My time here in India has probably been the most
difficult country I have had to deal with here on the World Race, the whole
month was physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting. Here is kind of an
idea of what our days looked like in the village.
Every morning
from 5-6 the Hindu temple next door to us loved to blast music making it nearly
impossible to sleep.
If we managed to sleep through this the hot sun was sure to wake
us up around 7:30 and we would wake up drenched in sweat.
Then it
just became routine for many of us to take our hike to use the bathroom before
too many people began moving around the village. Our toilet was literally just
a dirt road where we picked a place on the side and hoped that there weren’t
too many people around to see.
During our last week
we spent our mornings and afternoons working on building the church. It was
blaring hot usually getting up to 110 degrees during the day and we had very
little shade in our working area.
To build the church we had to dig 2′ x 2′
holes using only a steal rod, tear down two trees with nothing but a very small
hatchet, carry around large cement blocks and haul concrete in small, shallow
bowls.
In the late afternoon before dinner we would either
have time to take a break or sometimes we would go door-to-door visiting people
and inviting them to our evening service.
Dinners usually came around 8 o’clock then after that we would usually go
to a random road and hold our service in the middle of the street.
We
finished our services around 9 or 10 rushed back to take turns bathing and
hopefully be in our tents sleeping by midnight.
Now being out of the village we are all so worn down.
Besides being exhausted many people have massive blisters all over their hands
from building, boils on their bodies from sweating so much, over half of us
have parasites, and I have lice for the second time on this trip.
Despite the difficult living conditions a lot of good
did come out of our time in India. We were able to share the gospel with
several people who had never heard it before; we built relationships, taught
kids usually everyday about Jesus, baptized a number of people, and ultimately
build a church.
I really loved all the people in the village; everyone
was so welcoming and glad to have us there. One of the difficulties that we ran
into when evangelizing to the people, was that everyone wanted to accept Jesus,
but nobody was willing to stop worshiping their false idols. There were also
some people who considered stop worshiping these idols and giving themselves to
Christ, but wouldn’t do it until something in their lives changed, like if they
were healed from a sickness or injury or received more money or a nicer house.
This month whenever we had a kids program I was the one
that was usually doing the teaching and it is something that I have really
grown to love doing over the past few months. I have had the opportunity to
either speak to or teach kids between the ages of 2-18 and I have loved working
with all of them. So teaching and working with kids is definitely a passion I
have developed over the past 8 months and it is something that I have really
grown in.
Now we are in Nepal after a 60 hour trip from Hyderabad
which included one plane 2 buses, and a rickshaw. Tomorrow we have a 13 hour
bus ride to our ministry site, which will once again be in the middle of
nowhere so I won’t be able to update you again until the end of the month.
Also I am on a new team again, sorry I don’t have a picture of my new teammates, but there are 5 of us, Jared, Taylor, Samara, Laura, and me.
