By Calvin Smothers
In Nepal everyone is related to you. You are not greeted by your name alone but also by a person’s relationship to you. You are called sister, brother, uncle, auntie, mother or father. To the elderly ladies at Prem Ghar, I am Calvin Bhai (“younger brother”). To the young girls at Karuna Ghar, I am Calvin Uncle (except when I wear a dhoti, a skirt for men, and then the girls refer to me as Calvin Auntie).
Are our relationships different when we look at everyone as family?
The other day I passed a beautiful older lady who was sitting at the steps of a temple and asking for money. I said, “I don’t have any money to give you, Mother.”
Then I remembered my own mother. Would I say that to my mother? Of course not! I would never pass my mother on the steps of a temple and not help her. I would give my all to her and not think twice. Yet, when this woman whom I call “Mother” asks me to help, I find myself frozen and saying I can’t give her anything.
“When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:26-27).
Calvin is the Servant Team Coordinator in Nepal. Calvin loves zipping through traffic on his bicycle in Kathmandu and the beauty of the Himalayas.