Hi everyone!
Sorry it’s been so long since an update. My first month in India I didn’t have access to wifi at all, so I wasn’t able to post.
I’ve been in India since January 4th. My flight path was from Canada to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to New Deli, New Delhi to Kolkata, Kolkata to Manipur. Pretty crazy, I know.
Here are a couple facts I’ve learned about India that are pretty normal once you live in them.
1. The call to prayer happens multiple times a day and it’s LOUD.
2. Cows and goats are like dogs here. They walk around everywhere and if you can catch them you can touch them. (Also, I rode an elephant. No big deal.)
3. No bathroom anywhere has toilet paper so we carry it in our purses.
4. You can get Oreos for literally the equivalent of 2 cents in USD.
5. If you’re white, you’re treated as though you’re famous, so I’ve taken pictures probably 200 times with strangers. No joke.
6. Squatty potties are more common than toilets.
7. In the Christian church, if you wanna stand up and dance at any time, you just do it. Hallelujah, right?
I love the country, though, and I love the people and their hospitality.
For the entire month of January, I was in a very small village called Saiphai. I was a teacher 3 or 4 days per week in a school for grades 2-10. I could pick which age group I went to, so it wasn’t all at once. I taught English, cool camp type songs, and best of all, I talked all about Jesus and His magnificent love. One boy in my seventh grade class actually came to know our Jesus as his savior! Praise God. The kids were attentive so it was a perfect opportunity to just talk about The Father.
It was a hard month for me, though, and the days were long and slow because literally the biggest activity in the town was going to buy a small packet of shampoo. It felt so long that I sometimes felt like I had been born and raised in that village. I started to waver a little bit towards to end, feeling worn out and drained in every way.
My prayer life got ridiculously dull and I rarely prayed. I was pretty upset with myself, feeling like I wasted the last half of the month.
But luckily, the Redeemer of all my crap proved himself faithful as ever.
He used my dry season to allow me to be raw with some of the older kids and share that the Father is so slow to anger with us (Exodus 34:6) and always takes us back. It was incredible because, as always, Jesus took the poor choices of mine and used them to glorify his name and redeem my week. He taught me that we can never screw up enough to the point where He can’t redeem it, and that He can even use our crap to bring people to His great love. It was a hard, long month (longest month of my existence), but also a time of learning more of His goodness in my own life and seeing a 7th grade young man come to know Jesus.
In the beginning of February we got team changes. I’ve been living with the same 5 girls for the past 4 months, and now that I got a new team – another team with all girls – I’m with 6 new girls. It sounds simple, but imagine spending every waking moment with people for 4 months, and then suddenly getting new people to spend every waking moment with. It changed things. It’s bittersweet, but new people means new growth, and it also means new sides of myself that aren’t like Jesus being noticed so I can submit them to The Lord. So overall, I’m ready.
For the month of February, I am in a village called Darchawi. It’s not as small and I can even buy some cookies and strange chips when I want.
Oh, and by the way. For anyone who is wondering, I mostly eat rice and potatoes for every meal. Don’t get me wrong, though, we get butter, too!
Anyway, I arrived in this village a couple days ago. So far, we have mainly spoken in church and done home visits, but we will work in a school and hopefully be able to freely roam into the Hindu and Muslim villages right next door. I sleep in a tent here (I did last month, too), but I have a western toilet that flushes so Yee Haw.
I have wifi periodically throughout this month, so please message me! I want to hear from people at home and about what’s going on in yall’s lives. Literally just send me a little paragraph of what you’ve been up to. It would encourage me more than you know! With that being said, I may or may not get back to you, but I promise I’ll read with smiles and pray for every one of you.
Okay, thanks for reading all these words and I’ll get another blog up soon with more detail of how Jesus is shaping me. I love you all.
Love, Your friend in India covered in nasty swollen mosquito bites (haha)
Ps. To Paul who told me my grammar was scary in blogs (I love you): I had a writer help me. So maybe it’s better this time. (MayaKuipers.theworldrace.org – check her out)
