It’s been a long time since my last blog, and I have a couple big and important updates! Also I realized that I haven’t shared anything about my time in India, so an update on what I did there will immediately follow.
For all of you who don’t know, I arrived back home in the States on Christmas Day, having left the field and my squad in India due to health concerns. For the past 6 weeks, I have been resting, recovering, and reflecting over my last 4 months overseas. When I arrived home, I wasn’t sure if rejoining my squad at any point was an option, but after getting the “okay” from my doctor, I asked to return and join my squad in Costa Rica when they transition there in the beginning of March. A week or so ago, I received approval from AIM to rejoin my squad!
I’m really expectant that the Lord is going to move in my heart in big ways in Costa Rica, and I’m excited to see what life there will look like for me. I would love if you would be praying for safe travels for myself and my squad in March; for some big heart change and eye opening experiences in Costa Rica, and for my relationship with the Lord to grow in leaps and bounds.
Thank you all so much for your continued prayers and support of me in this crazy adventure!
India is dusty. The dust is in the air, on the floor, on our clothes, on our skin. In North East India where I was, the temperature was cold in the mornings and when the sun set (which was around 5 PM), and warm enough to be in short sleeves in the middle of the day. I took for granted having hot showers in Malaysia – in India it was bucket showers and ICE COLD water only. Every three or so days I would force myself to take a shower; yelling every time the freezing water touched me. Often the power would go out while I was showering (unreliable electricity was another reality of life in India), and I would be trapped soaking and blind in the bathroom, yelling for one of my teammates to bring me a light.
Every meal was cooked and served by an Indian man named Dara, whom we all grew to know and love. Potato curry, cooked vegetables, and soup were a few of the meals Dara made for us. It was really nice to have traditional meals cooked for us every day and not have to go out and buy food on our own, as was the case in Thailand and Malaysia.
Ministry looked different every day. Each day we met outside on the steps of our building and waited for our Indian liasons to come and get us and take us to our ministry location for that day.
One day we painted classrooms at a local school while belting out songs with the locals we were working alongside. Another day we filled bags with dirt and carted them back and forth for a building project.
One day we were told we would be going mud fishing. We showed up to this pond as the locals were draining it, and watched them work together to catch fish in large nets. Later we were allowed to join and catch them with our hands, but I got scared of the leaches and decided not to get in.
My favorite ministry days were when my team and our sister team got to go to a drug rehab place called Agape. I would say there are about two dozen men who live there – some of them long-term residents as they have no place else to go anyway. Their ages range from 20 to some in their 50s. The first thing we do when we go there, is gather together with the men and sing songs and share with them whatever the Lord lays on our hearts. Then we just hangout with them. Some of us play volleyball, some of us sit around while a couple men play the two beat up guitars that they have and sing together; picking songs out of the well used hymn book.
But one of my favorite things to do with the men was play Karem. Karem is basically the same concept as pool, just on a small square table that we sat around with a hole in each corner, and small clear and white discs at the top. The goal was to flick the discs of your color into the holes using a bigger disc, just like how you would use the Q ball in pool. It was a super fun game, and a lot harder than the men made it look, as I quickly found out.
The days at Agape always passed quickly and ended with us being served the best Red Tea and crackers and then saying goodbye and telling the men that we’d try to come back as soon as we could.
Almost every afternoon was free, and some days we would go into the town at the bottom of the mountain we were living on and walk to the American cafe – the only place we found with WiFi. The area we were in did not have many white people passing through often, and the long stares, catcalls and pictures being taken of us were a common and somewhat uncomfortable occurrence.
I learned a lot about hearing from the Lord in India. I used to struggle a lot with hearing from the Lord, to the point where sometimes I wondered if I ever actually had heard from Him. I learned that God doesn’t necessarily speak in the ways I assume He will or think He would. I learned that the reason I felt like I hadn’t heard anything from Him was because I was never truly listening in the first place, and that my lack of hearing was not His lack of speaking.
Listening and waiting for the Lord to speak is a process and one that I’m still not good at, but I have faith because He’s proved faithful over and over again.
India was an amazing experience and I’m so blessed to have been able to live life there for almost a month. Now it’s on to Costa Rica!
