“God was preparing me, preparing our people group to receive Christ especially with this understanding of rituals we have,” Tamang says.

By: Caroline Anderson

SOUTH ASIA–As a child and young adult, Anil Tamang* watched his relatives slaughter goats as part of yearly Tibetan Buddhist rituals. His family believed the blood of the goats protected them and appeased the spirits.

When he first heard about the Gospel, he saw many parallels with his childhood rituals and with the Jewish Passover.

He realized that he didn’t need to sacrifice every year any more. “When I heard of Christ, I heard his sacrifice is once and for all,” Tamang says.

Christ’s sacrifice changed his entire perspective. “God was preparing me, preparing our people group to receive Christ especially with this understanding of rituals we have,” Tamang says.

Tamang was the first to believe in his now-Christian family, and he recently received theological training. His vision is to see a church planted in every village of his people group, who emigrated from Tibet to Nepal and Bhutan.

This past year, Tamang trained 300 people outside of the country and hopes to continue his work within Bhutan. He plans to establish a theological training center to equip existing leaders to take the Gospel to their villages.

According to Tamang, a great need for basic hermeneutics exists among the Bhutanese. Interpreting the Bible out of context is a main problem; believers who thought they were acting in accordance to Scripture recently beat a woman to death for denying Christ.

In addition to strengthening the existing church, Tamang also shares the Gospel with his friends and neighbors who have yet to hear of the sacrifice Jesus made.

Going door-to-door and public sharing are illegal in Bhutan. “Here in our country, our way of sharing is our life itself,” Tamang explains.

So Tamang first develops friendships with the parents at his son’s school. Tamang invited one of the parents to his house for prayer and a meal, where they sat in view of a poster that reads, “Christ is the head of this household.”

News of Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice will spread from person to person when people like Tamang pray. “I am praying for the people here, especially for my king and the authorities and the whole nation, and then I am also praying for the church – for the growth, spiritual and numerical growth of the church.”

One day, he prays, his entire people group will stop their sacrifices and accept Christ’s.

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*name changed