So, I’m back in India. I had to talk myself up to being back here full heartedly. When I left India in August 2010, I was burnt out. It was a place full of spiritual darkness like I’d never experienced. I loved my time in Bahadurgarh, Haryana with Asha House & Anai Jyoti Leper Colony & in Palampur with my CCS friends teaching English in the Himalayas. But over the course of my time there I became sick with an infection in my bloodstream due to a food or water borne illness. I. WAS. MISERABLE. I came home with lice. The weather was incredibly hot—like no heat I’ve ever experienced, even after a summer in Texas. And I’d never encountered so many people that had never heard the gospel of Christ before. It was overwhelming in the fact that I felt super alone in my outreach. That there was NO way I could ever reach out to all these people. And that the THOUSANDS I’d seen caked along the streets would never come to know MY Jesus. Thoughts of home were even more overwhelming. There were a lot of people at home who would never even know how to connect with my experience. Many people cared to want to check in or to make sure all was well—but most would never consider leaving the States. Some were afraid of what life would be like outside of their comforts, and some openly admitted that. How in the world could I be a bridge connecting a hungry, lost and dying world with a society that often neglects the opportunity to go & love them?
In my time of seeing SUCH brokeneness, He enabled me to see how He loves these people and desires for us to go to them and love them, to share life together. And if this is something so heavy laden on my heart, my first experience in India wasn’t enough. It’s NOT a check box where we simply say we did a good deed. It’s a lifestyle commitment in recognizing that there is a world with needs and connecting our hearts with fulfilling this passionate dream and making it a reality. When the passion to reach the lost is there, you go. Enough said.
So, here I am… on the World Race. A year and a half later. In SOUTH India, this go round. And life is an everchanging, beautiful exhaustion before me. And I couldn’t be more happy to be right where I am.
