Laymen Ministries has been working in Nepal since the year 2000. We have trained 100s of youth, held evangelistic and children’s meetings plus health seminars.

Laymen Ministries started working in Nepal in 2000, with our fund-raising beginning in 1999 preparatory to sending missionaries there full time. Our first missionaries to Nepal, where Joel and Joyce Meyer, who worked in the capital city of Kathmandu. Their main focus was sharing informative health talks, learning the language, and overseeing the translation of Nepali literature. As the work grew, these missionaries were joined by other workers, both Nepali national and foreign.

In 2001, Laymen Ministries held the largest health convention in the history of Nepal at the convention center in Kathmandu. It was called The Health Expo and was even televised on National TV. People from many organizations around the world participated in connection with the Nepali School of Medicine. Our guest speaker to the packed crowd each evening was Dr. Pandy, who was the personal physician to the King of Nepal, along with Dr. Tara Amatya of the Hardic Fitness Center.

Right after the convention, Dr. Pandy invited Jeff Reich and team to attend a private and historic meeting where he was celebrating the birthdate of his health organization in Nepal. This was attended by the King and Queen of Nepal. It was am amazing experience for us all as we sat in the small auditorium watching the event and then later mingled at the reception and ate food together. Sadly, a few weeks later, the King and Queen of Nepal and many other members of the Royal family were assassinated. Maoist Communist insurgents are blamed for the assassination.

In the weeks that followed the assassination, the country was turned upside down by internal turmoil caused by the rise of Maoist insurgents. Because of the political unrest throughout the country, we quickly pulled our workers out of Nepal. Some came back to the United States, and one of our workers stayed, whose identity cannot be publicized for safety reasons, moving to India to open a Lifestyle Education Center in connection with Laymen Ministries. The focus of this center is threefold: 1) A seminary program for lay workers to ground them in Bible truth and teach them effective methods of outreach; 2) Health education with an emphasis on preventing and reversing lifestyle diseases along with training in simple remedies and how to apply them; 3) A women’s program consisting of education in ministry and marketable job skills.

With political activity and policies shifting and changing continually in both India and Nepal, we recently moved our school from North India back to Nepal. Our Lifestyle Education Center serves mostly Nepali-speaking people from Nepal, North India, and surrounding countries. Over the last several years, hundreds of students have come for various periods of training. This is the only training facility for Adventist lay workers in Nepal. Graduates of our training center return to their home regions to be lay pastors and leaders in building up church congregations and helping the local villagers to learn how to live healthier lives. Promising graduates are sponsored by Laymen Ministries, but also contribute to their own livelihood by selling Christian literature and through skills such as tailoring, holding literacy classes, and selling produce they raise and harvest. We hold women's courses designed to educate and give young women better life opportunities and skills for evangelism, and men's courses to help young men be more effective leaders and workers for Christ.

Laymen Ministries has printed literature for Nepal and North India for many years. Children's books, pamphlets on health as well as books such as Christ’s Object Lessons and Steps to Christ, Passion of Love, Darkness Before Dawn, Studying Together, and Amazing Facts Storacles Bible lessons. We are currently getting ready to print The Great Controversy in three volumes. We produced the book, Steps to Christ, in audio format in the Nepali language on CD and MP3 files.

Please pray for our workers in Nepal as they go to the most remote villages. Many lives are touched through our village meetings, health outreach, and children's meetings. Going into these remote areas in the Himalayan mountains, one sees so much ignorance due to a lack of education. Our goal is to bring the Light of understanding to these people in many ways. First and foremost, they need to meet Jesus and find a relationship with Him, and learn of Him through the Bible and studying together. They also need to learn basic hygiene and health principles to promote healthy bodies and minds that can think clearly. For example, we have watched villagers wash their dishes in the mud along a pathway where people were brushing their teeth, spitting, and small children and animals were defecating. Our students and health educators share simple principles that prevent and reverse sickness and disease. To most of us, these things may seem just plain common sense — but we have been educated in these principles for generations. We appreciate your help in sharing this knowledge where it has never gone before.