About the Inductive Bible Study Institute from Nepal
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At the moment I and my daughter, Tica, are in Nepal, where we came to the Inductive Bible Study Institute from this country to teach the session The History of the people of Israel and the book Joshua from the Bible. On our way to Nepal, we met my teachers and mentors, Mia and Costel Oglice in Moscow, and all of us had to continue our way to Nepal, but brother Costel Oglice turned very sick and he and his wife, sister Mia Oglice, had to remain in Doha, Qatar at the hospital. At the moment he is still in the hospital, having severe abdominal pain. We talk to him and we continue to pray for the healing of our brother Costel, and yesterday all the servants of the Gospel from Eurasia fasted for the healing of our dear teacher. Let us continue pray for this.
How did the Inductive Bible Study Institute from Nepal begin?
In 2003 the pastor of the church “Sarra” from Kathmandu, Tej Bahadur Rokka, studied an intensive course at “Haggai Institute” – an International Institute that trains Christian Leaders. There he met Richard Courthey, a Christian leader from Jamaica, who told him about the special effect of the inductive Bible study to make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and he gave him the address of a teacher at the Bethel college from Indiana, USA. Tej Rokka called that teacher and invited him to give a training of inductive Bible study in Nepal. That teacher, being a friend of Mia and Costel Oglice, called them and told them that they were the best persons to give that training and he sent them Tej’s request. Right then, I came to a country from South Asia to give the priests an intensive training of Bible according to the inductive method. Then, my leaders and teachers, Mia and Costel Oglice trusted me to come to Nepal to teach a seminar of inductive Bible study in the church where Tej Bahadur Rokka was a pastor. When I arrived to Nepal, Tej met me at the Airport and he asked me about our ministry. After I told him about the institutes that we have in Eurasia and about the effect these institutes brought in the Gospel, Tej, asked me to begin such an institute even in that evening. His request surprised me, because he hadn’t even known what inductive Bible study method was and I told him that I was not sure how quickly we could do that, because there were other 21 cities from different countries were we had been invited to open institutes of inductive Bible study. I had only the book of Titus with me in English, the only one I brought with me for the seminar. In that evening, Tej took the book and he translated the first lesson in Nepali until morning and Xeroxed it so that every participant might have a copy. The second day there were a lot of men and women from Kathmandu and other localities from the country who came at the seminar. I was moved by the passion all those persons had to study the Holy Scriptures. Tej was translating for me the whole day, and in the evening he was translating the next lesson, and so, to the end of the seminar, the book was translated in Nepali. After this, Tej insisted to open the institute, so in the autumn of the same year, 50 students came to the first session.
How the pastor Tej Bahadur Rokka became a Christian?
Tej’s parents were Hindoos and they lived in Okhaldhunga, that was close to Everest Mountain. When Tej was only 7 years, his mother was possessed by an evil spirit and no doctor could heal her, so she died in her early thirties, when she gave to Tej’s sister, who lived only 14 days and then died, because there was no one to take care of her. His father didn’t know and was not able to take care of her, because he had Tej and his brother, Karna who was only 2 years old. The father took the children and for a year he began to go from place to place to look for possibilities to get a job and provide for his family. He didn’t manage that and all of them lived very bad and they were poor. In a day someone came to them and advised their father to give his children to the orphanage. The father did not know that the orphanage was a Christian one, because Christianity was prohibited in Nepal and every preaching of the Gospel was punished by law. There, at the orphanage, the Christian workers used to come together into a room, to pray. Once, Karna, Tej’s brother took very sick and there was no doctor or hospital close to the orphanage. One of the workers came to Tej and told him that if he believed in the Lord Jesus and asked him for healing, his brother would be healed. Tej believed, prayed and he was greatly surprised when Jesus Christ healed his brother, Karna, very quickly. Some time passed and a new teacher came to the orphanage, Sundar Thappa, who was trained at the biblical school from South Korea. He began to teach them the Word of God. After Tej graduated the school, he came to Kathmandu, where he firstly went to a training organized by “Gospel for Asia” mission, and then he studied for 4 years at the Theological Seminary from India. At the same time, he planted the church “Sarra”.
The impact of the Inductive Bible Study Institute on spreading the Gospel in Nepal
Since Tej and other leaders began to teach the Bible using the inductive method, people from the church grew in the knowledge of God, and the church was growing very quickly. From a session to the next one about 50 Hindoos come to Christ and are baptized only in “Sarra” church, where the sessions take place and this year, from January to August, there were 2 baptisms in the church, where 95 men and women, who used to live in idolatry were baptized. Another result of the institute work is the planting of 12 churches in different localities from Nepal. In the city Ilam, 22 men and women have been recently baptized. Tej told me that he saw some other courses of Bible study, but those who are taught at the Inductive Bible Institute are special, because they are very deep, practical and they assure a continuity. Each person can study beginning with simple and moving to deeper things.
Translated by Felicia Djugostran
