There's a particular kind of homesickness that sets in around late evening, after the work day is done and the apartment is quiet. The light outside is wrong. The sounds are wrong. You think about aafnai manche — your own people — and feel the distance.
If you've felt this, you're in good company. Most of us at GHNC have felt it.
I've been thinking lately about what it means to be Nepali and Christian, far from home. About what scripture has to say to those of us building new lives in a city that isn't where our families are.
The Bible is full of diaspora stories
This may surprise you, but the Bible is, in many ways, a book about people far from home.
Abraham left his country to follow God's call into the unknown. Joseph was sold into Egypt as a teenager and spent his life there. The people of Israel spent seventy years in Babylon, learning how to keep their faith alive in a foreign place. Daniel rose to leadership in a culture that wasn't his — while staying faithful to the God of his ancestors. Even Jesus' early life was spent as a refugee in Egypt.
And the New Testament is largely written to diaspora communities — small Christian groups scattered across the Roman Empire, far from where they started, trying to figure out how to live as people of faith in cities that didn't share their values.
To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces... who have been chosen. 1 Peter 1:1–2
This is how the apostle Peter addresses the Christians of his day — as exiles. People away from home. Sound familiar?
Here's what's beautiful: scripture doesn't treat being far from home as a problem to solve. It treats it as a place where God meets us, shapes us, and uses us.
Faith feels different in a new city
I want to acknowledge something honestly: practicing faith in Bangalore is not the same as practicing faith in your hometown.
In Nepal, faith might have been wrapped up in family rhythms — the people you went to church with, the songs you sang, the language of prayer in your home. Here, you have to choose faith more deliberately. There's no automatic Sunday morning. No grandmother reminding you. No community that just happens.
This can feel like loss. But it can also become something deeper.
When faith is something you choose — week after week, in a city where it's not assumed — it grows roots. You stop inheriting it and start owning it. The faith that survives the diaspora is often a stronger, clearer, more personal faith than the one you left with.
I see this every Sunday at GHNC. People who come not because their family expects it, but because they have decided that following Jesus matters more than convenience. That's a powerful kind of faith.
Why GHNC exists
This is, in some ways, why our church exists. We started GHNC because the Nepali community in Bangalore deserved a place where:
- You could worship in your heart language, not someone else's.
- You could pray to God using the words your mother used.
- You could find aafnai manche — your own people — at the end of a long workweek.
- You could take off the mask you wear in your professional or academic world and just be yourself.
Sunday at GHNC is, in some ways, a little piece of home — but built around something even bigger than home. Built around Jesus. Around the family of believers we are now part of, regardless of where any of us was born.
Scripture for the homesick
If you're feeling the ache of distance this week, here are a few passages I'd point you to. Read them slowly:
Hebrews 11:13–16 — On the believers of old who lived as "strangers and exiles on the earth," looking forward to a homeland.
Psalm 137 — A raw, honest song written by exiles in Babylon, missing home.
Jeremiah 29:4–7 — God's instructions to his people in exile: build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the city you're in. Translation: this place where you are now is not a waiting room. It's where God has called you, for now, for a purpose.
Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you... Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Jeremiah 29:7
Bangalore is not just where we are
I want to leave you with this thought.
For many of us, Bangalore was never the plan. It was the city we ended up in — for work, for school, for life. We came thinking we'd stay a little while.
But God doesn't waste our places. Wherever you are right now, however temporary it feels, this city is part of your story. The people you've met here. The community you're building. The ways you're being shaped by living in a culture that isn't fully yours. All of it is forming you into who you are becoming.
And our church — our small Nepali community in this enormous city — is part of how God is doing that work. We're family for one another. We're aafnai manche in a city of strangers.
If you're new in Bangalore, or if you've been here for years and the homesickness still finds you on quiet evenings — come on Sunday. There's a seat for you. There's a meal afterward. There's a community of people who understand exactly what you're feeling, because we've felt it too.
You are not alone. And you are exactly where God means you to be — for now, for this season, for his purposes.
तपाईंलाई स्वागत छ।