My team and I just transitioned to our second ministry for the month on Saturday evening, the 20th, its an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. Its already several shades different from our last ministry site: we don’t really have much of a schedule, the children go to school from 10am -5:30pm Mon-Sat, we are about 30 mins from a grocery store, and we have down time!
We had a meeting this morning where we found out more of what our week here will look like: breakfast at 9:30, painting the children’s rooms (decorative/prophetic) from 10am-12pm, lunch, free time to pray/rest/laundry/prepare for the evening with kids, 6pm-8pm play/teach/crafts/ whatever time with kids, dinner and then bedtime! So we have stuff we are doing but its pretty relaxed which I am fully enjoying! We all feel like our time here is going to be mainly just relational and not so agenda driven – which again, I love! We have the most fantastic view which ill have to share with you later and the children are great – we spent yesterday afternoon throwing the frisbee, playing hide and seek and practicing english with them haha!
The 20th was the hardest day for me so far, one of my closest friends back home was walking down the aisle and I couldnt be there… I was missing her and it was strange to not even have the option of communication with her on that day. And all of that made me miss home and normalcy… my body felt physically off and I was drained…tears fell…the whole nine yards: I was a mess. My team is fantastic though and just took the liberty at the end of the day to lay hands and pray over me. I still miss home at moments but that next morning I woke up feeling so much better!
I didn’t expect to miss things so soon … my best guess is that its hard now in the beginning because we are trying to let those things go and create a new normal so I feel like the start and finish will be hard and multiple moments in-between. My whole time is sort of experiencing that so its been great to share in that and encourage each other through it. Ill often just think of the differences in culture and enjoy how vastly different they are but at the same time trying to comprehend what 11 months looks like…Its such a long time, feels like a lifetime. We are all challenging one another to stay in the moment and not get into a fixation about the things we miss.
Team Mountain Movers continue to grow together, we find ourselves laughing more because we know more about each other every day so we are able to find humor in so many other things together (like last night when we had to trap the frog in the bathroom at 11pm with everyone else sleeping…yep, haha that happened!) we’ve loved the conversations that come up and the small moments that make us all a little more real and allow us to not take life so seriously – to me its what gives me energy (besides my alone time 😉 ) Its neat to see that bond form!
Our biggest challenge is finding energy, there have been such long days since we got here so pray for our energy and rest. The hope is that with this change in pace we will naturally find ourselves with more energy 🙂
Prayers for us as we build relationships with the kids here that they would just feel Papas heart for them through our interaction with them.
Please pray for this ministry as well, they are completely reliant on Papa for funds to keep this place running and they take care of 20 precious boys and girls and have such amazing hearts that its just flooring. We are so excited to be a part of their family for this short time!
Update on our travel schedule:
We leave Kolhapur on the 29th via 12 hour bus ride (we are actually thrilled about this, the bus has beds and A/C!) to bring us back to Bangalore where the rest of the squad is at. Our team will spend a night there and then as a squad we fly to Delhi the next day and then onto Kathmandu in Nepal!
Some fun stuff 😀
We’ve made friends here that are our own age which is a blast! Grace, Sylvester, Justin, and Sunny! We met them through working with the hospital our first week and we’ve had such a blast with them! They are still relatively close to our new location so we are working to plan our off day with them and make a road trip to Goa for a day! That will be a blast 🙂
At the market I actually found a greenish blue ‘shirt’ with elephants on it!!! Im now the proud owner 😀
The daughter of the family who owns and runs the orphanage gave some of us henna last night!
Workin on that Chaco tan 😉
