It’s now the third time I’m calling you!
Timothy Tshewang - known as Tim - is a real Bhutanese that has been working with AsiaLink for years. When my wife and I visited Bhutan in the summer of 2019, we got a couple of hours with him after we had finished our youth conference. The plan was actually to talk with him about the development in the mission work, but suddenly I came to ask if Tim himself grew up in a Christian family. When the answer was no, I got curious, and once again I got to know one of the amazing ways God uses to find and win a person.
Tim grew up in a Buddhistic home, as most Bhutanese do. As growing up, he was a serious active Buddhist. He had a room in his house that was full of religious things. He got up early every morning and started the day with prayer as well as reading from the Sanskrit-scripture, burning incense and sacrificing seven bowls of water to Buddha, as the rituals requires. After that, he married Sawatri, and they gave birth to a son first, and then a daughter. Tim had a good job in connection with the UN, and his income was very good compared to the normal income in the country which was around 100 USD per month.
When Tim was 35 years old, he went to visit some relatives. This was in 1992, and on the way back he suddenly got ill while driving his scooter. He and the person he was with, as well as the scooter went off the road. Tim woke up in the hospital around midnight, and called his wife to explain what had happened. Thanks to the helmet, his head was not injured. His left arm on the other hand was badly injured, and so painful that he couldn’t move it. The doctor claimed that nothing was wrong with him, but his hand was still in pain, and not moving.
When Tim came back home from the hospital, he contacted a Buddhist priest. The message he received from the priest was both brutal and frightening: «Someone has cursed you with an evil spirit to kill you. You are going to die within a week.» Tim found it strange and unfair that he as a righteous Buddhist and father of young children should die because of someone else’s evil doings. One of his sisters-in-law was a Christian. She offered to come and pray for him, but he had a very anti-Christian attitude, so he said no. His sister-in-law, however, sent some other Christians to him a couple of days later, and they asked politely if they could pray for him. Tim accepted it, and said that if he got healed by the name of Jesus, he would believe in him. The Christians anointed him with oil, and prayed over him in Jesus’ Name. After an hour, his hand was completely mobile, and all the pain was gone.
Tim was very happy and convinced that Jesus is the one and only true God. He converted immediately to the Christian faith with his whole family. «It wasn’t hard to let go of the Buddhism, because I saw this with my own eyes» says Tim smiling. The newly saved family joined a Christian fellowship in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. In the same year, Tim received a prophecy that God was calling him to serve in His kingdom. Tim didn’t know the first thing about prophecy, so he didn’t think of that any more. In a prayer meeting some years later, in June 1995, he received the same message «The Lord is calling you to serve him». It didn’t affect Tim much this time neither. Three years later - in 1998 - he got the same message for the third time through prophetic words. This happened in a meeting in Denmark. Tim tells us that he can remember this as if it happened yesterday. He was sitting almost all the way back in the room, when the preacher suddenly said: «you down there by the door in the red t-shirt: The Lord is saying to you that it’s now the third time I’m calling you to serve me!» Tim can never forget those words. When he came back home to Bhutan he quit his job in the UN, and started to serve the Lord. He says «I had to obey the calling.» It was not an easy decision with a good and well paid job and with a family to provide for, but he tells us: «My wife and I prayed and fasted for three days and during that period the Lord spoke to us through our six year old daughter and told us not to worry.»
When they started their own Christian fellowship in January 1999, it was the first church ever to be planted by ethnic Bhutanese. They started up with Tim’s family as well as two more that wanted to join in, totally six people. This was a buss year. Tim and the two brothers, one from Sikkim, and one from Bhutan, walked around the whole city knocking doors, and sharing the gospel with everyone they knew. During the first six months, 12 people had accepted the Lord, and the church grew to a total of 18 members. «This was our first harvest for the Lord» says Tim. All of them were Bhutanese, some Buddhists, and some Hindus. Most of them came to faith because of healings, and they met Tim’s home.
«Things went well, we kept evangelizing, and the congregation kept growing. After one year the three of us agreed to expand the work. We split up, one went to Drongsa in central Bhutan and one went to Phundsholing in the south. Since then the work has kept expanding, and the three of us are together founders of Bhutan Bethel Ministries. Today this network has 13 congregations and each congregation has an average of 50 members. We are the only congregation that has a proper church building, a house that AsiaLink has helped us to build. The rest of the congregations are using their homes, in our church we are now 150 members. We have our sermon every Sunday at 10AM» Tim shares with us with a smile.
AsiaLink supports three evangelists in Bhutan Bethel Ministries. Two of them are in Thimphu, and one is in the east of Bhutan. Tim says that they are doing a very good job; one of them is also working as a pastor to be able to take care of other tasks in the church as well. His congregation is now counting around 30 former Buddhists, and all of them have accepted the Lord within the past two years. Jesus is great!
