We are officially in the seventh month of the World Race in India! This country holds one-sixth of the entire world’s population. It is incredibly huge and awesome. I have started to fall in love with this country and this culture. We wear saris and eat lots of kill-all-your-taste-buds spicy food.My squad is in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. We are working with an umbrella organization called India Christian Ministries (ICM). Under ICM, there are many different ministries. My team is specifically working under their ministry called Covenant Children’s Homes (CCH). Their website is http://icmin.in.
CCH seeks to love and provide for the orphans here in India. They set up individual homes all around the state with either five or ten children in them. Local pastors and their families run these homes. The work this ministry does is incredible. Through sponsorships, the homes feed the children three times a day, provide clean water and clothes, discipleship, and a private school education. There are over 70 homes and over 400 orphans that this awesome ministry serves.
These homes are an alternative to orphanages. These kids are all considered orphans, because to be an orphan you have to be without a father. And in the Bible, orphan actually means the fatherless. Many of these kids have mothers, but in this culture, if you do not have a father, you are seen as shameful and without honor. The fatherless children usually quit school and live a life in the lowest caste working in the fields for the rest of their life. They usually are downcast and without hope. What this organization does is takes these kids with the permission of any guardians they have and live in these homes. They are loved and well taken care of. They are prayed for and read the Word of God daily. They learn about how much Jesus loves them. The pastor and his wife become like their father and mother. This is all in hopes that they will have a bright future that honors God.
None of these children are up for adoption, because ICM hopes to train these young children to become a generation that changes India for the sake of God’s glory here. They learn to love their country and how they can best serve God right in their own neighborhood. By raising up this generation of Christian soldiers, India can and will be changed. The Kingdom of God is being built here, a country where only two percent of the entire population is Christian.
My team and I are living in four different homes, one a week for this entire month. We are playing with, loving on, dancing with, praying with, reading with, and serving the kids in anyway we can. We even get to spend one day of the week painting their bedroom with Bible verses, trees, flowers, fish, crosses, and castles. We just finished our second week and second home yesterday. It was an all-boys home with ten rambunctious, joyful kids. I really, really love our ministry this month. These kids steal your heart and you don’t even know it, until you have to leave them. I am so thankful to Jesus for allowing me to be apart of their precious lives.
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27
