Ministry Overview of India
Hey everybody!! We’ve been in India for about two months now and we leave in just a few days. We arrived about January 6, and we leave on March 5. Life here has been incredible and so much different than we ever could have expected.
For the most part, we didn’t have expectations for our time here, but the image of India was still in our minds.
What we expected: saris, to be living in a city, and to be eating a lot of Indian food and doing cultural things.
Instead, we’re staying in a part of north east India that actually isn’t any of those things. We’re staying in a village that is actually historically tribal. There’s about 20 different tribes around this area that all speak different (but similar) languages and all have different things about them.
Here’s a ministry overview of what we have been doing in India:
-VBS at various schools
-improvising with leading several vbs and children’s camps
-church construction (moving mounds of bricks or sand)
-going to a rehabilitation center for addicts called Agape. We go there and share testimonies and message, worship with them, and talk to them about whatever they have questions about.
-sharing testimonies and messages at different churches
-having kitchen days where our team cooks and washes dishes all three meals for the squad
-conversation English- we spend about an hour in intentional conversation with the students (at the Bible college we stay at) who are still learning English and want to get better.
-going to the local Christian hospital to pray over patients and help fold gauze or other tedious work to help out the nurses.
-playing soccer and/or volleyball with the students and building relationships
-encouraging local Christians and our hosts.
-every Friday night a few of us share a message and testimonies to a young adults group and we worship with them.
Each day about two teams will go together to each of the various schools or the rehab center. When we have church construction days, the entire squad will work together.
We have been staying in a dorm of a bible college. There’s about four people to a room and we have bunk beds (thank God for a bed). We take cold bucket showers and use squattie potties.
A Layout of a regular day:
-I wake up at about 5am everyday and go to the gym with a couple teammate
-We come back to the dorm, get ready real quick, grab our stuff, and head up to the bungalow that we have all our meals at. It’s about a half mile walk or so from the dorm. It’s pretty much like a big tent. We sit and have personal devotional time (a lot of us choose to go up to the bungalow early, it’s not mandatory) from about 6:45-8am
-we have breakfast, which would either be lentils, oatmeal, or toast with boiled eggs.
-at about 9:30ish all the teams go their separate ways to ministry for the day
-12:30 lunch. This will either be noodles, soup, noodles, egg rolls, or noodles. Some days we pack our lunch because it will be a longer ministry day and won’t have time to come back to the bungalow. Most days we all meet back for lunch.
-and then for the rest of the day we have choice ministry, and this is where you can really choose if you will press into your time and ministry here. We build relationships, this is the time we do conversational English or play volleyball with the students, or we can do other things, depending on what opportunities have come up.
-5pm- dinner- this will usually consist of rice and steamed vegetables (my favorite) every night. And the main part of the meal will either be fried chicken, curry, potatoes, pork, or more rice.
-a few days a week we will have a teaching, women’s time, or a team teaching after dinner and some days were free to go back to our dorm. It gets dark already at about 5:30.
-after dinner or the teaching, a few of my friends and I head over to our neighbor’s house to hang out and chat for hours. This family has become such great friends of ours. I think they’ll be the hardest part to say goodbye to. I’m going to write their names how they’re pronounced, not how they’re spelled because I have no idea how to: there’s Mompoy- she is the wife, the mom, and the most friendly and comforting person ever. Her husband, Rootsung, he has the biggest heart and is so caring, but would never admit how much he cares about people. He is laid back, and he’s a great father to their son, Malzamtar- he is 8 years old, so smart, full of energy, and LOVES playing with my squad mate, Caleb. He is obedient and kind. Our other neighbor, Holte, is a great man and has been such a great friend. He is married and they have a 2 y/o son.
We go to one of their houses, usually Mompoy’s, pretty much every night. She told us the other day that they have never gotten as close to other previous world racers as she has with us. We always let her know that we value her friendship so strongly.
And then the next day we have a totally different but relatively the same kind of layout of our day.
Transportation to and from ministry looks different day to day also. We either stand piled into in the bed of a truck, with some standing on the bumper on the back (my personal preference because it’s so fun), sometimes we will pile into a tuk tuk, or we will walk.
Off days:
Monday’s and Thursdays we have off days, unless your team is cooking. There’s not too much to do around here so usually most people will go to Life Cafe, which is a missionary-supporting cafe. It’s a nice relief and comforting to go to. I’m actually sitting here right now while writing this. Sometimes people will go to the market that’s nearby. A few times my friends and I will just walk around to explore and see what we can find. This past Monday (Feb. 25), a group of us went on a hike (easily the most amazing hike I’ve ever been on, not including trekking in the Himalayas). This was one of the most fun days on the race, actually in my life. We hiked up to this massive cross that stood on the highest peak around this area and the hiked to a different mountain that had a cave. It rained pretty much the whole time, we all were slipping and falling, and we all laughed so hard. On the way down, we actually had to slide down the mud on our butts because it was so steep and slippery. Ahhh I’ll never forget how fun it was.
Alright yeah, so that’s a ministry over view of our time in India!! Everyday’s ministry looks pretty different, but for the most part we typically have a pretty consistent schedule. Which is kind of a mix between our time in Swaziland and Nepal. Swaziland’s ministry was very consistent-we went to the same carepoint every single day and my team cooked for the squad everyday. Nepal’s ministry was very inconsistent, we didn’t know what we were going to be doing everyday until we found out when we were on our way to ministry and it was always something new. We traveled a lot more in Nepal also. And then here in India, we’ve stayed in the same place, but did different things for ministry everyday, but rotated around the same general ministry sites.
Alrighty- let me know if you have any questions about what we have been doing! Sometimes I don’t know what to include and sometimes I overlook things since they’re everyday life. Love you all and thank you!
-Clarissa
