I am sad that my time in India has come to an end. I did not think I would really like India, and now I am mourning our leaving. This country is so colorful and so full of life. The people are amazing, warm, and welcoming. We lived like celebrities while we were there. Everywhere we went, people stared. A few times, children in the villages even asked us for our autographs. We always has seats of honor at the church services. We would be offered food at many of the houses we went to as well. Overall, we were treated so special.
About a week in, this treatment kind of bothered me a bit. I wasn’t sure why we were being treated this way and I wanted it to stop. I wanted the Indian people to realize that we were just messengers of the Lord, that there wasn’t something more special about our prayers for them than their own, but that they could pray to God and He hears them. He hears them just like He hears us.
One night we were walking around a village and my heart wasn’t completely in it. I was walking from house to house blankly. We were having communication issues with our new translator and things just seemed unorganized and a little chaotic. Phil was trying to pray for an elderly man and I was standing in the background. I was becoming irritated, wondering “God, what is going on? Why do you have us here?”
I didn’t hear anything from God in that moment, but as we began to leave to go to the next house I realized that we were surrounded by many young girls. I made eye contact with one girl and smiled. Her face brightened as she smiled back. Then she said something that struck my heart.
“Please hug me”
My heart melted as I quickly wrapped my arms around her. Suddenly, I was surrounded by young girls all asking me to hug them. We laughed and chatted, exchanging names, etc. It took a matter of seconds, but I know that those hugs meant the world to those girls. As I walked away, my heart was overwhelmed with what just happened. The first words out of that girl’s mouth were requesting for signs of affection. It made me realize how the girls of India are so desperately wanting to be loved. India is hungry for the love of Christ, and even if those girls don’t know it, that’s what they received that night.
God showed me that, if nothing else, that was why I was there. To show those young girls the love of Christ. It started a fire in my heart, to make sure that each person we came into contact with did not just merely see us as “The American’s”. I wanted them to experience the Love of God through us. It didn’t matter about us, we were nothing, but God used us to pour out His love in India, of that I am confident.
