man standing at the bus stop where we had gotten off the rickshaw, from his lips came the most amazing response – not “Thank you,” not “Oh, I’m a Christian,” not “I’ve seen this before” – but “I know Delron Shirley.” Nothing on the tract gave my name; the only association was that it was the same material that we distribute every year on our missions to Nepal. You can’t imagine the young man’s surprise when the next person who walked up to the conversation was the other passenger from the rickshaw – me.
It was at that minute that we realized the impact that our mission was having on the hungry souls of the nation of Nepal. This young man had received a tract four years before as we were distributing literature on the streets of Kathmandu. As a young believer from Chitwan District, he had come to the capital city for a training conference and had just happened down the street as we were handing out the gospel tracts. He then followed me back to the hotel where I gave him a box of tracts to take back and share with the people in his region. Now, here we were – four years later and a couple hundred miles away from Kathmandu – when he again just happened to be where we were distributing the little gospel portions! Now he was the associate pastor in a little church with fifty-eight converts! After all those years and all those miles, he not only remembered the tract but the name of the man who shared it with him. It is moments like these that make you know that it is worth all the effort, all the money, all the time, all the prayer, and all the trouble to get the gospel to the hungry souls. To these people, the little gospel portions are not just pieces of paper; they are their lifeline to Heaven!
In divine timing – at exactly the same time that I made my first trip to Nepal – Lester Sumrall’s broadcasting network was building a shortwave radio station in the Hawaiian Islands, beaming a twenty-four-hour-per-day gospel message right into Nepal! The message for Nepal continued to bubble inside of me and I realized that this was nothing short of a God-ordained coincidence. I had to know that I was speaking into the lives of these beautiful saints every day; so, I began to raise funds to cover the airtime and to bring an interpreter from Nepal to the States where we could record programs for the half-hour daily Nepali broadcast, “The Voice of Joy,” to be aired on the new gospel giant reaching across the Pacific Ocean, over the Himalayas, and into the hearts of those humble people. Since so many Nepalese were eager to learn English, we knew that even people who weren’t interested in the gospel would tune in because the Nepali/English format would help them with their language skills. Not only did we broadcast the lessons, we also developed a correspondence follow-up program for all who responded. When the Christian leaders in Nepal began to hear the truths in the broadcast lessons, they expressed concern that the people who really needed to know these truths might never hear them because they don’t own shortwave radios or because they wouldn’t know when to listen even if they had radios. “Put this teaching into a book,” they pleaded. So, we did. And then another. And then another.
It was also about this time that I was invited to speak to the students at a small Bible college in the city of Pokhara at the base of the spectacular Annapurna peaks of the Himalaya Mountains. Before you begin to envision a classroom with whiteboards, a microphone for the teacher, and rows of desks filled with students, let me paint the true picture. It was a one-room apartment on the third floor of a tenement house with half a dozen young men sitting on the floor with ragged Bibles, pencils, and tattered notebooks. A very humble beginning of what God had planned.
The Lord prompted me with a vision of a much different school than what I witnessed in the tiny living room; so, I went back home and began to find money to buy property for a full-blown campus for the school. Meanwhile, my friends back in Nepal were diligently looking for property to show me on my next visit. By the time I was back in Nepal, I had sufficient funds to buy a piece of land in the outskirts of the city. This property came with a defunct factory with several buildings that could be renovated for use as classrooms and dormitories – if we could only get the machinery out. This project required actually tearing down one side of the main building, hauling out the machines, and rebuilding the wall. This was the first of many construction projects on the property – advancements that took place at the same time that the city itself was growing and advancing in the direction of the school’s property. One advancement was the construction of a new international airport just “down the road” from the school – a development that caused the property to escalate in value and brought constant traffic along the road which was originally an isolated rural path. This new status gave the school the chance to “cash in” on an economic opportunity by erecting a new dormitory that faces the now-busy street. The front of the building contains stalls that are rented out for shops, providing steady income to help support the school.
Now, let’s get back the story that prompted all this reminiscing about bygone years. On my first visit back to Nepal after international travel was halted due to the COVID pandemic, I visited the Bible school where I had a moment that was equally shocking as the “I know Delron Shirley” encounter at the bus stop in Chitwan. I stepped in on a group of students who were using their break time between classes to work in the library. When I walked over to them, I couldn’t believe my eyes because they all had copies of the book containing the lessons from the shortwave broadcasts – a book that I assumed had been out of print for close to thirty years! When I asked where they got the books, the director of the school told me that there were eight remaining copies in the library and that the students check them out and make handwritten copies of the lessons to take with them when they go back to their home villages or out to the ministry fields where they are called. Calculating that eighty percent (an incredibly high percentage in comparison to what I have seen in other Bible colleges) of the fifteen hundred students who have graduated from the program since those six that I met in the tiny apartment on the third floor so many years ago who are now actively involved in the ministry and have made copies of those lessons, there are approximately twelve hundred handwritten copies of those lessons still impacting lives in every corner of the nation of Nepal. That’s what Jesus was talking about when He spoke of fruit that remains!
