I’m sitting here trying to think about how to begin to explain what India is like and what I have witnessed here, but I don’t know that any words I can say will do it justice. There’s simply no way to describe in typed form the smells, tastes, culture, views, people, and etc. that are India. But as I look back at my time spent in India, I have realized that it is simply the everyday lifestyle that I loved the most. It was the simplicity of waking up, living, sleeping, and doing it all over again in India each and every day. So I would like to share with you a small picture into what an average day here in India as a World Racer looks like for me.
I open my eyes and instantly become aware of the immense amounts of sweat that cover my body and the air filled mat that I am sleeping on top of. India is hot! The temperatures usually very from 92-105F degrees during the heat of the day and with little to no air flow and simply just a few ceiling fans, the warm temperatures create a challenge for sleeping through the night. I wake up and look around at the 11 other bodies on sleeping mats that are surrounding me in our small room and I prepare myself to begin another day. I go outside of my room into the common area of the ICM (India Christian Ministries) building where we are staying to eat breakfast with the rest of my squad. It is all squad month here on the World Race, which means my entire squad of 43 people all live together in the ICM building (or “the compound” as we have begun to call it here) and do all of our life activities outside of ministry together. Breakfast usually consists of something such as Chipati (a mix of a tortilla and pita bread which is absolutely delicious but very filling), boiled eggs, bananas, curd, or sometimes rice or another mystery Indian breakfast item.
After eating breakfast, we usually have an open period of time between 9am-2pm. This time is used for all squad activities or worship, spending time in our teams, running errands, hanging out, having quiet times, visiting with the ICM staff, doing laundry, and etc. After lunch, which usually consist of mostly rice and doll (a type of gravy for the rice), we prepare to leave for all of our individual team’s ministries for the day. In the case of my team, Team Aperture, we wait for our driver Vinny to pick us up in his auto (a car resembling a small jeep). After he arrives, we all pile into the auto with 1-2 people sitting in the back seat which consists of a skinny sliver of wood for a seat and has only a knee high tailgate. We call it the “lookout seat” and it has grown to become one of my favorite places to be.
On an average day of ministry we will drive anywhere from 45min-1.5 hours to the rural village where we will spend the rest of our day doing ministry with the local village church there. As soon as our auto starts to enter the village we begin to see people coming to their doors and we begin to get many smiles and waves as we drive through. That’s been one of the little things that I have greatly enjoyed in being in the villages, simply the pure joy and excitement that the people there have surrounding our arrival and interacting with us. They often make me feel at home in their villages before we have even stopped the auto. Once we finally arrive at the village church, we usually are ushered inside of it (or directly outside of it if it is very hot inside) and brought plastic chairs to sit on. From the minute we arrive, the church people begin serving us and it never takes more than 10-15 minutes before they have sent for one of the children or other church adults to go to the nearest village shop to buy cold sodas (Thumbs up, Limca, Sprite and Coke) for us to drink. They rarely even ask us if we would like drinks, but instead they simply just get them because they want so badly to serve us and make us feel welcomed to their village.
After we have spent some time resting from our long journey (these are their words, not mine), we spend time sitting down and visiting with the local pastor of the church. Our translator, Pastor K, translates for us as do a short interview with the local pastor to find out more about his story as well as how God is specifically working in his village. We end our interview by sharing some encouraging words with him and encouraging him in the work he is doing already. I have really grown to enjoy and appreciate that time spent with the pastors. It has been amazing to hear how God not only personally brought each of them as individuals to know Him personally, but also how God has brought them specifically to pastor in the villages that they are. I love being able to see how intricately God orchestrates everything to fit so perfectly together for His plans and for our own good.
