After two days, four flights, and half a dozen cups of coffee, I was in India and seriously regretting my decision to wear jeans. Having only slept for maybe six hours in our 48 hours of travel, I drifted in and out of consciousness during the bumpy, humid bus ride from Silchar to Hmarkhawlien until we arrived at Partnership Mission Society School.
Later that day, we were formally introduced to our host for the month: John Pudaite. With his genuine demeanor and a joke about the unfortunate initials of Partnership Mission Society (think about it for a second), I immediately liked him. We found out that this month’s format would be a little interesting – while it wasn’t exactly an all-squad month, each team would be working with a PMS ministry somewhere in Northeastern India. Most would be partnered with schools, but my team and one other had a different assignment: we would travel to six different locations with a medical team and provide free clinics.
But first… bricks. Before heading out to our designated sites, we had a few days together in Hmarkhawlien (pronounced MAR-ka-leen). One day, the entire squad piled into two pickup trucks and arrived at the base of a mountain. We were presented with a gigantic pile of bricks and a task: get them up the mountain. Together with the locals, we formed a human chain up the mountain and passed all 4,000 of those bricks up to the top, where they would be used to build a church. At the end of the day, we were all exhausted and covered with red dust, but we had been part of a rare trifecta in short-term missions: we had partnered with locals, accomplished something tangible, and knew what we did would be sustainable.
This region of India is still classified as “unreached,” as the gospel had only been presented to the people two generations previously. John’s father, Dr. Rochunga Pudaite, had translated the bible into the Hmar tribal language and founded Partnership Mission as well as Bibles for the World, which has distributed over 100 million bibles since its start. Dr. Ro, as he was affectionately called, had started a movement, and thousands of children and families are still being reached thanks to his work.
Soon enough, we were off to our first medical clinic. Over the course of two weeks, we conducted seven clinics and saw hundreds of patients. We stayed in some locations for a few days, and others for less than 24 hours, working long, busy days. While the medical team diagnosed patients and prescribed treatment, the rest of us spent our time in a variety of positions – crowd control, registration, pharmacy, and the prayer room.
The prayer room was something else – before each patient left, they would be asked if they wanted prayer. Most would say yes, enter the room, and sit with a Racer who prayed with them. A local pastor would be on standby for anyone who wanted to learn more about Jesus. Starting around the third clinic, I started to hear some interesting stories from my teammates. A deaf woman had been able to hear again. Cataracts cleared up in front of their eyes. A woman with a knee injury walked away with no pain. Devout Hindus entered the room and left wanting to follow Jesus.
I wasn’t in the room for any of this, and I’m not proud of it. Twice I tried to enter the prayer room and push past my fear of praying for healing with complete strangers. But twice I left the room, feeling physically ill and certain that I would either pass out or vomit if I stayed. So I camped out in the pharmacy day after day, filling prescriptions for our pharmacist, Hmunca, to dispense.
I chalked it up to anxiety, and made excuses to stay out of the prayer room, thinking that I, someone who wasn’t sure if she believed in physical healing, was unsuited to pray. The enemy really got me twisted up in that lie, and as I heard story after story of healing, I simultaneously longed to be part of it and talked myself out of going for it. I couldn’t understand it – we had prayed for dozens of people in Mozambique but seen nothing, and here in India the Spirit moved like crazy. I had too many personal hang-ups regarding healing, convictions, and theology to keep track of, and I was paralyzed by them.
It took a while to shake off that residual shame, and it wasn’t until I surrendered it to God some time later that I finally did. There’s nothing I can change about it now, and God used that time of my brokenness, failure, and missed opportunities to teach me lessons that would serve me well in the months that followed. Thankfully the results of this ministry wasn’t dependent on me, and it was still awesome to be part of such an influential, sustainable ministry.
Halfway through our travels, we learned that Dr. Ro had passed away after a brief illness. On our second-to-last day in India, we attended his funeral. Dressed in a piece of traditional Hmar attire, (the women on our squad had been given skirts and the men scarves) we sat in a crowd of thousands as countless people shared the significance this incredible man held in their lives. It was like being at the funeral of a politician – crowds of people had lined the streets as his casket was brought back to India from Colorado, choirs and soloists sang, and for the Christians of the Hmar tribe, this was a historic event. I wish I could have met Dr. Ro, but it is an honor to have been part of his legacy.
