India…Actions Speak Louder Than Words

 
Well I am sitting in the airport on my last day in India waiting to catch my flight to head into month # 9 into Thailand. I honestly cannot believe I am on way heading into month 9. The race in so many ways has felt so long to me, but it’s crazy to think that I have only three months left until it's over and i'm back home…

I am really, really excited for this next month. My Dad is actually flying out to Thailand for the first week of ministry to live life with me on the race. Please pray for my Dad and I from March 7^th to the 12^th. This is such an exciting and meaningful time for me to get to spend a week with my Dad on the race. It means so much to me that he is making the sacrifice of time and money to come visit me and learn about what the Lord is doing in my life. I’m really excited and can’t believe that I’m going to get to see him and minister side by side with him to expand the true love, hope, and Kingdom of God in and through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

After my Dad leaves, I and the other guys from the squad will all be together this whole month for “manistry” month. We are going to be doing construction ministry all month on an all guys team.  I’m really excited and I hear we will be living in tents the whole month with no electricity or running watter! So this month will bring a lot of changes, which I am really excited about for what God is going to do in and through them.

Before I get too excited about what is next, I really wanted to take time to reflect and write about what God has blessed me to be a part of this last month in India. This month was honestly such a blessing to me, it was not something that I thought I would be doing in India, but something that I was so so blessed to be a part of. I can honestly say that this month was one of my most favorite months that I could really see myself coming back to with others one day!

India….actions speak louder than words

* Growing up my Mom always used to teach me that actions speaks louder than words. This month was a great reminder of my Mom’s advice to me growing up. This month I was blessed to work with kids from a boarding school for the deaf. We lived on campus of a boarding school with about a 150 deaf students. There were kids there as young as 5 years old, to as old as 25 years old. The team and I all taught different classes with the school day and spent the rest of the day working on a specific project for the school, spending time with the kids, or resting in ways that we needed rest. The biggest blessing and objective for this month was to get back to what I personally love to do best, build relationships and friendships with the kids! My hope is always to be real and intentional in a way where a real and true friendship is established. I initially connected with the older guys right away through playing some intense soccer with them each night. I was amazed at how good they were and how well they could play together without being able to hear one another. I definitely had to play my hardest just to keep up with them!

Through the month I was blessed to teach one or two PT classes each day. A PT class, is just like a PE class that we would have in school. It was a class where I taught them how to play basketball and how to throw and play with the  frisbee. I was again amazed and how smart the kids were and how fast they picked things up. At first the only way that I could communicate with them was through someone translating for me by signing to them. But after a couple of days, my teammates and I learned the alphabet of their sign language and slowly began learning on how to communicate with them pretty effectively.

The month for me truly was a breath of fresh air. The past couple of months while in Africa and Nepal were filled with preaching, evangelism, and sharing the gospel in many ways through communicating with people. This month was a nice change of pace for me to get back to building friendships and relationships in a real and true way!

We were blessed to live on the campus with the kids, where we had beds to sleep on, great food to eat, showers to take, and even WIFI to use. We were really blessed to stay with a family who were the directors of the school who really took care of us. Something much different from this month than the other past months was that we got to see the same kids each and every day that we were ministering to and working with. Again this was such a blessing of getting to hang out with the kids, build relationships, and love on them like true friends day in and day out of our month!

This again was so refreshing because unlike other months where we would meet people and then only get to spend one or a couple of days with them, we got to spend the whole month with the same kids and really see the fruit of our time spent with them and how God was working within their lives!

I felt really blessed to teach the PT classes every morning, but the biggest blessing of the month for me came through teaching a Bible class each day.. This was a class that the kids could choose to come to if they wanted to since it was after school. The class started off with only 6 kids or so, and within three days there was a solid 25 to 30 students that came to every class. I was truly amazed at how many came and how committed and dedicated the kids were to learning more about who God really is!

This also sparked something in me that I didn’t know that I had, a love for teaching older teenagers and young adults. I knew I always had a love for working with young adults and teenagers, but I necessarily didn’t know I had a love for teaching. I loved to be able to explain the Bible to them in a real tangible way that they could relate with, grasp, and understand.  It was such a blessing to see the hunger of these students to learn and know more about God!

Another blessing for me this month was to work out with the guys doing pushups and sit-ups. We did this for r after our Bible classes before we went to go play soccer. This was not only a time that we came together as men to work out, but it was a time that we grew together as friends and brothers in Christ.

We always ended each work out in prayer in a huddle and then lifting our hands up yelling and beating our fists on our chests over our hearts! It’s so amazing, because even though the boys couldn’t hear me praying for them or couldn’t hear themselves yelling; you could see it in their eyes and see it in their faces that it meant so much to them!

. It was a reminder of the greatness of building relationships and friendships with people in a true and real way. I truly believe God has blessed me to have a passion and a love for working with guys in their teens and young adults. I felt so blessed by God to have the gift of so many friendships and a brotherhood with the guys in a way that I will never forget and will always remember as my brothers in Christ!

To build a friendship with someone from the love of Christ within your heart that loves them no matter who they are and what they believe in, in my opinion is the true love of God within you.  By loving people with the love of Christ, I believe whether they know it or not, will feel the love of Jesus Christ in a way that only God can love them!