The visit to orphanage number four started to go downhill
after Joti, the pastor’s daughter, drank some paint thinner and had to be
rushed to the children’s hospital in Anantapur. The pastor looked white as a
ghost as I met him in the waiting room of the hospital. His wife wailed out in agony as she feared for her daughter’s life. Onlookers stared at us
as we huddled to pray in the corner of the room. We had just enjoyed a pleasant
day; eating a nice lunch and then bouncing some emails to loved ones back home.
The disturbing call came just as we were hailing an auto for the journey home.
We hailed the auto, but headed towards the hospital instead. We prayed and did
all we could to be supportive, but ended up leaving to go back to the orphanage
less than two hours later.
(One of the girls and I)
The day after the incident, the pastor requested to his
superiors that we cut our visit short and leave two nights early. He felt that
there was a burden, and neither he nor his wife could take care of us because
they were spending the next two nights at the hospital with their daughter. The
pastor felt as if we would have to singlehandedly take care of the ten girls at
the orphanage and would have to prepare our own meals. We knew that we would
love the task of caring for the girls and we could take care of ourselves- but
we respected and honored the pastor’s wishes and left later that night to
Hyderabad.
(Neighboring houses)
We arrived at our hostel in Hyderabad around 3AM in the
morning. A few hours later, our team was up and thinking about what we had just
left behind. I was sad to have left the last orphanage. The ten young girls
there were precious, wonderful, and so eager to have us visit them. Since they
have school on Saturdays, we only got to see them from dinner time until the
time that they went to bed. A few of them cried as they waved frantically until
they couldn’t see us anymore. It was really unfortunate that we had to leave
them, knowing we could have spent two more days with them.
(We painted this one sky blue and orange)
It was somewhat of a bitter and sad ending to the month. As I
wrote about briefly in my last blog, our team was on our last leg and running
on fumes. Despite that, we feel like this month was productive and beneficial
to the forty children we visited. God worked through me and my six teammates to
shine God’s love and to be his light for these four villages we visited. It was
extremely difficult at times as the language barrier made us want to pull our
hair out. Monibab and Bobland helped us out the best they could and were such a
blessing to us this month.
(Pastor)
I’m forever grateful for the awesome experience that I’ve had
here in southern India.
(The 10 beautiful girls arriving home from school on Saturday)
