Photo Diary: INDIA - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

entry from journal:

i don’t want to forget days like this. the teacher we helped yesterday at the daycare invited us over to her house. today we walk to her home, close by the daycare. she is so happy we are there, smiling from ear to ear. she is beautiful. she is hindu. she has skinny arms and a pink sari is wrapped tightly around her shoulders. her house is not more than a concrete couple of small rooms. she has loosely painted walls that are neon green and pink and no furniture. she sets out a straw mat on the floor for us to sit on. she tells us we are beautiful, and when we tell her she is too, she says no, because she is dark. she is honestly one of the most beautiful women i have ever seen. she slips into the kitchen and comes back with room temperature orange soda in weak plastic cups. she serves us from a tray and we sit on the mat. her english is quite broken, but we have a translator, whose english is only slightly less broken. there is a photograph of a child high on the wall. it is her son, whom had passed away at the age of 6 or 7. he was sick, and on her way with him to the doctor, he passed away. just like that. she has another daughter, now eight. she sits in her school dress next to her mother in dark pigtails and darker eyes. the teacher brings out dusty photo albums with ripped plastic chalked with dirt. we opened them up to see her wedding day. she looks absolutely miserable. she isn’t smiling in any of the photos, which isn’t totally un-normal in other cultures when being photographed, but you could see in her expression that she is completely unhappy. she looks into the camera with swollen eyes, she looks like a child. she was twenty years old when she was forced to marry her uncle. this happens all of the time here in India. women are often forced to marry cousins or other family members, and separation is literally not an option. they must do this to please and honor their parents or else have their families disown them and face disgrace. there are also photos of her baby boy, years before he passed. a photo i will never forget is that of her son, celebrating his young birthday at the table with different Indian dishes and treats. this photo was taken one week before he died. i never would have guessed that this bright woman, so beautiful and beaming with life, has such a broken past. she speaks about her son and her marriage very matter of fact-ly. we are told that she was having some financial difficulties, for which we pray for with her daughter. i don’t want to forget days like this, which happen so often on this journey. people who open up their homes, often no bigger than many people’s closets in the states. they always serve us food and drinks out of the kindness of their hearts and are so happy to have our company. usually its store-bought biscuits or cookies, sprite or orange soda in tiny cups, homemade chai milk tea, or fruit. even when we have food in our hands they insist we take more. it’s their way of showing love. i have met some of the kindest and most beautiful people, and i’ve come to see that they are the ones with the most heartbreaking pasts. some of the happiest people i’ve met are also the most poor. we’ve gone on house visits to pray with believers, who are radiating with the Joy of the Lord and speak so boldly about what He has done for them. they thank God for healing them, for saving them, for giving them a hope they have never known before. that’s where their joy comes from, and its been incredibly humbling to see.

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we spend our month working in a lot of different ministries: schools, orphanages, daycares, after school programs, a home for trafficked women, a hospital for victims of HIV & AIDS, Home for Hope, which takes dying people off of the streets to treat them and restore them back to health.

india through my eyes: