This has been my final ministry week of the World Race. I type that with a great sigh, knowing how bittersweet that statement is. As usual, we spent our time working at the Christian school with Hindu and Muslim students, the daycare with adorable toddlers, Faith Children’s home, and teaching some of the YWAM Discipleship Training School students that live with us at the base. Something I was very excited about at the end of this week was the opportunity I had to work with Team Calvary, who is working in the slum of Bangalore this month. I was hoping and praying for the chance to work with this specific team, especially since I am very close with many of Calvary’s team members and I’ve never served with them before, but finally at the end of the month, my prayers were answered! Nikki, Tracy (from Team W.O.W.) and I piled in an autorickshaw with all the clothes, tents, shoes and bags we were going to donate to the slum in our laps and headed off to the other side of Bangalore to meet Calvary for slum ministry. We have done ministry in the slums before in previous months but I have such a heart for the children in India living in those areas that I really wanted to be able to pour into them here in Bangalore.
Walking into the slum I was immediately reminded of the Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionare,” and how the area I was in looked just like the Mumbai slum in the movie where the three main characters grew up. There were ten to twenty children hanging on me and following all of us the entire time walking up to the tutoring center and we passed countless heartwrenching images of poverty and despair. Once we got to the center, I looked up at a five story cement building filled with classroom upon classroom and heard the sounds of the 250 children laughing inside, waiting for us to come and teach them English, Math and Science. I got to work with one of my best friends on the squad, Emily Toles, that evening, helping her teach her 4-7 year old students reading, writing and spelling in English. I was so impressed with Emily’s students and their proper grammar and spelling, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them children Bible stories including the stories of Noah and Moses. We finished the evening of teaching with Sunday school songs and prayer. I have never seen children so concentrated on singing song with motions and folding their hands properly with prayer in my entire 11 months and it was absolutely precious to watch. When we left the slum a huge group of children surrounded the car, climbing on it and trying to get in the vehicle with us. We were trapped their for a while when finally our driver had to get out and chase the kids away so we could drive out of the slum without ten children hanging onto the sides of the car.
Once we made it back to Calvary’s contacts house, we were greeted with an enormous spread of traditional Indian food (which I’ve gotta say was a treat considering we’d been eating plain white rice and yellow curry for every meal at the YWAM base). Calvary’s contacts are a paramedical couple who have their Masters in Divinity and have previously worked in Mumbai and have moved to Bangalore for their slum ministry. The wife, Latha, and I chatted during dinner and I was able to hear their testimony of how they’ve gotten to this part in their lives. Latha told me she and her husband grew up in very comfortable homes, married and went to seminary school, worked at a church together in Mumbai, moved to Bangalore to be on YWAM staff and then decided one day that they wanted to leave their positions at YWAM to pursue their own ministry devoted to the slum. Latha and her husband, Suresha, were walking through the slum one particular day and God completely broke their hearts broke for these children.
These slum kids are living in one-room shacks, receiving no education, no love, no food and were living in the same room that their mothers were prostituting themselves in and where their fathers were drinking or doing drugs. She realized that these children were rebellous, violent and had no discipline because of their hard lives with no parental support or adult figures to lead me and that a way for them to get discipline, love, confidence and hope for a future would be to support them in school. Latha and Suresha spent time getting sponsors from Indians in the higher caste to donate money so these slum children could go to school and after a lot of work fundraising, they were able to go to the schools in the area and see if the children could enroll. Many of the head masters and administration of the schools said they would absolutely not take untouchable children from that particular slum and that if they did take them it would be spoiling the other children’s education who had worked so hard in their classes.
Only two schools allowed the children to enroll, agreeing to integrate the children of high caste and income families with the poverty-stricken slum kids. The aspect of their ministry that Team Calvary has been apart of is the after-school tutoring portion. They have rented out a building in the slum with teachers in every classroom who tutor them and give them any additional help they need, with a dinner meal at the end of the night for them. A lot of these children will go days without eating and Latha and Suresha have told the children that they can no longer steal or beg for food, and that the Lord was going to provide them food with the tutoring program. The children have stopped stealing, fighting and begging and are now able to have a big meal once a day through their ministry. Another amazing aspect of their ministry is the contract they had all the children’s parents sign, saying that the children would be raised in a Christian discipline environment and that they were going to be teaching the children about Jesus Christ and how to follow the Lord in their tutoring sessions and that the parents had to be supportive of it if they were going to have their child sponsored. Every single family in the slum involved in their ministry has agreed to this and all of the children are learning about what Jesus Christ did for them on the cross and how important it is to have a relationship with Him.
It’s amazing to see such transformation in their lives, especially comparing the children in Emily’s classroom to the children out on the streets going from autorickshaw to autorickshaw begging for money and food. I asked Latha if she did any type of work with the prostitute mothers and she said she does a sewing ministry with them in the slums where she teaches the women a trade and a financial living that doesn’t include them having to sleep with men. After many months and sometimes years, the women have finally given up a life of prostitution and even a life of Hinduism and are now shop keepers, seamstresses and cleaners who follow Jesus Christ as their Savior. Another problem Latha was facing with these women was the incredibly high abortion rate that was going on in the slum. These women were doing very dangerous, at home abortions, killing the babies and sometimes themselves, and Latha told them how precious their children were to the Lord and how God has a purpose for each and every child’s life. Many women would kill their daughters by burying their new born babies in the ground or by putting their babies in pressure cookers and throwing the remains out to the dogs. It makes me sick. Physically sick. And it makes me furious that these things are happening in this part of the world. But this is the real truth of what it’s like growing up as a “slumdog” in India.
Latha knew there was a way to end the madness these women were doing. One day during sewing class, she told the women where her home was and said she would keep a craddle on her doorstep. If any of the women wanted to give their babies up for adoption all they had to do was donate the child in the night, and they wouldn’t have to feel shame or guilt. A few weeks after Latha first made her speech to the women a beautiful 3-day-old baby showed up on her and Suresha’s doorstep. The child had Hepatitis B and both of her feet were cleft but after praying for healing with the Hepatitis B, it is now completely gone and after 9 surgeries on the babies feet she is almost completely healed. They named the child Grace and now she is a radiant 1 and a half year old little girl who lovingly calls Latha and Suresh, “Mommy and Poppa”. I was so inspired by Latha’s testimony that I just had to share it with you all. Clearly the Lord is at work BIG TIME in the slums in Bangalore thanks to Latha, Suresha and their willingness to serve in one of the darkest places in India. These are the kinds of people that have inspired and encouraged me this year…and it is my sincere prayer that one day, I will live a life just like them, serving my Lord in ways that may be hard in earthly terms, but are so very rewarding in the spiritual realm. I’m sad we were only able to spend one evening with Team Calvary, Latha and Suresha, but so grateful to have received the blessing of meeting them and serving alongside their incredible ministry. If you would like to visit Suresha and Latha’s ministry website and blog, please visit: http://karunyaministries.wordpress.com/
