Olive Branch Church · Essay Competition
2018 · 92 Entries · Prize: NPR 3,00,000 · Winner: Pradeep Limbu
The 2018 competition was shaped directly by a milestone in the church's history: the commissioning of our first international mission team, 22 volunteers travelling to India in July of that year. The theme — "Beyond Our Walls" — invited writers to explore how faith compels service not only within the familiar, but across borders, cultures, and comfort zones.
The competition drew 92 entries — the largest response to date — from students, young professionals, and community volunteers across Pokhara and surrounding districts. First-time entrants from outside the congregation made up nearly a third of submissions. The judging panel of six included a returned mission team member and a guest educator from Kaski district.
How faith calls us to serve beyond the borders we know — beyond our neighbourhood, our language, our comfort — and what we carry back with us when we return.
Writers were encouraged to approach the theme through personal narrative, theological reflection, or a combination of both. Essays could address international service, cross-cultural encounter, or simply the act of stepping outside one's familiar community into the unknown.
Word limit: 800 – 2,500 words · Language: English, Nepali, or bilingual
All submissions are reviewed by a panel of church elders, educators, and community representatives. Entries are scored across four weighted criteria:
Pradeep Limbu, aged 23, was working as a community health volunteer in a remote area of Gandaki Province at the time of submission. His essay, "The Road Back Is Different," described a month he spent volunteering in a hill village far from his home in Pokhara — not as a grand adventure, but as a slow, often uncomfortable education in how little he knew about lives lived twenty kilometres away. The judges praised the essay for its refusal to sentimentalise the experience and for the clarity with which it described how crossing that distance had changed the way Pradeep saw his own neighbourhood when he returned.