If you are scrolling through social media looking for an interesting story you’ve found the right article. If you’ve been following my journey you would know that I was in India last month. Our ministry was taking long tuk tuk rides from village to village preaching, praying and sharing our testimonies. Ministry was not at a set time of the day. It was all day every day. After awhile it starts to get tiresome. One evening we had to get ready to preach at a village kind of further away and my teammate Jordan and I weren’t feeling the best. My Tourette’s was bothering me and she was throwing up so our team leader told us to stay home and rest.
So we should have known that we wouldn’t actually feel rested if we stayed behind. Our host family was very loving and when we weren’t feeling well they would try to do anything to get us back on our feet. This is where having grace comes in and understanding cultural differences. All Jordan and I wanted was to sleep and relax but we have 5 younger sisters constantly knocking on our door offering us food, chai, or coconut water. Just when you’d fall asleep you’d wake up to someone calling for you. We were both slowly getting slightly irritated but we kept our cool. Finally I think I managed to obtain at least 15 minutes of sleep before the next interruption. This time is was from “Mom” (that’s what we called our host). She pounded on the door that we had locked and started shouting “daughters, daughters” until I managed to crawl out of bed (my deflated sleeping pad on a concrete floor). When I opened the door she quickly showed me that her aunts had arrived for a short visit and that she wanted Jordan and I to pray for them before they left.
Waking up to my “sister” painting my nails
To give you a bit of a backstory something that was very difficult this month was our prayer life. Not from lack of but just the opposite. We interceded on behalf of India, the churches, and the people we encountered. We prayed over hundreds of individuals for healing and freedom. We were constantly being pulled from our beds and our room to drive or walk and pray for people. Sometimes Mom would come into our room with someone on the phone and tell us to pray over the phone. It’s just a country where the people are so hungry to receive prayer. At times it would become spiritually and physically draining and we just couldn’t do it anymore, or we would get agitated. It felt like we were just a tool for them. It was as if though they thought our prayers were better or more likely to be heard than their prayers. To us that was heart breaking. We wanted them to understand their authority in Christ and know that they are just as heard by the Lord. They have just as much power in their prayers. Despite all this we continued to pray because it was the season the Lord had called our team into.
Gisele being nursed back to health by our “Mom” (She’s under the blanket with her face in a bowl of steam)
Anyways getting back to the story. I told Mom to give me a few minutes. I closed the door behind me and told Jordan that they wanted us to pray for her aunts. Jordan quickly responded with one of her famous lines, “Absolutley not.” She told me to lay down and that we are sick and we are going to rest. I sat on the bench and I told her that I would wait for a few minutes to see if Mom would forget about us. Sure enough Mom started banging on the door again so finally I just got up and told Jordan that I would say a quick prayer and then crawl back in bed.
When I stepped out Mom said that they wanted me to pray that they have a safe tuk tuk ride home. After I finished praying thinking my presence was no longer needed I was asked if I could take a few pictures with them. I looked down at my outfit that I had worn two days in a row, with my messy hair looking like I just rolled out of bed….because I did. I agreed to take a few photos which ended up turning into a photo shoot. Eventually the lady ran out of storage on her phone and deleted a few videos of her own baby to make more room for these awful low quality photos of a strange American girl.
When they left Dad asked me to sit down and eat a few bananas. I knew that if I didn’t accept the bananas he would come into our room and offer us some other type of food so I took them. As I was silently munching on one of my least favorite fruits the neighbor lady who is Mom’s friend was watching me eat. She is of the Hindu religion. Apparently she thought that there was something off about me and before I even knew what was happening I’m being rushed by her and Mom into the bedroom. They started yelling at me to sit on the bench. Don’t ask me why but I thought maybe I was going to get a massage. I’ve never been more wrong in my life. The lady came in with a burlap sack and tucked it under my feet. Quickly she lit a candle and then she lit a rope on fire. So while there was a legit fire going on in our bedroom the lady stood in front of me with a black rock on the end of a screw driver. She kept yelling at me to spit on the rock. I was nervously laughing and I asked her what was going on and the only person who spoke English was a little girl who was too shy to translate. So finally I said, “I am not spitting on the rock. If this is something spiritual you need to stop.” They continued on with this ritual and she began waving the rock in circles around my face and then another strange lady lit giant bundles of incense on fire and began to wave it around me. Jordan finally rolled over in bed to see what the commotion was and immediately saw the tiny fire in our room. She then responded with, “Are you kidding? The last thing a nauseous person wants to smell is smoke. Take this outside.” Then me still panicking told Jordan that it was okay just go back to bed. I turned back towards the women and said, “I don’t know what this is but I rebuke it in the name of Jesus!” I think they finally got the picture that I wasn’t interested in participating.
Finally a little later the rest of the team got back from ministry. They asked how we felt and if we got any rest. We both just sort of chuckled. During dinner I told Gisele we needed to talk privately about what happened but then Mom found us on the stairway. We had to explain to her that what happened can be considered witchcraft and she started apologizing. She explained that apparently while I was eating my banana I looked like a demon was trying to posses me because I was pretty. Not sure what that means…We told her not to apologize and that it was okay but she just needs to be careful when it comes to practicing those sorts of rituals. That night Gisele annotated us in oil and prayed over us haha. India was definitely a month I learned how to have grace and practice patience with others. Despite this crazy story I love these people and this country very much. India will always be near and dear to my heart.
Our bathroom last month. The squatty potty is multi functioning. We washed our faces, brushed our teeth, washed our hands, and went to the bathroom all in one. Hahaha
The congreagation we had one night of preaching (many said the salvation prayer this night)
