Olive Branch Church · Essay Competition
2005 · 38 Entries · Prize: NPR 1,50,000 · Winner: Sunita Gurung
In the church's fourth year, the 2005 essay competition invited writers to reflect on the quiet, daily call to serve faithfully in the place God has put them. The theme — "Grow Where You Are Planted" — was a response to a growing pattern the church observed: young people leaving Pokhara for Kathmandu or abroad in search of purpose, when purpose was often already waiting for them at home.
The competition received 38 entries — a modest but meaningful number for a young church. Writers came from Pokhara-9 and surrounding wards. The judging panel of four included two church elders and two local educators.
The call to serve faithfully in one's own community — neighbourhood, family, school, and street — as an expression of a rooted, grounded faith.
Writers were encouraged to draw from personal experience or observation, and to reflect on what it means to bloom not elsewhere, but here.
Word limit: 600 – 1,800 words · Language: English or Nepali
All submissions are reviewed by a panel of church elders and community educators. Entries are scored across four areas:
Sunita Gurung, aged 20, was a student in Pokhara and a longtime volunteer with the church's food pantry. Her winning essay described her decision to decline a study opportunity in Kathmandu to remain in Pokhara-9 and care for her ailing grandmother — framing that choice not as sacrifice but as the most direct path to the life she felt called to live. The judging panel praised the essay for its honesty and its quiet insistence that ordinary faithfulness, lived close to home, is as worthy as any grand ambition.