Life in an Indian Village

It took all of three days for me to fall in love with India. A surprising feat given that I had several years not wanting to go back. Two weeks in and I still love it. Don’t get me wrong, India has it’s moments. There’s never any silence, whether it’s random music being blared or the constant noise of traffic and horns. Not to mention the spiritual atmosphere. I’ve never felt so tired as do I do right now. And there’s no logical reason for it. I could get ten hours of sleep, struggle to pull myself out of bed and still want to go back to sleep after breakfast. It’s quite a lot to contend with.

But the beauty of India is in so many things, the color, the hospitality, the people, and our ministry. This month we are working with Covenant Children’s Homes, part of India Christian ministries. It is a phenomenally run ministry that is apostolic to its core. The main goal of CCH is to take the most at risk kids in a village with the most potential and put them in a CCH home. These homes are with the local pastor and house no more than ten children. They live in a family style atmosphere and get a quality English education as well as constant Christian discipleship. The goal is to have these kids be the last in their biological family to live in poverty.

I remember when I heard this I wasn’t quite sure how it would work. And then we went to our first village. I was blown away. Even though it was a boys home and we were an all girls team, those boys captured our heart. It became quite clear that we were living with ten little gentlemen. Whether they always got chairs for us, or we’re incredibly watchful on our walk to the park, they were amazing. We spent time with them every evening playing volleyball, reading storybooks, practicing English and even playing the keyboard. During the day, we learned how to make chapati, prepared for our evening service and even managed to do some gardening.

We thought it couldn’t get any better.

Then we went to our second village, an all girls home. It was amazing. These girls are absolutely darling. We played together, sang together and read together. And we hugged and hugged some more. When we weren’t spending time with the younger girls we got to know the pastor’s wife (who insisted we call her mom) and their two older daughters. We talked about so many different things… If we were scared to travel or not, if we got to choose our husbands, and college life. Before we knew it, Oma (aka mom) was joking that she would make our food spicy if we made her mad. We visited several other homes in the village and got pray for many of the women who go to church. And we got to pray for their Hindu neighbors who came out to see the seven white people next door. And every night was ended with prayer and reading the bible.

There were tears on both sides when we left. I feel privileged to have met these incredible women.

We head to our third home tomorrow morning. I know I’ll be blown away again at the amazingness of India.