Hey guys!
I’m sorry I haven’t blogged much this month but honestly I haven’t figured out what to say, so I’m just going to start from the beginning. (Sadly I can’t tell you were exactly in India we are to keep the safety and privacy of our mission hosts.) So much has happened since the last time I have blogged. From 48 people cramming into a bus that fit 35 with 20+ packs in the isle, to starting a type of mission work that neither my team nor I ever expected to be on the race.
We started our journey with an 8 hour bus ride from the city to our mission location. The compound where we are staying is absolutely beautiful; when we got here I thought I never wanted to leave. Little did I know my mission would be at the very compound we live so I wouldn’t be leaving a lot- good thing it’s a beautiful building with a beautiful view.
My mission this month was nothing like I expected it to be when I signed up for the race. When I thought of the mission work we would be doing, I figured the majority of it would be preaching, VBS, evangelizing, and playing with kids. Yet to my surprise, my mission this month was nothing like any of those. My team and I were assigned construction. These last few weeks have been filled with a lot of sweeping, cleaning, painting, cutting grass, and putting putty on walls. We do construction for the first 2 hours and then we play volleyball, on a court we built ourselves, with our mission hosts. Our mission has literally been cutting grass with a sickle or mixing concrete wall putty with our hands and then turning around and playing two hours of volleyball, a game that I have zero ability to play, with our extremely volleyball-gifted host.
(Photos by Katie Parson)
To be honest I was not excited when I found out what our ministry was. I had been looking forward to India and the people and the culture for months and now that my ministry is in the same place we live, I haven’t gotten to see much of India at all. I was really questioning the Lord in why he put me here. But this last month I really got to see that mission does not always have to look like evangelizing and preaching. This month I got to minister to my team and to our hosts. God used this month to humble me and really show me that I’m not here for me, but that I am here to do what he needs me to do. This month I got to surrender to him.
I’m sure at this point many of you are wondering why I titled the blog “India tried to kill me”. Based on my Facebook updates it looks like India has been all fun and easy going. Honestly I did not think that the race was going to be very hard. I had been away from home and never been home sick, I have been to other countries, and I have been on mission trips. I didn’t think anything would go wrong on the race, as I MISTAKEN …..
The last month in India has been the most spiritually, emotionally, and physically hard and demanding month I have ever had to go though.
Let me just start with the bugs. Oh boy the bugs! They are everywhere. In our hair, tents, someone even just opened their mouth and accidently swallowed one. One night they were so bad our ministry hosts began killing them by lighting newspaper on fire and waving it around, followed by catching a pile bugs and setting them on fire on the ground. That night I fully believed there were more tiny black beetles in our one house than there are people in the country of India (which is roughly about 1.2 billion). Our ground was black. Our light grey concrete floors were black. I truly feel like I understand how the Egyptians felt in Exodus when God and Moses released the 8th plague on Egypt. Though, instead of locus, we have tiny black beetles.
I’m just going to speed through the rest but in the month we have had encounters with fatal scorpions in our living room, heat exhaustion, multiple sicknesses, I got an allergic reaction to something I ate causing me to break out in this crazy rash and go to the local hospital and receive 2 shots. We encountered a rat in our guest house the size of a cat that proceeded to die and come back to life 3 times in the span of an hour. And I had what my squad leader and host think was a 2 week long stomach battle with a parasite.
But the most entertaining story I’ll explain more in depth. So the other day was Gandhi’s birthday, which is a national holiday, so we didn’t have ministry, and my team and I decided to go to the beach. After the hour long car ride we ran through the forest right on to this beautiful beach, without another human soul in site. (Let me give you a little insight on why this next part is so unlike me. I don’t like the ocean. Point blank.) So my team and I are standing there looking out over the Indian Ocean and we all kick off our shoes because “When else are we going to say that we swam in the Indian Ocean??” So despite my fears, I ran in, and it was actually quite fun. We swam, played Frisbee, laughed, and jumped through the waves. I had almost just convinced myself that the ocean isn’t that bad of a place… the key word there is ‘almost’…Disaster struck.
A wave had just crashed over me and I had just come out of the water and was looking back at my team. Their faces were different, but I couldn’t figure out how they were different until I realized it was fear. They were looking at me like I was the boogie monster and running away from me, screaming. I couldn’t tell what they were yelling because they were all screaming at the same time. Then I heard one clear word: “SNAKE!” I got so stiff in fear and yelled back “WHERE??” The response I got back was the worst thing you can hear when talking about snakes… “IT’S ON YOU!! RUN!” I looked down and this snake was going around my waist and my arm. I got a .005 second look at it before I ran like my like depended on it. I do not think I have ever ran that hard or fast in my entire life! I got out safe, no actual harm, just really shaken up.
I do not tell you this to scare you, and PLEASE do not think I am not enjoying my time here. Because I am!! I am telling you this to be real with you about my struggles. Struggles like suffering though severe homesickness, illness, and coping with the indigenes wild life. India was the country I was the most excited for, I was excited for the wrong reasons. I was wanting to get things out of India for myself. I went in to the race thinking that I could do it really easily. I went into this journey thinking I could do it on my own strength. As this month is drawing to an end, I have been able to reflect on my time here.
I really do feel that God has pushed me to my breaking point this month to teach me that I can’t rely on my own strength for these 9 months. I had to learn to fully rely on Him. Faith. He used this month to wreck me in every way possible, and I’m so glad He did because I have never had to rely so heavily on him.
Thank y’all so much for reading this blog! On Sunday we leave for Nepal! I can’t wait to keep y’all updated!
