July 9, 2012
First “Travel Day” and First Day in India!
“Travel Day” is less of a day and more of a time period on the World Race. It’s the time you leave one place and get to your ministry site. So technically, we’re still on a travel day right now even though we did make it to Andhra Pradesh (the region/state we’re doing ministry in). Here’s a bit of how our first “travel day” went:
- Waited in the airport all day because we had to leave the hotel but our flight wasn’t until 11pm
- Flew 12.5 hours to the country of Qatar (Most interesting thing in the airport – I saw a man in all white with several women following him who were dressed in black from the top of their heads to their feet without even any eye slits that I could see. Really bizarre.)
- Flew 5 hours to Calcutta, India where we had a 10 hour layover (We stood out a lot to the people and Indians would line up around us and just stand there staring at us – especially when a few people brought out their instruments)
- Flew 2 hours to Hyderabad, India
- Got on a bus that would take about 7 hours, which turned into about 10 hours, getting us to Andhra Pradesh at 3am this morning.
After all of the traveling, attempting to sleep sitting up, and seeing hut after hut and warehouse after warehouse on the bus ride, I was thrilled to see that we would be staying in a large room of a church building for at least the night. We have a bathroom with an actual toilet and a sink! I had my first bucket shower this morning and the cold water was actually so refreshing after 3 days of traveling and sweating. I’m already learning to appreciate the little things.
We met a couple of ministry contacts this morning and learned what our teams will be doing this month. The organization is called India Christian Ministries (ICM). Three teams will be working with children at an orphanage and a special needs home, and the other five including my team will be doing village ministry. We are leaving tomorrow morning for the village and will probably be staying with a pastor there who will house and feed us. The pastor will then show us the ropes of entering into the surrounding villages, meeting and praying for people and inviting people to a nightly meeting where we will worship, share testimonies and a message and invite people to accept Jesus. The villages we will be entering do not currently have a church, so we will be helping with the church planting by sharing the gospel to the village and raising up believers to establish a church there. So exciting!
Preaching and teaching and sharing my testimony in front of a group of people, especially a group who don’t speak my language, is pretty intimidating. But weirdly, I’m not too nervous about it. At least not yet. I’ve felt the presence of the Holy Spirit really powerfully today and I know God is going to be leading me and my team in all of this. I love this new dependence on him that is so necessary in day-to-day life now. Even on day 1 I’m seeing how much I will be relying on the Lord for everything this year, and I love it so much.
Thank you for keeping up with me and for reading! Your support means the world to me.
And please don’t forget to email me and keep me updated on your lives too!!
In love,
Alison
