I know that there have been many of you who have been wanting to hear about my first month in India! I want to apologize for the lack of communication and blog output! Our internet situation has been a little less than desirable, although it has been really nice to not have access to any internet! So I am excited to share a little re-cap of what this month’s ministry looked like and share some stories of how God worked to show his glory.
At the beginning of the month I was very confused because all the people that we met were Christians.Because my experience in Kolkata, India was very different than that, I was expecting that the Manipur state would be very similar. I started to wonder why we were even here if everyone had already heard about Jesus. A few days into our stay we were able to watch a movie called Beyond the Next Mountain that shared about how the ministry here started. About 100 years ago a single young missionary came to bring the gospel of John to the tribes that lived in this underdeveloped state of India and how he changed the lived of many people. Bibles for the World now has many schools (the one in Sielmat has over 1,800 students!), a hospital (which they are working on expanding), many churches planted in the area, a seminary school (with approved credits as a real college) and have given out millions of copies of the Gospel of John in the Hmar language. Later I came to the realization that it is actually a privilege to be able to strengthen the ministry, and to give a break to the people who work so hard to make this mission possible.
Here’s what a normal day would look like:
5.15 am – Wake up
5.30 am – Workout
There is a pile of bricks outside of our dorms that we use for free weights and then we go for runs around the neighbourhood. If we are really ambitious we might even attempt to run up Sielmat Prayer Mountain.
6.30 am – Shower
Now when I say shower I mean… get in a stall and pour a bucket of cold water over myself.
6.50 am – Chai and butter cookies
This is probably my favourite time of the day.
8.00 am – Breakfast
Often this will be curry and a deep fried dough tortilla type thing called Puri, and then some days we will have french toast or oatmeal with bananas.
10.00 am – Ministry
Because the ministry we are working with here is so large every day of ministry looks different. We have 8 teams here so we take turns doing each type of ministry.
The hospital here does free mobile medical camps to villages that do not have access to medical care. When our teams help out, we are in charge of praying for and sharing the gospel with the people who come in for care.
One day we were in a predominantly Hindu village and there was a 19 year old boy named Avan who came through the medical camp, so we asked him what was wrong and asked if I could pray for him like we did with everyone else. After we prayed for him we asked him if he knew about Jesus and the biggest smile appeared on his face. He said, “I’m a Christian and I’m telling everyone about Jesus!” After he got his medication we asked him if he would be willing to come back and help us translate. It was so special to see him praying for healing over the people in his community.
– Some days we are on Kitchen Crew, which means that we prepare the food, wash the dishes after every meal and connect with the people who worked in the kitchen.
– Another day of ministry that we did often is church construction, many of the churches here are growing and need larger buildings! We went to one village and they had been constructing their church for 2 years. Every Saturday the whole community comes to the site and build their church. It was very inspiring to see the 5 year old boys working along with 60 year old ladies.
– Towards the end of the month we also got to help out at the Seminary. In the mornings we would sit on some classes and in the afternoon each racer would get assigned a small group of students to have conversations with to strengthen their English.
5.00 pm – Dinner
6.00 pm – Team time
Sometimes we have serious team time, but sometimes we do something fun like watch Tangled!
As you might be able to notice at the top of this page, I am still not fully funded. My next deadline is the end of the month and I am currently $2,932 short. Please prayerfully consider if this is the right time for you to give.