AN AMAZING PROPHECY – AND AN EVEN MORE AMAZING FULFILLMENT
By Peggy Shirley
While vacationing in the Bahamas a few years ago, my husband and I joined a local congregation for the Sunday morning service – not expecting anything other than a good time of worship and fellowship. However, all that changed when the associate pastor stepped up to the pulpit to greet the visitors. Rather than a casual “Thank you for joining us today,” he said that he had a prophetic word for us and then proceeded to point to my husband and prophesy. Having never met my husband or me and not knowing anything about us, he began to “read our mail” by saying that my husband was a writer and that his books would be published all over the world. Then he turned to me and really shocked the both of us by saying that my book would go even farther than my husband’s books!
Well, if you have read my Women for the Harvest book, you’ll likely remember that it opens with a story of how I almost died in the faraway nation of Nepal – a nation steeped in Hinduism, mysticism, the occult, and suppression of women. Not only does the book begin in Nepal, but the whole ministry that birthed the book also began there. When my husband first visited the Himalayan kingdom in 1992, the local leaders told him that their greatest need was for someone to come help educate and liberate the women.
Beginning the next year and continuing for the next thirty years, I have made annual trips to Nepal to do just that. Today, there is a powerful army of women who have stepped forward to become leaders in the churches, aggressive soul winners, and mighty prayer warriors. Naturally, the first translation of my book was into the Nepali language.
The nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma, has also been a major focus of interest for me since the day that a young Burmese Bible college student insisted that he be allowed to enroll in my Women for the Harvest class, which was restricted to only ladies. After he graduated and returned to his home country, I visited him several times to minister in his church and hold women’s conferences. Eventually, we saw the need for making the book available in the Burmese language as well. After the pastor had a seizure and died while preaching the Sunday morning sermon, his wife heroically stepped up to fill her husband’s shoes. She readily testifies that she would never have been able to do so without the teaching and anointing she had received from the conferences and reading the book. Today, the Burmese version of Women for the Harvest is widely circulated in Myanmar, and a second translation in one of the tribal languages of the country is also available.
When I met the National Director for Every Home for Christ in Thailand, one of just a handful of women in such a high level of leadership, I knew that I had found a woman after my own heart. Before long, I was traveling with her and teaching from my book to woman all over Thailand, which she offered to translate into Thai. The next year, four thousand copies were distributed to the top pastors and Christian leaders in the nation. On the heels of the Thai translation, came a second language spoken by the tribal people in the countryside. Today, the books have been distributed throughout the nation and into neighboring Laos, where there is unprecedented growth in the churches – much of it birthed from the active roles being taken by women who have been motivated through the teaching in Women for the Harvest.
When an evangelist from Pakistan was traveling in Thailand, he ran across a copy of Women for the Harvest and contacted me, requesting permission to translate it into Urdu for distribution in his homeland. After prayer and consultation with my husband, we granted him permission and funded the project. Within months, he had finished the translation and had arranged for three thousand copies to be printed by a local printer. Unfortunately, conditions in Pakistan became so dangerous for Americans that the US Embassy had to withdraw from the country, prohibiting me from going there to hold women’s meetings and to release the book. However, local Christian women are aggressively distributing the book throughout the nation, and we are getting encouraging reports of how the women’s lives are being impacted.
Later, the Lord gave my husband and me our first open door into Europe through the nation of Hungary. When I began to go to Hungary and share with the people that it was through the ministry of a woman (Lydia in Acts 16) that the continent of Europe was opened to the gospel, the people were amazed and blessed – and the women began to be eager to take their rightful place in the Body of Christ. Before long, the women were asking for the book in their language, and a young lady stepped forward, volunteering to do the translation. The Hungarian version of Women for the Harvest was the first local European translation, but not the last! Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world, and Women for the Harvest is now available for the nations that speak this tongue – both in Europe and in Latin America.