Following our time of encouragement with the local pastor, we gather our stuff and prepare to go on a prayer walk through the village. The local pastor and our translator, Pastor K, lead us from house to house throughout the entire village and instruct us to pray for the people of each household that welcomes us in. We would pray over men, women and children and pray for whatever requests that they asked of us. We prayed over sicknesses, disabilities, demon possession and oppressions, heartbreak over loss, protection, and much more. This part of our ministry this month is actually what has been the most surprising and growing experience for me. When we first began these prayer walks in our first days of ministry, Pastor K would instruct us to give only short prayers and to move quickly through the village so that we could get to everyone before nightfall. I often would struggle to know how to pray for these people who so willingly welcome us into their homes and kindly request our prayer. I didn’t feel adequate to be praying for these people’s healings and many different requests. I would think, “Who am I to pray over these people when it is very likely that they have greater faith than I even do? They rush up to us to ask us for prayer and eagerly await for us to lay a hand on them and pray over them. They have more faith that our prayers will heal and restore them than I do and yet they still want MY prayers.”
The first couple weeks of our ministry here, these were the thoughts that often ran through my mind and I would often get frustrated when I would continue to pray over people with as earnest of faith as possible but still fail to see any immediate results of those prayers. But then God taught me something that I should have realized from the start. He reminded me that my prayers actually have nothing to do with me and their success rate isn’t dependent on me at all. He reminded me that I don’t heal people, He does. And He showed me that my frustrations about not seeing my prayers immediately answered were completely selfish frustrations. I had to ask myself what my main motives were for wanting to witness the Indian people be comforted, see them healed and hear them say they feel His presence. And when I did I realized that I had been looking for my own gratification through seeing my prayers be answered in these people’s lives. That was a tough realization for me to come to and it disgusted me to see the kind of control my flesh had been having over me. But the good news in coming to that realization is that our God is a God who shows us unlimited forgiveness and grace and He extended that to me. As the month went on, I prayed that God would give me the words to say in my prayers that would be completely honoring and glorifying to Him and that when I didn’t have the words that He would intercede for me as He says He will do in Romans 8:26-27. As it comes to the end of this month, I can now look back and see so many ways that God was moving through my team and I’s prayers and I can see many instances in which He truly did answer the requests that we made to Him. Just when I had thought God had taught me a lot about prayer in Nepal, He showed me while I was in India that there is still much more for me to learn.
After the prayer walks through the villages, we would go to a church families home or the sometimes the church and eat a traditional Indian dinner (Chipati, white rice, and chicken curry) that was freshly cooked for us. (Fun Fact: Ongole, India (where we live) is actually known to be the spiciest city in the spiciest state in the spiciest country in the world) After dinner, we would return to the church where several of the village people had already been praying and worshiping while we ate in preparation for the evening church service. Over loud speakers that rested on top of the churches, they would be singing loudly and passionately into the microphones songs of worship to our one and true God for the entire village to hear. Their boldness and passion taught me more than I can explain. During the church service, there would be anywhere from 15-50 village people (women, children and some men) in attendance. My team and I would share 2 testimonies/words of encouragement and 1 message with those in attendance as well as over the microphone for the rest of the village to hear as well. This was a great opportunity to really learn how to let God speak through us words of truth and encouragement and just enjoy preaching His love and saving grace to the villages. After the service ended, many people would come up to us again for some final prayers before we leave. After many prayers and a long evening of ministry we would load up our auto and head back to the ICM building to try and get some rest before the next day.
So that is a small glimpse into my every day life here in India. It is far from ordinary and far from what I have always considered “normal”, but I have loved every day of it.
Every day of our ministry here in India, we travel to a new village. We meet hundreds of people, we hold hundreds of children’s hands, we look into many different eyes, and we pray over many different lives. We see God moving and we see Satan fighting back. We see people serving many different gods and worshiping man made idols. We see people who are in search of hope and love in their lives. We see people who are not too unlike the rest of the world in that they simply want to be loved and cared for and cherished. God is beginning to show me that it doesn’t matter where in the world I go because when it comes down to it, every human being in the world is searching for the same things. They are searching for love, for purpose, for hope, for grace, and for acceptance. And I get the amazing opportunity to be someone who tells them that those things all exist and that they all exist in the God who created them in His very image and knows everything about them. But I know now more than ever that I don’t have to go to India to have the opportunity to share that hope with people in need of it because those people are in every country and those people stand before each of our very own eyes every day.
