Hello from Bangalore, India! My squad and I just arrived here today (September 11) and our teams have split off to different parts of the country. My team, Aurora Borealis, and another team, Beloved Warriors, are paired together for our three week stay in India. We’ll be working with Rise India, a Christian organization that has a heart for temple prostitutes and their children. Rise India’s mission is to enable these women who have been given to temples to find new life for themselves and their children. We’ll learn more about what we’ll be doing tomorrow, but we’ve already settled into our place for the month and we couldn’t be more excited to work with Pastor Prakash and his staff. We’re incredibly lucky to be living in a house with beds and a shower room (with cold bucket shower, but a shower room with running water all the same!), and when we arrived they had a delicious Indian meal prepared for us. They are wonderful people and I can’t wait to work with them and learn more about their ministry!
Before we left the United States the other day, I wrote this in my journal:
“I’m ready for this journey to start, ready to get my feet into the water and see what God has planned for me in the next 11 months. I want to go places I’ve never been and love people I’ve never met.” I wasn’t nervous or worried, even though I was getting ready to leave the country for another 11 months and visit countries I knew almost nothing about. Now that I’m in India, I’m still not nervous or worried, because I know that God has planned for me and my teammates to be here this month and He’s got some awesome things planned for us! The year ahead may be daunting, but I’m going to take it one step and one day at a time and follow where He leads us.
Quoting some songs, I also wrote this:
“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me… You make me brave, you call me out beyond the shore into the waves. You make me brave.”
So that’s my motto for this month: Follow God’s leading and be BRAVE in His name.
UPDATE: Let me share some pictures with you! (this is for you, Maggie!) Hover over each picture to see the description.
