If you follow me on any social media, you’ve seen bits and pieces of what we’ve been up to here in Manipur, India. It’s been wild and fun and beautiful and encouraging! In this post, I want to fill you in on the details of it all. I just filmed a YouTube video talking about the same information, plus video clips from ministry! That should be posted in a couple weeks. But now, without further ado…
MINISTRY DETAILS:
Children’s ministry- we have been able to work with kids a lot, which has been such a beautiful privilege! We helped run a children’s retreat for over 2,000 kids in this state and surrounding states, sharing the Gospel and worshipping with them. We’ve also gone to three different schools and we have been able to split up into different classrooms to teach. I never thought I wanted to be a teacher until those ministry days! Math, English, bible verse memorization, and LOTS of silly songs! We also run bible camps every Saturday morning in different villages. My favorite day of children’s ministry was distributing school uniforms and textbooks to all of the incoming students who are able to receive such things due to their sponsors from across the world. It was beautiful to be on the other end of that process!
Manual labor- due to the fact that Christianity is still fairly new in this state, churches are still being built up. The church in our village is too small to hold everyone that’s coming (HOW DOPE) so we’ve been partnering with the locals to construct the new, bigger church. Moving lots of bricks, bags of sand, and iron rods. We also had a day where we went to the river in a nearby village to clean chairs for the kiddos at the school we would later be teaching at, and we did some construction at the local hospital as well.
Hospital- we get to go to the local hospital and pray over different patients! We also get to help make cotton balls and roll gauze for the different rooms. It’s so wonderful to be in an environment that so many people travel to for inexpensive or free medical attention all because of the love and provision of God!
Agape (rehab ministry!)- possibly my favorite… we go to the facility and host a church service for all of the members. We worship and share testimonies and preach messages of encouragement and hope through Jesus. We then break into small groups and listen to their stories and get to know them on a deeper level. Then we get to just fellowship with them, normally playing volleyball, ping pong or Carom board. Beautiful friendships have been formed and I’m not looking forward to the goodbyes!
Kitchen- our awesome friend Dara cooks all of our meals along with some local men and women. Each day a different team helps in the kitchen all day, helping to prepare meals and do all of the dishes. It’s a treasured time!
Conversational English/squad prayer/relationship building- every afternoon a group of us will go to the college and help the students with their English skills. Every Wednesday afternoon we have corporate prayer as a squad, praying over each other’s requests as well as the country of India as a whole. We also have been able to deeply invest (and be invested in) by locals in our village. We play lots of sports and spend lots of time drinking tea, eating grapefruit, and talking with our new friends.
We do scheduled ministry every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Different teams are scheduled to different ministry sites each day. We have off days on Mondays and Thursdays, and then we have church all day on Sundays. We are often asked to lead a worship song or share a short message with the congregation, which is truly an honor.
Overall, Ministry here has been exciting and full of joy. God is so gracious to allow us to serve in so many different capacities. I’m not ready to leave this place but I’m grateful for the work we’ve been able to do in this season! Thank you for being interested in all that God is doing here! I pray you have the opportunity to serve in this gem of a place someday, too.
-Anna
