Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve done this whole writing thing, but in all honesty it’s been hard for me to write because I just can’t do my time here justice. My liking towards India has surprised me a lot. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I do. The people are absolutely incredible and have shown me so much about the character of God. I’ve learned that living out of true abundance isn’t giving up some of your time or a small bit of your money, rather it’s giving what people need and us believing that our God will provide. I experienced this way of living at our first village. The first month we were in a very remote village called Satrai. My time spent within this village was very peaceful and filled with so much joy. Our ministry hosts were awesome and blessed us so well. By the end of the month the other team leader and I wanted to bless them and give them some of our team money because they gave so much out of their pockets. Our ministry host, LT, said he couldn’t accept our money because it was his duty to serve us. These people don’t bless us well because it “looks good” or they are going to gain “heavenly points” but they do it because of their love for Jesus. They embody true joy from the Lord. The more you fall in love with Jesus the more you find yourself wanting to seek out who He is, and because of that you can’t fight the urge to loves others radically.
Over the course of two and a half months I have fallen even more in love with Jesus, which I didn’t think could be possible. He’s shown me He really does meet us in our brokenness and loves us so well. I’ve found a lot of freedom in who I am since being on the race and especially since being in India. God gives us this crazy beautiful life with passions and desires, and it’s up to us if we want to walk fully in that freedom or not. I have many passions with the Lord, but the more I fall in love with Him the more I’ve realized His truth. What I mean by this is that as followers of Jesus we have this burning desire for every single person to come to know Jesus. People need to know who their savior is and not what religion has made Him to be. People need to know who their king is, the one king that takes away suffering and saves, and in order to do this we need to knock down the veil of pre-conceived notions about what religion has made Him to be.
With our time in Satrai we wanted people to see Jesus and not religion so we held an event one night and invited all the villagers to come and have tea and cookies. At the event we danced with the people, shared about why we follow Jesus and what He has brought us through, had a candle service towards the end, etc. We were expecting about thirty people to come but we ended up having over 300 people there. The masses CAME..Christians, Muslims,and Hindus all in one area. Wars being fought around our world are those of religious disputes yet we had all of those religions in one place with so much peace. How? Jesus. The presence of Jesus made it possible. Towards the end we told them that if anyone needed prayer we would love to pray for them, and wow were those people hungry. After praying for someone then another person came and another and it just didn’t stop. People had so much faith that they would be healed, emotionally or physically, and they did! Jesus showed up and healed His children. A few days after the event we found out that the Hindu priest’s wife in the village had come, and that night she ended up giving her life to Jesus and now lives a life of only following Him. The presence of Jesus is something people can’t shake. It’s this inescapable feeling of so much peace and joy, and you can’t help but want it and grab a hold of it.His love is raw and deep and it’s something everyone can have. Jesus is good and He’s moving here and He’s breaking chains.