When I heard that prophetic word that Sunday morning in the Bahamas, I could never have imagined that anything like this would ever happen with the words I wrote on those yellow legal pads at my kitchen table. Little could I have ever imagined that a young Filipina girl living in England would get hold of the book and transfer to college in the US just to sit in my class at Charis Bible College and, after graduation, would return to her homeland of the Philippines and translate the book for her native people. But God has done it – and is still making it happen!
WEEPING ENDURES FOR THE NIGHT
By Delron Shirley
Two months before our scheduled departure for the trip to Nepal in which I discovered those Bible college students studying from my thirty-year-old books, the shocking headlines reported a tragic airplane crash near the city where the Bible college is located. All seventy-two people aboard were killed and incinerated – many beyond recognition, requiring DNA testing to identify the bodies. As soon as I heard the startling news, I contacted our friends in Nepal to see if anyone we knew was included among the victims. It turned out that no one aboard was a personal acquaintance; however, there were three members from one of the churches in Pokhara who had lost their lives. With a deep sorrow in my heart, I asked the pastor who was coordinating my visit to the city to see if he could arrange for me to meet with the families who were left behind by the tragedy. It was a very somber moment when I was ushered into the room where they were waiting for me. I spent some time sharing the love of God and praying with them and gave each family a few thousand rupees as a token of our support. It was only in this meeting that I learned the full impact of the loss. I discovered that the men were elders and deacons at their church and that they were returning from India where they had attended the funeral of their pastor who had just died of cancer. What a tragic loss for the church – a pastor, two elders, and a deacon, all taken out of their positions so suddenly!
But this was not the only sad moment we encountered during this visit. We had two other meetings with families of top national leaders who had died since our last visit. One of our dearest friends in Nepal, the senior-most pastor in the country who had actually pioneered the evangelization of the country more than fifty years ago, when the nation was a totally Hindu kingdom and Christianity was forcibly forbidden, had died of COVID during the pandemic. But, compounding that loss, his son – who had stepped into his father’s position of nation-wide leadership as the father had aged – was also a victim of the pandemic, with the two deaths separated by just two days! Another one of our closest companions in the nation who always stuck to us “like white on rice” during every visit in the country – taking care of all our travel arrangements, introducing us to new frontiers in the country, and interpreting our messages – had died just a couple months earlier. The loss of these three men in the top leadership of the nation has left a tremendous void in the Body of Christ – an exponential example of the loss in the church in Pokhara. But I was soon to discover that the void was much greater than I could have ever imagined. The pandemic had taken a devastating toll upon the Body of Christ with the deaths of nearly one hundred and fifty pastors and other men and women in leadership positions.
Yes, this is cause for weeping – but such weeping and sorrow can only endure for the night because joy is destined to come in the morning! (Psalm 30:5) In those eager Bible college students who were studying my thirty-year-old books, I saw the bright hope of future leaders rising up to take the places of the fallen heroes of the faith in Nepal! And, that potential is greater than we can accommodate at the moment. The director of the Bible college confided in me that he has to turn away quality applicants every year due to lack of housing. When I heard that, I asked why we weren’t able to build a second level on the existing dormitory building, providing not only more dormitory rooms but also more street-front shops to provide outside income for the school.
Later that day, I met with the board of directors of the school and suggested the expansion idea to them. Their response was that it would take only a minimal investment of about $20,000 to expand the building to house a dozen more students and provide space for four more shops.
LEMONS AND LEMONADE
By Delron Shirley
The pastor who coordinated all the details for our visit to Nepal is a living example of how resourceful the Nepalese people can be. His church was meeting in a rented facility but had a vision of owning their own building; so, they purchased a plot of land in a developing area on the outskirts of the city. For a couple of years, they worked hard to pay off the loan they had taken out to make the land purchase – which they finalized just before the pandemic. When the government shut down all public meetings, they found themselves paying rent for a building that they were not using; however, they were unable to move out of the rented hall because they had nowhere to store all their chairs, sound system, and other items. So, they decided to move ahead with the construction on their property. Since they had very little money in the bank after having paid off the loan on their property, they came up with the brilliant idea of hiring only a handful of skilled workers to oversee the project while all the congregation members volunteered their time to do the “grunt work” under the supervision of the hired craftsmen. Since all the people were out of work due to the shutdown, they willingly came to help and volunteered their time in exchange of a simple meal of dal bhat (rice and lentils) at the end of the workday. With over five hundred workers on the project, a beautiful new sanctuary, classrooms, and church offices were completed in almost no time. Another blessing that came from the pandemic was that many members of the congregation moved away from the city when they lost their jobs and returned to their villages where they could work on their family farms. As these believers spread across the countryside, they planted nine new extension churches from the mother congregation.
