We’re in and soon we’ll be out. And once we’re out, we’re heading back to America. Weird.
So what have I been doing in this amazing country? Glad you asked:
Elementary School
We went to a Christian elementary school that took about an hour and a half to get to via three buses and plenty of walking. Once we showed up we spilt up our two teams and our team walked up like 6 flights of stairs to the roof. We had the older kids. They had uniforms similar to the one I wore at New Life Academy for junior high. We pulled out the missionary classic: Father Abraham, which I would say is the Christian equivalent of the hokey pokey. Then we pulled out our “go-to” which is the chair skit. Almost everyone seems to love it and all you need is a chair. You tell the audience to pretend the chair has a “do not touch” sign on it and then one by one we all go over and touch it and become stuck to it until the Christian, complete with a Bible (you can always tell they’re a Christian if they have a Bible in these skits, or a robe…), prays over each person and they become unstuck. We have done this all over the world and it is generally a hit, but I must say this group, and the last time we did it in Tanzania, were the biggest hits. The children were rolling on the floor laughing, literally. And I don’t say “literally” unless I mean it (for real, I learned this was a pet peeve of mine on the World Race, oh the things I have learned this year). The point of the skit is that the chair represents sin and you are able to experience freedom from sin through Jesus Christ. We caused such a commotion that the classroom across the hall invited us over to do it and we got even more of a reaction out of them. This was the first group I have ever had that has yelled out “Don’t touch it!” and then as the children walked out at the end a couple brave ones put out a finger and touched the chair and were relieved to find they did not get stuck. After that, we headed back down the stairs and trekked back. Three hours of travel for a half hour of ministry? Worth it.
Life Challenge
Teen Challenge, the amazing faith-based rehab center for teens and adults struggling with addictions of many kinds, is all over the world. I was blessed to be able to work with them in El Salvador and would love to volunteer in the Minneapolis location upon my return. Well, apparently, there are some inter-denominational conflicts here and so instead of being tagged to the denomination of Teen Challenge, they branched out and opened Life Challenge which is the same program with a new name. Similar to the location in El Salvador (and I found out from Christina, my team leader, to the location in Cambodia where she worked for the month of April) this location was only for men. I was blessed to be able to share my testimony. I hope it made some impact because the guys didn’t seem too responsive. However, I trust that God will use my words in a way to help others and bring Him glory. We also did the chair skit, I thought it would be a hit throughout India. I was wrong. We maybe got a couple of chuckles but we were still able to share the message afterwards. I have such a heart for Teen Challenge and I pray that I will be able to be involved with them somehow in the future, even if it is only through donating.
College Campus
We went to a Catholic college campus that isn’t too far from where we’re staying and were told to just invite the students to a cell group that happens every Saturday. What we didn’t know at the time was that the cell group is just a time for college students to get together and hang out and that it wasn’t necessarily focused on being a Christian group. That would have been helpful to know beforehand, and made our interactions a little less uncomfortable. We were informed that the school was primarily Indian but there were also a lot of Africans, oh and no white people. We stood out a little. Especially because I was wearing the Punjabi suit that we had to buy for ministry this month and everyone else on campus dressed like Americans.
It was strange running into the Africans and feeling an odd sense of familiarity with them, being that we just came from Africa. We mostly met guys from Congo and the Ivory Coast and we mostly met the Africans on the basketball court. I’m not kidding, they told us that whenever they come to the court it is usually just Africans there. I wonder if I will feel an odd sense of familiarity with people from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and India when I return home? Or maybe I will just feel an odd sense of familiarity with everyone I mean the guys we met from Africa weren’t even from the countries we went to…
YWAM
That leads up to today. We are staying at the YWAM base and it was cleaning day. All the DTS teams and our WR teams were gathered together, got put on new teams, and were given an area that we were to clean. I got the roof which is where the kitchen and dining area is. I am not sure how often they do a deep cleaning on this scale, but it was needed today. I had to stand up on plastic chairs and counter tops to clean the beams supporting the roof. Then I helped scrub all the tables and chairs. It was good! We didn’t seem to have a lot of tasks like this in Africa. We were always being served and taken care of in Africa, which was such a blessing, but it was nice to be able to put some of my own elbow grease into the task I was doing. I love the sense of accomplishment this brings. I was reading one of the many books I have read on this race and it encourages becoming a radical Christian in minor ways. There was a team that would go out in their own neighborhood and offer to clean the homes and yards of elderly neighbors, those who were in need of help, or just anyone. What a great ministry that would be, and how simple!
So, we’re in. We’re doing what we can. We will be done with ministry on the 24th, take the 36 hour train ride back up to Delhi and spend the 26th to the 30th in our final debrief. Then early on the 31st, I think a little after midnight, we’ll get on a plane that will take us home.
I’m taking it all in for the rest of this month!
