Extreme heat
extreme spices
extreme amounts of people
extreme amounts of sheep
goats,
and water buffalos.
We started the month living here with Nana, a 100 year old lady who gave us enough crazy stories to last a lifetime.
Apparently Nana never told her family that 13 white people were moving in so when her son arrived halfway through the month to find us there, let’s just say he was less than thrilled. We got kicked out, spent the day praying for a new place to live, and found a “hotel” attached to an Indian restaurant (picture a 7/11 meets your local diner, now imagine the dirtiest thing you’ve ever seen or smelt, except it produced some of the best food ever).
The heat was so bad (typical day was 110 degrees Farenheit) we slept on the roof while the 10-second per horn melodies, sheep following their shephards back to the farm, and the business of the main highway 50 yards from our house sang us to sleep.
India was my Heaven and India was my Hell.
“I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I tell Lacey our theme song for the month is Destiny’s Child “survivor.” There are ants everywhere. The heat is out of control. Power goes out at random times throughout the day = no fans. People are EVERYWHERE, alone space is nothing but a fantasy. Everytime we leave the house people attack us with the same questions we’ve had for the past 9 months: what is your name? how are you? and they ask us the same question 5 times in a 2 minute period. People stare at us everywhere we go. People come to our house and walk through the gate just to stare at us. Our contact’s 16 year old son plays the same song all day long on his cell phone, I wonder if I can make it “disappear.” “
“Door to door evangelism is our ministry for the first half of the month. When we ask people if they have ever heard of Jesus, 90% of the time the answer is no. It blows my mind how much of a honor God has given us. That we have the honor of telling people who Jesus is?!! so humbeling. People approach us asking for healing prayer. We pray and people walk away healed and having encountered Christ for the first time. People tell us about dreams they’ve had where Jesus appears to them with a very specific message. Healings and miracles seen throughout the day are normal lunch and dinner time conversation. A man gets baptized. Show ‘The Jesus Film’ everynight. Build a church; the first church for the lowest caste in this village.”
(guess which teammate loves Miami and which one loves Alabama)
India was hands down the hardest month on the race thus far for me. And yet even though there were a million challenges, God showed up in a big way and did some HUGE things in this Indian village.
