We headed off from our nice layover in Qatar to Hyderabad, India. We arrived in India at 3am, finally got our bags and a wonderful lady from California met up with us. She is a missionary in India and you can tell right off the bat she was created to serve in India. She has lived here 15 months and LOVES it! She said with zeal and a huge smile on her face, “Oh you will fall in love with it! The smells, the noises, the food, ahhh! Just everything!”
At the beginning of my race I was least excited about India. I percieved it to be…well like she said, smelly, noisy,hot, and very aggressive. So meeting this woman so passionate about India, I remember thinking to myself, “Praise God someone is called here and loves it!” We got on our bus crammed in and rode to the convent/retreat center. We passed traffic and saw “autos”, 3 wheeled taxis. We heard loud obnoxious honks every 2 seconds. We saw trash on the sides of the roads.
When we got there, we got off the bus and had to walk down the street and passed a lady in a sari holding the hand of a little boy with a shirt on and no undies. Next we passed a man pumping water from a well. Everyone we passed gawked at us! 30 white people with huge packs are a sight to see. I thought right then, yup! We’re in India!
We walked in our retreat center with nuns greeting us at the door. We then went to put up our stuff. Best part was Drew and I had our own room! From what I gather from most people, staying a night in Qatar the night before, made it quite difficult to adjust to India, since we went from staying in a nice hotel with AC and nice comfy bed to staying the night in a convent/retreat center with squatty potties, bucket showers, no AC(although luckily, it’s “winter” here which means it’s only 100 degrees instead of 120), mosquitos galore, and pretty much sleeping on a board. However, I have had a severe cold since a few days before we left so I didn’t feel so luxurious in Qatar anyways, which I guess in a way was a blessing, because I noticed how many of my squadmates got homesick from feeling “normal” from just one day.
(hotel roof in Qatar) (bucket shower at retreat center)
Don’t get me wrong, it was still a big adjustment from Romania-as you’ll see in my future blogs. Romania was also considered luxurious compared to here. We had a washing machine we could use one day each week. We had running water, electricity, and the weather was perfect! It was even cold sometimes!
We stayed there 2 days to have culture training. We learned all kind of important things, such as, do everything with your right hand only (because they wipe “you know what” with their left so it’s considered unclean), ladies must covertheir shoulders, knees, nothing fitted, and cover ankles (however-showing your midriff is totally ok…yup!-that’s different), boys have to wear pants and button up shirts, (another side note-it seems the hottest countries are always the ones you have to cover the most), when praying or speaking in church for ladies-cover your head, no smiling at the opposite sex or eye contact-because that is considered flirting (this may be the hardest for me! …I’m a happy girl, what can I say?), we learned about the insane amount of Idol worship, take your shoes off when entering a church or home, the caste system, about the ministry, about an amazing children’s home for disabled kids (which in their culture- they believe probably means they deserve it because they did something wrong in their last life. That is infuriating to me!), and even about arranged marriages.
2 days later and we were off to go to our different “homes” for the month and start ministry! I was feeling so many emotions-
excited, nervous, dreading it in some ways, and a little overwhelmed. But Indians are very spiritual people. There is so much going on in the spiritual realm here, so much spiritual battle, that I know I will see God do amazing things and my faith will grow and if I can see more of Him and if this will stretch me out of my comfort zone and demand that I lean on Him…well then that’s perfect! That is why I came here! To share His love and to know Him more! Let the journey begin!
