I am currently on an 8 hour bus ride back to Hyderabad, India after a crazy first full week in this beautiful country. Everything already seems like a blur from this past week. We had a chance to travel around to small villages and pray for some amazing people. Being Christian is very difficult in India. There is some persecution and you lose a lot of benefits that people of Buddhist or Hindi faith gain from the government. Your children do not get funding to get through school, you are sometimes kicked out of family lines, you are discriminated against for job opportunities, and considered an untouchable the rest of your life. If you identify yourself as a Christian, you are automatically put in the lowest caste in India. The untouchable caste is the largest caste in India making up 80% of the population. These families are separated from other castes with different entrances to houses and drinking from other wells. They are considered to be in a permanent state of impurity. My squad got the chance to go to villages filled with these so called “untouchable” families. I was able to hold the hands of the children, lay hands for prayer over the families, and pray for the Lord’s blessings. There were amazing testimonies from these villages that we had the chance to visit. As my team went out into the village we were able to see healing, deliverance, and the faith of the people grow with our visit. We were welcomed into these villages like kings and queens. They prepared meals, marigold necklaces, and even a parade in our honor. I have never been so humbled in my entire life. Knowing that we were coming to their villages to pray for them, they opened their hearts and their homes as we walked house to house. We walked off of the bus never really knowing what kind of prayer requests we would hear but living every day expectant to see God work through us. Some of my fondest memories of India will come from some of those prayers being answered and seeing people in the village praying for their neighbors. We would sometimes visit 2 villages in a day but the stories that would come from a night of prayer are some of my favorites on the race. I will share two stories from my team that have really changed the way that I look at prayer.
One thing that really surprised me when we started praying for families in the villages was their idea that white people hold more power in prayer than they do. These people truly believed that our prayers held more authority than theirs would. Boy was our squad excited to tell them that the same spirit that lives in us lives in them. They can pray for their neighbors, healing over their children, and even pray for my team. We were showing these people the power of prayer one house at a time in the third village that we visited. Of course their was some hesitance over the idea of praying out loud in front of us but with encouragement I could see a whole new door open up for these women who were neighbors. A lot of the men in the village worked farther away so they weren’t home yet but we got a chance to pray for these beautiful mothers and their children. After we prayed we asked them to pray for their children. At the first house, we asked the mother to pray for her child but I felt, as I was listening to her speak Telugu, that she was praying for my team. I asked the translator who she was praying for and she confirmed it was us. I had a chance to tell her the authority her prayers hold and how she is a woman of prayer. After praying with her, she followed us through the entire neighborhood bringing more women with her to pray with us. I have never been more encouraged to teach on the importance of prayer for these women of God. We learned that all of the women were baptized and had dedicated their lives to serving the Lord. Their smiles and joy together showed the people of peace that they truly were. At the end of the street we had 4 mothers and their children following us and praying with us. My heart was overjoyed in thinking that these women would remember that their prayers will be answered as well. We don’t have some special direct line to Jesus that they don’t have. Empowering these women and families in other villages to pray was one of the coolest things as they laid hands on their neighbors and family members praying prayers from their own hearts in their own language. I pray that they continue that understanding of community and they are able to continue to lift each other up in prayer.
In our fifth village, I experienced so many cool moments. We found out before we were sent out with a translator that the village we were praying in was almost 100% people of the untouchable people group. These are the people treated like garbage and considered lower than rats. There were so many houses in the village and we wanted to bless as many as we could so our team split up into two groups. So two of my teammates and I headed out with a girl who didn’t speak very much English. Our second stop was at a house with a very big family. Their were three young babies and an older son. Since our translator didn’t really speak English we didn’t know any specific prayer requests for the family. We started to pray and I kept feeling like I needed to pray for a breathing problem in the family. The little girl was right next to me and I could tell that she was very congested. I could hear her breathing her lungs were so stuffed up. I was praying for her and the rest of her family but after saying amen I really felt like I needed to pray for that breathing problem specifically over the child. We were rushed to the next house because there were so many houses and I couldn’t communicate to the translator that I wanted to pray for someone specifically. I was so distracted praying for the next house and luckily it was our last one so I could grab our translator that spoke perfect English. I asked her if we could go back to the house and ask if someone was having a breathing problem. The translator asked the family if someone young in the family was having a breathing problem and the family looked surprised. They pointed to the baby boy and told our translator that he was born without a proper uvula in the back of his throat. The family is saving up for surgery but it is taking longer than they would like. After they explained the situation they asked me how I knew that someone in the family had a breathing problem. I had so much joy sharing that it was the Holy Spirit telling me that someone in this family needed specific prayers and that He wants to heal their child. I was able to hold this baby boy and pray for healing with his family. He looked at me with his big brown eyes while I was praying with a curiosity and a sense of peace, which is hard to come by when a strange white person is holding you and saying words you don’t understand. Do I know if the little boy was healed? No, not really. But I believe that Jesus can heal him. After I prayed for him I told the family to continue to pray because their prayers are heard and God wants to heal their child. I loved being able to go back to the family and encourage them in their faith. Sometimes I get so caught up in my head thinking that maybe it was something I was telling myself that someone needed prayer for a breathing problem. In the end, it was God whispering in my ear and asking me to be bold. Their were so many amazing stories from that night. If you want to hear more about it, remind me to talk about it when I see you!
My first week in India and we are already seeing healing and empowerment in the people here. They are strong in their faith and growing in understanding just how powerful their prayers are. I am glad that we were able to walk through their village and hear their prayer requests. I am also thankful that where I live, I am able to say with pride that I am a follower of Jesus. These people face death threats and persecution for what they believe. The decision to follow Jesus brings shame and persecution on the individual and eventually their whole family. If the whole family does not want to follow the believer, they can disown them and have them sign papers to never speak to any family member again. These people that we talked to and prayed for knew that risk and still trusted their spirit. Through that trust, these mothers, fathers, and children were able to see miracles happen in their communities. Not just because of our prayers, but because of their prayers and their faith in who Jesus is to them. I hope that through our visits, these villages grow as a prayer community. I hope that you will pray with me for the people that experienced healing, saw deliverance, and accepted Jesus into their hearts. We only spent maybe max 5 hours in around 7 villages but I hope that our prayers and teachings are never forgotten for these strong beautiful people.
