Sorry everyone this was not finished and was not meant to be sent yet, but here is the full first part!:)
Caution! Some of the things I am going to write about may be quite graphic and at times hard to read, but i’m going to try to give you the best description of my experiences in India this month.
I went into India this month with two new team members and a new name. We are no longer called trailblazers, we now call ourselves blazetrailers! We loved our name so much that when we were told to change it we just switched the words. We like to think we are quite smart as well as funny thank God for a sense of humor!
The first city we went to in India was Kolkata, the city is quite polluted so I got really bad allergies and got sick for the first few days. While stuck in bed God started to prepare my heart for what was going to happen in my month in India. When I was feeling better my team and I went to Mother Theresa’s home. Mothers Theresa has several homes all around the world, but the home we went to is where she lived and worked. As we went to volunteer they led us into a room in the basement and fed us bread and chai while they counted people and decided where they would send each group of people. The nuns go through the process of splitting up the volunteers and sending them to all different kinds of homes around Kolkata. Their is a children’s home, leprosy home, elderly home and a home for the sick and dying. We were chosen to walk to the elderly as well as the sick and dying home. As we made our journey we walked through the slums of India. Their were cows and trash every where. I will never forget the smells or the people, to be honest my heart wanted to shut down and did a bit. I was feeling so much compassion and my heart was in so much pain at the same time. Their were little mini Gods and man made temples every where, this place was so heavy. It was in this moment I realized how blessed I was to know Jesus, to have grown up in america and to know what it means to be loved. I prayed as we walked down those streets I prayed for the people, I prayed that they would know they were sons and daughters. I spent a lot of time for repenting, I asked God to forgive me for all times ive complained about america, I asked him to forgive my entitlement and selfishness.
When we arrived we were quickly put to work washing clothes and hanging them. This took about an hour and then we went and met the women. We began going through out the room massaging their feet and hands as well as painting their nails. I will never forget meeting this lady who’s face was so deformed you could see her bone at the top of her nose. She also had no lips and most the skin on her face was gone so you could see all the curves of her skull, her eyes were burned out and in their place was just thin pieces of flesh. when I heard her story my heart broke, her husband had gotten angry at her and poured either boiling water or oil down over her head.
As I massaged these women’s feet and hands I prayed that God would reveal himself to them. Their was a huge language barrier and many of them didn’t talk so I loved with the hands that my father gave me. Sometimes we don’t need words, we just need the love of our father to flow through us and touch the person in front of us.
After helping with this for a while I felt like I was supposed to go find my team mate Rosie. She is a nurse and i’m fascinated by the medical field so I went to go work with her and some doctors. The medical supplies are very minimal and the nuns don’t believe in pain killers so many of the patients we saw were in terrible pain. The first patient had golf size holes on either side of her head that were bandaged up. As I watched the doctors they all got ready as they opened the bandage and pulled out the gauze because the hole in her head was full of maggots! They all quickly pulled them out with tweezers so they couldn’t hide, then cleaned the wound and quickly bandaged it back up! We then went into a room and as the doctors were bandaging up a patient I was drawn to this lady in the corner. She was so skinny you could see every part of her skull and every muscle and vein in her body. She couldn’t talk and wasn’t coherent I could tell she was Hindu. My heart was overwhelmed with love and compassion for her. I laid my hands on her head and began asking Jesus to encounter her in that moment that she would know him. Her heart beat was was so slow and I knew she was in excruciating pain. The doctors finished with their patient and came over to her to see what needed to be cleaned and bandaged. As they removed her bed cover my heart sank her hip bone was protruding out of her skin and the flesh on her back was rotting away. Everything in her body had shut down and she was going to die. It was in this moment that my heart began to pray that Jesus would take her, I prayed he would encounter her and take her home quickly. Many might judge me for this prayer and ask why I didn’t ask for her to be healed. To be honest if I was reading this blog I might ask the same question, but all I can say is that is what I felt the holy spirit leading me to pray. So I prayed that this 60 something year old woman would know her father for the first time and be accepted into glory. She didn’t die in that moment, but as her heart beat got slower and slower the doctors said she would probably pass on later that day.
Many might say seeing these hard things would shut a person down and honestly they would. The old me would have mourned for days and wanted to shut down, but God is doing a new thing. After I left this home I was sad and angry, but most of all I was hungry. I was hungry for more of Gods loving power, I was hungry to show the world my dad. He is the answer to every hurt and every pain, he is the answer to every problem and sleepless night. If the world could feel and understand his love for just a minute they would never be the same. The love of God compels me to action, I don’t do it out of a place of striving. I do it out of a place of knowing his love has set me free and that love compels me to action. We were made for love, but most of all we were made to be loved by a beautiful Father.
I pray that as you go throughout your day today that you will encounter the love of our heavenly father. I pray that all your pain, worry and fear would fade away as you experience his overwhelming love. Most of all I pray that you would know that you are loved and that you were made with a purpose and a big part of that purpose is to be loved by our father.
