India!! I honestly never thought I would fall in love with India. I thought that I’d get through the month, the food and the smells then move on and be good with never coming back. I was totally wrong, this month has changed my life in so many ways and as if that wasn’t enough, God has chosen to use this month to change the rest of my race.
As many of you may already know, I was raised up to be a squad leader during our Leadership Development Weekend in Bucharest at the end of last month. Since then, the other two raised up squad leaders (SQLS-Hunter and Amy) and myself have been training all of India. This has looked like a lot of moving, a lot of sessions with our alumni squad leaders and a lot of prayer. There are so many things that go on behind the scenes when a group of 48 people are traveling all over the world as missionaries and getting to be a part of facilitating how that happens logistically and spiritually has been a humbling and exhilarating experience.
Specifically at the beginning of this month, after a few days of training with just the squad leaders we split up and my alumni leader, Jen, and I visited team Luna working at a special needs children’s home in Hyderabad called Sarah’s Covenant Homes. Here, God revealed to me that I had a lot of judgments deep in my heart about special needs kids that were not designed by the father, nor were they good for my soul. Judgments, like “these kids probably don’t understand whats going on” and “how would they be able to talk to God if they cant sit up or speak or eat themselves?” . It breaks my heart to say that I had these judgments in my heart, but its true and even though they weren’t thoughts I had often they kept me from loving the children and investing in them the same way I would with any other kid or adult that I would usually share the gospel with, tell a bible story to or even cuddle while watching Thomas the train…so naturally, God decided to break me of these misperceptions….
One afternoon, I was sitting with a little girl named Jamila. If you are a visual person, here is her individual page with pictures of her…http://schindia.com/children/jamila/ Anywho, I was playing music on her foster mom’s ipad and she started growing very frustrated. I asked her what she was wanting me to do, but because she doesn’t communicate verbally and I don’t know sign language, I just couldn’t understand what it was that she needed. So I put the ipad down and just sat and looked at her. Slowly, she scooched closer to me and reached over my leg to grab the ipad. As she reached over, drool started slowly dripping from her mouth and onto my leg. Without thinking, I said “ohhhhhhh” and grabbed a towel next to us to wipe it off. Jamila, has hemiplegia and doesn’t have a lot of control over her muscles so doing thinkgs like taking her hand from one location to another specific location is really hard for her; however, as I grabbed the towel she slowly brought her little hand over to the drool spot on my skirt, then began to wipe it away and sign “im sorry” with her other hand. THIS IS WHERE I LOST IT, I started crying so hard. Even though, I had assumed that she didn’t know what happened or cared about what happened she did everything in her power to show me that she was sorry…and the thing is that she shouldn’t have to! She has no control over the fact that she was born with hemiplegia, she didn’t WANT to drool on me, she didn’t WANT to not be able to speak to me but she was trying her best to show me love even when I just assumed that she wouldn’t be able to because she was born differently In this moment, I felt God teaching me that even if communication is difficult, even if someone with special needs acts differently, looks differently, or isn’t able to control themselves in the same way they were still PERFECTLY created by the same creator and God NEVER messes up. He made these children with the same amount of love, hope and compassion that he made me with. He sent his son to die for these children in the same way that he sent the same sacrifice for me and my faulty perceptions of if and how these children understand the gospel is irrelevant because the gospel is just as important to them as it is to me and there is no doubt in my mind that God speaks to them just as he speaks to me. So, after I got wrecked of my own pride and selfishness in Hyderabad with Team Luna, we had a few more days of training and then moved to a city about 3 hours north called Nizamabad to visit team Life Surrendered
Im still in Nizamabad and honestly it’s a little difficult for me to write this because talking about my time here makes it real to me that I have to leave in 2 days….and I don’t want to leave. I want so badly to continue to go village to village sharing the gospel with these hindu people every night with wonderful Pastor Danial and incredible translator Abhi. Ive grown SO SO much just in this last week and a half here and God has taught me so much about the power of prayer and just why he asks us to pray healings over people and pray to cast out demons whereas, In America, I never had to think about that stuff because I never had people ask for healing and I never noticed the hold satan had over people around me. Because I have white skin, everyone looks and stares and asks to take pictures or asks for our autographs…which im not gonna lie, has been really weird, but God has been able to use the fact that we look different in order to bring in people to the church that would never normally come simply because they want to meet an American. And yes, I realize that to our knowledge no one has become a Christian in the last week but when those thought creep in my head I realize what a HUGE decision it is to hand over your entire life to ONE God when you’ve spent your whole life worshipping THOUSANDS of them. Hundreds of the people we have talked to this week have NEVER heard the gospel before and It may take time, but I am confident that it will make a difference in their hearts and that, in God’s timing, he will reveal truth and life to them individually.
Anyways, I have to stop typing because Im about to cry thinking that tomorrow might be my last time in this city doing village ministry in India….but bottom line is that Ive loved being here, and God IS working. Not because im here, not because the world race comes here or because we are white but because HE LOVES these Indian people and desires for them to him more fully. Thank you for praying for me, thank you for supporting me and being a part of the ministry here in India!
Hope this update was helpful, my wifi situation has been very limited this month but its actually been working the last couple days so Ive been able to post a few pics/videos on my facebook (Andrea Lynn Ruddock) if you wanna check those out (:
Travel update: I have a few more days of some final Squad Leader training in Hyderabad and then we leave to fly to Nepal on 12/4. Please pray for me and my squad as we finish well and then move on to Nepal, its gonna be so hard to leave and I know its only going to get harder as the months go on but God knew that this was an 11 country thing when he laid it on my heart to come so I am confident he will give me the strength to say goodbye when the time comes.