When I heard this testimony, I felt a deep tug on my heart that this spirit of “turning lemons into lemonade” is the backbone of the Nepali church – the same attitude of resilience that can take a thirty-year-old book and turn it into a handwritten document that can become the foundation for ministry in far-flung villages from
the Himalayan peaks to the plains on the Indian border. The believers in Nepal are able to take every situation that they are handed and find the advantage – rather than the challenge – in it and make something constructive out of it. It is this kind of resourcefulness that inspires me to offer whatever assistance I can offer to help them further the gospel in their country.
THE BIRTH OF A VISION
By Delron Shirley
The moment that I saw those Nepalese students studying my thirty-year-old books, I knew that it was a confirmation of something that I had been thinking and praying about – starting church-based libraries around the world for the books that Peggy and I have written. The idea had come to me the week before we left for the mission to Nepal when I read that a good friend of mine in India had initiated a similar program of placing books by Andrew Wommack in churches throughout his nation. The purpose of the project is to make valuable faith-building and discipling materials available to individuals who cannot afford to purchase them.
When I heard of this approach, I immediately envisioned the same thing happening with our books that have been translated into other languages in addition to the English books which can be read by an ever-increasing number of believers around the world. At this point, we have books in eleven foreign languages – a total of thirty-one translations of eleven different books. The idea is that each library would contain three copies of each title in the local language plus a small section of English books – a decision that was confirmed when a couple of Nepalese girls asked if I had English copies of the book that I had just given them in Nepali. They explained that, even though their native language is Nepali, they prefer to read the original English version because some concepts cannot be adequately communicated in translated versions. In addition to the copies that are to be circulated through the library, Teach All Nations will also provide the church that hosts the library with extra copies which they can sell if readers say that they prefer to have their own personal copies and to replace any lost or damaged books.
Our present estimate (based on $10 per book and $100 for the display case) to set up a library using books that are already translated is that it will cost $1,300 (ten titles with three English copies and three books in the local language to loan out and three each of the local language and English versions for sale and back-up), plus $100 to ship it to the foreign location. However, we envision that this is only the initial stage of the project. It is our desire to translate more and more of the books into more and more languages. Although translating and printing costs vary widely depending upon the local economies and the number of pages in the book, on average, it costs about $2,000 per book for printing if we print in quantities of three hundred or more. If we have to pay a professional translator, the cost can skyrocket to thousands of dollars per book; however, when I asked one young Nepalese man who does professional translation work what he would charge to help me with my books, he responded, “For you, nothing!” In addition, when Peggy was sharing with one of the ladies about her latest book, the lady interrupted the conversation and asked if Peggy would allow her to translate it for the Nepalese women. In situations where we have volunteers doing the translation work, we usually give them a token gift of $500.
My entire trip to Nepal was one pitcher of lemonade after another – all squeezed from the lemons of the pandemic, the plane crash, and the lack of good training materials. And each experience simply added “fuel on the fire” that has always been the motivation behind Teach All Nations – to raise up a new generation of leaders within the Body of Christ.
Won’t you join hands with me to bring this vision to full birth? Your one-time gift or monthly pledge for the remainder of this year (May through December) can help make it happen:
$2,500 ($312 per month) can build a storefront at the college
$1,666 ($208 per month) can build a new dorm room
$833 ($104 per month) can house one Bible college student
$2,500 ($312 per month) can translate and print a book
$1,400 ($175 per month) can provide a library for a local church
Books Available in Foreign Languages
Burmese
Finally, My Brethren
Women for the Harvest
Chin
Women for the Harvest
Filipino
Women for the Harvest
So, You Wanna Be A Preacher
French
Finally, My Brethren
Women for the Harvest
Pulling Down Strongholds
So, You Wanna Be A Preacher
Hungarian
Women for the Harvest
Nepali
Maximum Impact
Finally, My Brethren
Women for the Harvest
Israel – Key to Human Destiny
Portuguese
Finally, My Brethren
Women for the Harvest
Seventh Man at the Well
Spanish
Maximum Impact
Finally, My Brethren
Women for the Harvest
Seventh Man at the Well
Swahili
Maximum Impact
Finally, My Brethren
Daily Bible Studies – Psalms
So, You Wanna Be A Preacher
Daily Bible Studies – New Testament
Tamil
Maximum Impact (Abridged Version)
Urdu
No Longer Bound
Maximum Impact
Women for the Harvest
People Who Make a Difference
Delron in Topi
Delron Praying for College Students
