I love taking photos. There are so many great moments in life, so many beautiful scenes and I want to chronical and immortalize them all – I want them to last forever. I am extremely unashamed to say that Instagram is one of my favorite things – it’s a scrapbook of my favorite moments.
Well my phone is my only camera and these days we aren’t as close as we once were. When your phone doesn’t have service, you don’t have Wi-Fi and you’ve sworn off social media, there’s really no need for it to be your no. 1 pocket companion. So I apologize for my lack of photos. The photos I do have will be going on Facebook in a month and will eventually end up in the “photos” section of my blog once I figure out how/have enough Wi-Fi to do that.
So here are some verbal snapshots of my life right now.
Home. Or our home for this month. We are living in a partially constructed dorm building for the seminary next door. By partially constructed I mean people are daily hauling bricks and cement up bamboo scaffolds to build the second and subsequent levels. My roommate Victoria (from team Meek & Mighty) and I share an unfurnished room with a window, electricity and an outlet. I love it! Squatty potties, no hot water and bucket showers are all things here, but I’m pretty used to them by now.
Dining tent. It’s a brightly-colored canopy with mandala-like and trapezoidal designs that protects all 60 of us from the elements. And there are definitely elements here, mainly rain. I’ve seen more rain here in the past week then I have in my entire life. Word of causion for all you Californians – rain jackets from Target aren’t rain jackets, they are drizzles-that-last-for-five-minutes jackets.
Back to the tent. Our ministry hosts are blessing us so incredibly much. They are preparing all our meals for us. Every day a different team helps with kitchen prep, but sill. Wow wow wow. So generous. Even though I feel like we should be the ones cooking for them and not the other way around, I’m super thankful for my chai and cookies every morning and my curry and rice with “dragon” chili powder every night.
Ministry. This one would be a collage. One photo would be of a field of cows, children playing futbol and one of my teammates praying for a woman in the rain. Our first day of ministry we traveled an hour and a half to a village to set up what they call “medical camp.” There we prayed for people after they were seen by a doctor and shared the gospel with the help of interpreters if we could.
The second would be of us painting the window panes of a school building while pausing every so often to wave hello to children in the yard. We had the opportunity to sit in on one of the school’s chapels and it was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever experienced. The whole building exploded with sound as the children sang their hearts out about letting Jesus shine and about one day being in heaven with Him. I cried. Multiple times.
The third would be of the the outer structure or skeleton of a church – racers and locals moving dirt from piles outside into the foundation of the building, children sitting on the banisters above, women cooking yuka off to the side. A big part of our work here has been helping build churches. Christianity has been growing steadily in the province of Manipur, but building bigger churches has been slow going because the villages literally build their own churches.
Overall, India isn’t anything like I thought it would be. I tried not to come in with expectations, but that’s near impossible. I expected busy city streets, colorful saris, temples, hinduism, Bollywood, etc. The area we are in is mostly and surprisingly Christian (I’ll tell you all about the ministry we are partnering with once we’re in Nepal). The Hmar people migrated from China so they don’t look quote-on-quote Indian. We are also in a pretty rural area so I honestly forget we are in India sometimes – think lots of fields, jungles and mountains, but no tigers. Life is way less structured then I’m used to with way more down time than I’m used to. But it’s good.
Also the Lord is shaking up my world as usual, but it’s been so many things in so little time that I don’t think I can write about it just yet.
Thank you all for your prayers. I’m sharing my life story with my team tomorrow, so if you all could pray for vulnerability on my part that would be amazing!
Until next time! `
