kids stepping on me, tiptoeing around me, and staring at me from all angles.
It’s hot. I’m drenched in sweat, majorly dehydrated, and bit up by
mosquitoes. Welcome to my first morning
in India. This is how I got here…
We had a flight to New Delhi that landed around 9pm last night. We got our
bags and waited for an hour+ for our contact to show up with a bus. Just imagine how it felt being a group of 40 Americans.
We were extremely out of place and getting starred up and down.
What resembled a prison bus with wooden bench seats and bars for windows
showed up. We’ll take it. After a sticky hour ride, we arrived at a hostel. We
were greeted by even more Indian men huddled around us to stare as we unloaded
half of the groups stuff. We were told that all the men would stay here, because
it was not very safe. “The rest of the girls would sleep somewhere else.” Ok. My
first thought is that this is EXACTLY what we we’re told never to do in India. Since our
contact is 7’9″ tall Indian man and he will go with us, I guess feel safe. =)
where we park, grab our things, and head through a maze of dark and sketchy alleyways.
When we arrive at our resting place, we are greeted by two women, crowd into
the living/entryway, and sit down to wait for instruction on where to sleep. A
few eyes are peaking at us from the roof as we discover this IS where we are all
suppose to sleep. People can see us from the roof because there’s really no
‘roof’ above us, it’s just a big hole open to the sky. Welcome to my bed for
the night. Kasey and I laid out our sleeping mats in a walkway, and the other
girls spread around the floor as well. There was no hiding from the mosquito
bites, no matter how much spray or blankets you had covering you.
Getting back to how I woke up….
There are kids walking and standing around me because I am in an orphanage. The
eyes we saw above us last night were the boys that slept on the rooftop to make
room for us on the floor. They are up at 5am because they meet every morning
before school to worship God. At 5:15 my ears were ringing with…
“This is the Day… This is the day, that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice… and be glad in it”.
Talk about a great reminder of
priorities. The kids in this orphanage are mostly Indian children whose parents
cannot afford to take care of them. After seeing and hearing these little ones,
the last thing on my mind was to complain about how early it was or how
uncomfortably hot and itchy I was. These children LIVE here every day, and they’re
happy. All I could think about was how BLESSED I am to have the loving family
that I do, and how honored I am to be able to spend time with these children
for a couple more days. Following worship, the boys and girls go in separate rooms
to and study their bible before they eat breakfast and head off to school.
Welcome to India! It’s hot. It’s
uncomfortable. It smells horrible. It’s (not going to lie)… so far it’s been kind
of creepy. But after waking up in this orphanage, I’ve realized God’s is HERE.
I have been spoiled and blessed my whole life with my family and in America, so
if I have to be completely uncomfortable to meet kids like this, ok.
I can already tell that this is
going to be a life changing month… We are in New Delhi for 2 more days, and (if
we can get tickets), the plan is for our team to get on a train south to Bangalore as
soon as possible, where our team will be working.
