Hello friends… it’s great to be back online again! During our time in India, I was able to check e-mail but unable to get any blogs up. So, when I found myself with four hours to kill in the Malta airport, I though’t I’d try to fill you in on what life has been like this past month.
Our past month in India has been such an incredible time… my heart has been stolen by the wonderful kids at the orphanage, I have been challenged in my own spiritual life, and God just continues to stretch me in new ways. It’s difficult to write about my experience in Delhi, mainly because words just cannot capture the essence of our time there.
I’m sure you all already know that our conditions were rough: extreme heat reaching 120 degrees F, dust storms that penetrated every room / bag / crevice (I’ll be carrying pieces of Delhi with me for a while!), difficulty with communications back home. I also know you don’t need me to tell you that the lives of our orphans aren’t easy. Most of them have parents that are living, but have abandoned them; scabies, lice, and boils are a constant battle; there’s never quite enough food to go around (when there’s food at all).
What I most wish is that I could just bring you all here to the orphanage to see what I can never get across through a blog: the power of lives forever changed by real devotion to Jesus Christ. I’m talking about watching fourteen-year-old young men preaching and leading younger ones in their worship services, knowing that they’ve fasted and prayed more this year than I probably have in my entire life. Or the fact that every morning, eighty respectful and devoted children get out of bed for a six o’clock am church service. During three weeks, I didn’t see a single child complain, cry, or act selfishly. Their adored leaders came to them for a Sunday morning church service, to teach and encourage, despite living on the run from persecution by angry Hindu leaders in the community.
How many Sunday school classes have you ever heard taught on martyrdom? Not as in, ‘God bless those martyrs’, but ‘We will all taste death someday… I pray that you will die the blessed death of a martyr…’ Whoa! This is a very different type of Christianity than I’ve ever seen in the United States. It’s scary, it’s humbling, but… it’s
real.
So, those kids didn’t need me to teach them another Sunday school song. They already worship in three languages. What I could do, and what I did, was to love them, individually. Remind them that even when they feel betrayed by family, or feel lost in a sea of orphan faces, God brought them into this world for a purpose, and knows them by name.
And in return, God continued to break my heart for the poor, the helpless, and the orphans of our world. He showed me that when distractions are stripped away, pure devotion can thrive in a way never seen in America. If I can bring just a sliver of that home with me, perhaps I can be the world-changer I want to be. Perhaps together we can take our eyes off ourselves, and put them back where they belong: on our savior, our Father, our provider, our best friend.
