I’m laying in my bed in a little village of Bulgaria. It’s rest day after a long first week of ministry. For some reason, I decided to look at pictures of my month in India, 3 months ago, and I realized I never wrote a blog about it. That month changed my life completely. It was hands down the craziest month of my entire life. Looking back, all I can say to myself is, “we DID that. We survived…” I haven’t written a blog about this month because it has taken me 3 months just to process it. And I definitely cannot sum it all up in one. But I want to share this with you all… I want you to hear it. All the ups, all the downs.. everything. Give me grace, though. I’m not sure where to start and it might be choppy but here is the raw truth about the time I called India home for one month.
After 3 days of orientation in Hyderabad, my team took a bus to our ministry site. I remember looking out of the window as we drove through a village. It was the most “villagy” village I have ever seen… and I’ve been in A LOT of villages. Dirt roads, farm animals, houses made of trash and mud, no stores, people who looked like they have never seen civilization other than this… and then the bus stopped. The driver got out and began unloading our bags. “Surely not…” I said to my team. “We are surely NOT living here…..” no one spoke English and people began running out of a church-like building and started hugging us. We had no idea what was going on. We had no idea who these people were. This must be our host, we all said.. And then the bus drove away… we were hours from a store. Hours from civilization. Hours from “normalcy” (as normal as a foreign country can be). Who are these people and where are we? Why are they taking my bags inside? Why are they handing me chai? Why are they grabbing my face and kissing me? We walk into this home and they motion us to a room. There was nothing other than brick walls and concrete floors that could barely fit 5 people. This room was now our home for the month.. inside the room was a “bathroom”. Which was a squatty potty and a bucket that was now our shower. We set up our beds for the month – squeaky sleeping pads and sleeping bags. And then we sit in silence, with so many questions.. we quickly passed out on the floor and slept for hours after a long few travel days to get here. During this time, our team leader tried to get information about our ministry schedule for the month. The daughter of the host family translated. Gisele asked for a schedule, and they had no idea what she was talking about. And she realized that this family is not our host…. so, who are they?? And why are we in the middle of nowhere India with these people? This place isn’t even on the map. It’s nowhere to be found on google.
Hours later we were woken up by this family that we now live with. They open our doors, turn on the lights and little girls start jumping on us. They pick us off the floor and bring us into the “living room”. Mats are laid down on the floor and they motion us to sit down. Instantly, piles of food were thrown in front of us and we began eating with our hands, hoping we were doing it correctly. Gisele was asked to pray but we were quickly told to cover our heads with a scarf. We cannot pray without it.. so we all had to get up and go get them (never made that mistake again). After about 2 hours, dinner was over. It’s a long ordeal. We then head back to our little room I like to call an “underground bunker”. I decided to take a bucket shower and immediately regretted that decision. The water was so cold and there was nothing I could do about it. My best bet for the rest of the month is to take mid-day showers when the sun is out and it warms the water up.. something i would have to get used to.
The next day, we woke up at 6AM to our host family praying really loudly and singing Indian music. That’s also something we need to get used to… It was Sunday, which means we go to church. Luckily for us, church was right upstairs so we did not have to walk or drive anywhere. In India, people sit on floors during church. We sang and clapped to 10 minute-long songs for over an hour and then we were asked to sit on the stage. Again, this is another thing we must get used to.. a few people gave testimonies and a sermon. And then we finally see our real host.. but then, someone calls him by a name that we do not recognize.. does he have two names? Do we still not know who our real host is? Who are these people? WE ARE SO CONFUSED.
Turns out, he just decided to have two names. After all the trouble trying to find out who these people are, we didn’t question it..
He told us this family was just giving us a place to stay and food to eat. We were then given a schedule for ministry. On it, was a list of days and times and places to preach. On it was 18 days of preaching, with no rest days. Over 25 different villages to preach at… various times… I have never preached before in my life…. I’m not even supposed to be in this country.. it’s illegal for me to be here….. this was going to be a long month.
