Story of Love (Maya)

One day someone noticed a helpless, unloved and filthy little girl sitting alone on the dirt road. He reached out and took her hand, leading her to his home where he cleaned, fed and properly clothed her. He loved the little girl so much that he decided to let her stay and adopted her as his own daughter. She not only had a new home and good food, but she also had all the rights and privileges as his heir and soon forgot her past life on the unforgiving streets. Can anyone guess who that Someone was? Yes, God. And the little girl is Israel, the church, His Beloved. This is the story of love:

It was an early Thursday afternoon when I was sitting in the courtyard with nothing to do, and frankly felt like doing nothing. 1:00 rolled around and a bunch of people were heading out to a house fellowship. It's the one I normally also attend, but didn't feel like going on this particular day. Finally after lots of urging from a few different people, I went. We bussed there on those crazy Nepali metal pieces of junk, had a good devotion time with a group of about 15 others from the church, were given lovely Nepali tea at the end, and then headed out to catch our bus home.

This particular day was also the day before their Nepali 'holi'- day, which is a day where everyone (mostly kids and teens) fills up water balloons with water and red dye and throw them at passersby. But on this day (before the actual 'holi'-day), they merely prepared you for the bombardment coming the next day and only threw water balloons at you. So, we just finished fellowship and exited out the back. All together there were Karina, Hari, a gal from one of the villages and me (Alana). We had the choice of either taking the bus back or walking through the twisted paths and past countless houses of potential battle zones. Karina and I expressed that we were not afraid of getting hit by (or rather dodging) balloons. So, Hari finally gave in and started leading us back. We came to a fork in the road and Hari said, "Ok, we can choose to go the long way with less balloons or the shorter way with many homes." The vote was still undecided after a couple minutes of standing there. So I said, "Let's ask God," and I spun in a circle and pointed to a path, so we went down it.

We passed through many zones of activity always on the alert for a balloon attack. Soon we came to another fork in the road. This time Karina chose the one that promised less of a threat to us and which led down a quiet alleyway.

We didn't walk for very long, before coming to a small little shop on the side of the path. Wandering along by the side of the dirt road not too far from the shop was a tiny baby puppy. The sight of it made me stop dead in my tracks. She was wandering frantically around looking for something to eat and she was no bigger than both of my hands put together. I turned to Hari and said, "Can I take her? We can't leave her here to die like all the other stray puppies in Kathmandu!" Hari looked at me and said, "Really? Are you sure?" Of course I was sure! How could anyone leave such a helpless yet adorable puppy all alone to fend for itself on the street! So Hari asked the woman in the shop if we could take it. Since the streets contain not only homeless boys but also dogs, she said it didn't belong to her. So we took the puppy home.

There we washed and cleaned her up, as she was dirty and full of lice and ticks. I had to feed her milk with an eye dropper. Then Anup, Pastor Shyem's son-in-law, proposed the name 'Maya' - the Nepali word for love. So that's how she got her name. And that's how we got our dog.