With only 8 more days until I leave for the World Race and an estimated 14 days until I land on Indian soil, I now have information on what my first month on the mission field is going to look like! And I am so excited! I want to share with all my readers and supporters so you can get a better idea of what I’ll be doing and what you can be specifically be praying for over the next month, as well as what your financial contributions are going towards.
Team Themelios has been placed in a small town in central/southern India, partnering with a ministry that is working to end female infanticide through rescue, prevention, and awareness.
The female infanticide crisis in India takes 2,000 girls a day! It is a historic problem in India’s highly patriarchal society where the life of a boy is valued over a girl’s because daughters are viewed as a burden to the family due to the dowry system. Apparently 12 MILLION baby girls have been aborted since 1981. The new government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking action to stop the issue with its new initiative Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) which launched two years ago this January and enforces the laws against prenatal sex determination and giving girls better access to education. There seems to be some positive change, with more girls being admitted into orphanages, representing a transition from “being killed to being thrown out.” (1)
“Because daughters leave their families of origin, they are often regarded as temporary members of their families and a drain on its wealth. There is an expression in India that ‘bringing up a daughter is like watering a neighbor’s plant'” (Anderson & Moore, 1993). (2)
The ministry works with young girls that are neglected or discriminated against, have alcoholic fathers or single mothers, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers to fight malnutrition and child neglect. They do this by empowering them through establishing their own businesses, hosting regular medical camps for women and children and awareness programs on the importance of a girl child, and providing counseling services to women who are under pressure to abort their girl child or are being abused because of no boy child.
Our first day of ministry is supposed to start on January 16th. There will be a medical camp and an awareness program that my team will be helping out with. Other activities include:
-investing in the lives of the girls from the after-school program that will shape them to be more confident young ladies
-conduct home visits and create profiles for the new batch of women enrolled in the Entrepreneurship program
-gathering profiles of the after-school program girls
-ministering to the mothers in the nutrition program, educating them on important aspects of child growth and development as well as their identity in Christ
-working with a team of staff to film stories of beneficiaries
I am so excited for this first ministry placement! I love investing in young teen girls, seeing as I have been volunteering and co-leading a group of teen girls in my church’s youth group for the past year and a half. What an opportunity to help in the efforts to stop this horrific crisis and pour into these girls and women who are struggling with unworthiness and oppression by educating them, loving them, and speaking into their souls about who they are in God’s eyes!
I can’t wait to get started! This thing is so much more real to me now that I know more about where I’ll be living and what I’ll be doing! I am excited, but I am nervous about acclimating to the culture that is so different from America. Please pray that I’ll be able to not just accept these differences, but embrace the Indian culture, food, and customs!
I don’t know when I’ll write next, but I’m hoping to get one or two more blog posts in before I leave the United States!
I am SO CLOSE to being fully funded! Right now I’m at 92% and only need $1,361 to reach 100%! I’ve been trusting God by having big faith and big prayers that He will let me leave on January 7th fully funded and I can’t believe how close He is to getting me there. I was not expecting this to happen at all! If you’d like to help me close the gap, today and tomorrow are your last chances to donate to receive tax deductions for fiscal year 2016! Of course, you can donate in January, as well. If you’d like to donate to my personal money fund, please contact me.
I wish all my readers, whether you are family, friend, supporter, or acquaintance a Happy New Year! Thank you SO much for all your support and prayers this year!
Sources used, where you can learn more about India’s female infanticide crisis:
(1) http://time.com/3830874/2000-girls-killed-every-day-india-minister/
(2) http://www.domesticviolenceservices.com/female-infanticide.html
