Usually when people talk about India, I imagine the slums I’ve seen in movies, the giant temples, packed roads, a lot of honking, Hindu culture, curry, and Indian-looking people. Well for our first stop, we are staying in a little state in Northeastern India called Manipur. It’s known as a tribal region in the hills of Eastern India, and is easily confused to be part of its surrounding Southeast Asian countries. There are a lot of mud and straw houses, but the longer I’m here the more these houses seem normal to me. They’re definitely not slums, though. There are 16 different languages spoken in this state alone, so you could literally learn walk down the road and the local language would change. It’s a mostly Christian culture around this area, and the Hindu culture is actually much smaller in this part of India. There is a lot of honking and what seems like no traffic laws, but it’s definitely not as crowded in this part of India either. The people here don’t quite look like the rest of the people in India either; they look like dark-skinned Chinese people. They’ll tell you themselves the think it’s silly that they’re even considered part of India because they’re culture is so different and they’re so far east. Many speak English, but for the most part they speak Hmar (pronounced: mar) in the region where we are staying.
Since this is our first country, we’re all still learning how to do life together as a squad. Usually the squad splits up into teams, but our contact here is housing the entire squad for the month. Some of us stay indoors at the seminary while others sleep in makeshift bamboo huts closer to where we eat meals. The trees surrounding the main camp area are now home to at least 20 hammocks scattered throughout where many of us spend our quiet times swinging in the trees. It’s pretty chilly in the morning and night times, but it warms up in the sunlight during the small amount of daylight we have. India is funny because, even though it could easily be split into three time zones, the entire country is in one time zone, so it gets dark around here at 5pm when we’re eating dinner. The food is incredible! It’s like curry and Chinese food medley cooked over an open fire. The cooks never leave the kitchen all day! They’re incredible people, and it’s amazing how truly infectious their joy is. I know that if I had to cook for around 60 people every day over an open fire, I wouldn’t be nearly as joyful as these wonderful women are. Luckily they’ve allowed us to help them; every day a different team helps them prepare the meals and clean all the dishes in the sinks they built for us. Did you catch that? They BUILT sinks for us! This ministry is such a blessing.
My team has already done a wide variety of ministry projects so far including working at a children’s ministry, packing a truck of Christmas presents for children in the mountains (like blankets and books), helped the kitchen staff, and gone to a local church. I’m actually on a team of mostly introverts so I thought I would be struggling as a raging extrovert, but they’ve taught me a lot on valuing alone time with Jesus. I’ve always known that I needed to value alone time, but finally yesterday I fully understood what that meant. I’ve always been terrified of being alone, but yesterday I spent 2½ beautiful hours alone with Jesus. I learned more than I anticipated and I can’t wait to delve more into alone time like that. It was so rich and beautiful. I look forward to the next 10 months spent in constant worship.
