The first month of the Race has been nothing as expected. The journey to India was stretching and challenging. I arrived at the Kolkata International Airport in India with a fever. India checks the temperature of all arriving passengers as an Ebola precaution, and I was a mere .3 degrees from being detained and put into isolation. During our 9 hour layover I began to get sick. Real sick. I threw up several times in the Kolkata airport, mid-air, and at the Imphal airport. During our flight I remembered all the stories of malaria, water-borne illnesses, and parasites I’ve never even heard of and began to seriously reconsider if I was going to be able to do this. If this is what it’s like before we’ve actually started the Race, what will the next 11 months be like?
I arrived to our ministry site with both an uneasy stomach and uneasy mind. We learned our ministry for the month would be with the Hmar people in a village called Sielmat in Northeast India, which is culturally very different from the rest of India. I quickly came to learn that the people here are beautiful and they have quite the story to tell.
In the early 1900s, the Hmar people were a tribal group fearfully known by many as headhunters. They once took 500 heads in a single day. Despite their reputation, a lone British missionary armed himself with only a Bible and traveled to Northeast India to share the Gospel with their tribe.
For a boy named Rochunga, the Gospel changed everything. He committed his life to Christ and sought an education. After years of hard work and a sponsorship from World Vision, he came to America to attend Wheaton College. While in school, he worked at night to translate the Bible to Hmar for his people. After graduating college, Rochunga returned to India and began to work and minister in his community. The result of Rochunga’s work is Partnership Mission Society – our ministry partner for the month.
Partnership Mission Society (PMS) is basically an umbrella of other smaller ministries – a school, Bible college, hospital, sponsorship program, and other community outreaches. The ministry receives funding from an American-based program called Bibles for the World, also founded by Rochunga (we call him Ro). Sielmat, the village we are staying in and where PMS is located, is 100% evangelized.
Our hosts this month are John (Ro’s son) and his wife Lawm, who have worked relentlessly to make our stay in India one we won’t be forgetting anytime soon. We’ve been given the opportunity to dip our feet in different types of ministry within the community. We’ve hosted VBS for children in surrounding villages, painted classrooms at the school, cleaned and helped with construction at the hospital, worked with the local women to prepare meals, assisted other missionaries with a children’s retreat, worked with the ministry’s sponsorship program, helped with the beginning construction of a church, and cleared brush on top of Prayer Mountain to make room for prayer cabins.
Life and ministry in Sielmat have been nothing short of incredible. My absolute favorite thing about this place is the people. We spent our off day hiking to a bigger Prayer Mountain with our liason, Sawmpek. Prayer Mountain is a place where locals go to spend time with the Lord in prayer. During our hike, Sawmpek explained to us that the people here love God so much that they spend more building cabins on Prayer Mountain than they do on their own home. Despite there being over 50 cabins, there’s usually an hour wait to get into one on a Sunday.
The Hmar people have changed my mindset of what it looks like to live as a child of God. They selflessly put God first every day of their life. They spend time with Him and give Him the adoration He deserves. They worship Him with an unconditional love and unfailing attention that is often forgotten in American society. God is with them everywhere they go and it’s easily visible if you spend just a little bit of time with someone from this community.
My question on my ability to live out this journey has been answered by the Hmar people. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to sacrifice the comforts I cling so tightly to for the God who sacrificed all for me. I’m going to have to put God first and look to Him for everything – just as the Hmar people do.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the Hmar people, a movie, “Beyond the Next Mountain,” and a book, “God’s Tribesman: The Rochunga Pudaite Story,” were made to tell their story and how the Gospel was brought to their tribe.
