Last month in India, my team and I were living in a remote village where we slept on the floor of a church.
In the evenings around 6:30pm, our ministry host would take our team to a neighboring village to preach at a house church or to pray for families throughout that village. During the day from 8:30am breakfast until 6:30pm ministry, our time was left unscheduled and we were not allowed to leave the church. Additionally, our host only knew a handful of English words and my team and I only knew a handful of Telegu words (our host’s language), so communication was very difficult. As a result of our circumstances, many of our typical comforts were broken and stripped away.
I began noticing a lot of breakage in my physical possessions that I would normally find comfort in. For example, my sleeping pad developed a hole in it (I shouldn’t have let the kids get on it lol), so there were a couple nights when I slept on the hard, wood floor until I was able to repair my pad with duct tape. Also, my phone broke, so it was difficult or impossible to communicate with friends and family, to listen to music or podcasts, and to check social media.
More breakage occurred in the area of our ideals and values, such as communication, privacy, and freedom. Clear communication broke down as we were unable to fully communicate information to our host and he was unable to fully communicate information to us. This lead us to have false expectations about the plans for the day or even for the whole month. We never knew if anything would actually happen the way we thought it would and oftentimes it didn’t happen the way we thought it would. It was easy for us to get frustrated about this because it made us feel as if we had no control over what we did each day.
Also, our privacy was broken down as neighbor kids or community members would randomly come into the church room during the day to play with us or ask us for prayer. Our “room” was rarely a quiet space to take a nap or private place to change clothes. This made it difficult to rest or relax because we always had to be prepared for someone to knock on the door and ask to come in or for a kid to yell at us through window: “Sister!”
Finally, it felt like our freedom was taken away as we couldn’t leave the building without our host. Even if we just wanted to play badminton on the street in front of the church/house with the kids, our host would make the kids give us the badminton gear to use inside the gate (which defeated the purpose: to play with the kids). We also didn’t have freedom to choose what we ate for any meals or to wear certain clothes. Sometimes we even felt like American zoo animals kept in captivity during the day, then paraded around a village at night with small crowds following us, people intently watching us as we ate dinner with our hands, and endless requests for photos and selfies.
Due to our circumstances and the breakdown of so many comforts we would usually turn to, we ended up having to fully depend on God to comfort us and sustain us. Instead of ignoring or numbing discomfort with social media, music, or alone time, all we could do is turn to the Lord through His Word and prayer.
If the Lord hadn’t filled me with His Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc) I would not have been a good example for Christ this month. If tried to live out of my own strength I would have been much more irritated, frustrated, short-tempered, etc.
But thankfully the Lord does sustain us and provide for us. He is enough for us when our own strength is not enough. He knows what we need. He is always with us. He is a good Father and has good plans for us. Even when His plans don’t seem good to us or we don’t understand our circumstances, the Lord will bring goodness from them. His plans are so much bigger & better than our own. Praise the Lord for bringing goodness out of our month in India even though it was the most challenging month of the Race so far.
