I’m sitting in an empty room in India, waiting to be questioned by a police officer. Ironically, the power for the only fan in the place has stopped, and I’ve begun to pour out sweat- a little unsure how much is the heat, and how much is my nerves.
I’ve been told the Indian FBI does not like white people, and specifically in my section of the country, they hate Christians. I chew on the inside of my cheek, pick at my fingernails and pray fervously as I wait for my one-hour questioning to come.
I think back over the past week. How.Has.This.Only.Been.One.Week?! It blows my mind. My time in India has already felt like an awful eternity. It’s impossible really. I thought simply leaving on the World Race would turn my life completely around. I was wrong. This is much, much worse.
About a 1/2 week ago I was comfortably sitting in my Romanian hostel when I was told I was going to be promoted to a team leader. Team leaders are one person in a group of 6-7 people that equally pour into the team as the point person to talk to teammates, ministry contacts, translators, etc, etc, etc. Needless to say, it comes with a bit more responsibility, and mine was accompanied with a completely new team (leaving the people I was grouped with for 3 months) and heading to India. Hello, culture shock.
We arrived in India and everything, I mean everything, was different. Welcome to the land of no toilet paper and squatting outside, heat-heat-heat, living with birds, bugs, bats, rats, cockroaches, snakes, geckos, etc, and all you can eat chicken with chapati. Don’t be deceived though, when I say chicken, I mean the WHOLE chicken went into the pot. Minus the feathers… I think.
Ministry changed too. From playing with children to praying over 100’s of people in villages and casting out demons. Yup. That’s real. No way I could say evil spirits don’t exist now. That’s not possible. Insert any scene from an exorcist movie and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, yesterday is when this whole bad situation started to unravel. My teammate Greg and I were on a mission with our translator Elisha to find a village with internet. Internet is a luxury when you’re in the middle of who-knows-where, or AlagayaPalem as they call it, and we had to send team files to World Race headquarters in Atlanta.
On the way home we decided to stop in the gasping heat and buy a soda. Quickly a large man took our translator Elisha and demanded he answered a phone call from the man’s personal phone. Elisha had a stressed stance about him as he talked fast in Targu (the southern Indian language), for 35 minutes.
It turned out that we were being spied on and the man with the phone was from the Indian FBI. They wanted Greg and I to go to the police station to be questioned. Let’s not forget they made it clear they hated white people and especially Christians.
We refused to tell them our information as we knew we were legally allowed to be in the area and had Indian Visas to prove it. We gave the number of India Christian Ministries (ICM-the ministry we were partnered with) and quickly fled the scene in a tuk tuk. If you’ve ever been in a slow moving tuk tuk, this would be amusing to you.
The next 20 hours was chaos for me. Being a team leader I had to work constantly with ICM, my pastor/translator and World Race squad leaders to establish a safe place for my team. We had to avoid particular villages while ICM worked with the police/FBI. Also, not letting my team realize how much danger we were really in was key.
Today I’m ordered a meeting with the police for questioning, which brings me back to the room I’m sweating in. I go over the basic questions and answers for safety and try to pretend they are true:
What are you here for? “Tourism.”
Who are you here with and why are there so many of you? “A University- Study Abroad.”… shoot. I’ll have to make up a name of an organization…
The list goes on.
“What if they question my teammates too?”
One thing I didn’t expect to learn how to do on the World Race: Lie well.
I quickly texted the other team leaders and squad leaders asking for prayer over my 1990’s version of an international cell phone. Most responded with the same verse, Romans 8:31-39:
More Than Conquerors
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As the last team leader responded over prayer, I received a message. My meeting was called off and the FBI were no longer pressing for information. They no longer needed me to testify for information and they believed us to be there legally.
I praise God for taking care of us. For answering our prayers, and not having me deal with an even more difficult situation.
Our next distraction from the Devil is many expected cyclones going through our area in the next couple days. Bring it on Devil, we’ve got this.
(This is an old post I’m catching up on- we were all safe from the two cyclones that went through our little village).
