This month my team and I have been in Nalgonda. Well, really we have been in a small village an hour outside of the city called Vallala. If any of you read my last blog, you know that I was not enthused about this month. You know that my attitude was less than stellar. Now, I want to tell you how God blew me away this month. I want to paint you a picture of this amazing village that time seems to have forgotten.
This tiny Indian village was a beautiful mixture of the old and the new. There are tuk-tuks and motos, but there were also carts full of hay being pulled by a team of oxen.
Our house had no running water, and the water we did have was from a well. Like an actual go to the well, drop the pail in the water, and pull it up kind of well.
I don’t know for sure, but I think there were more goats than people.
If you walked down our street, you would see water buffalo in people’s backyards. Not dogs, water buffalo.
I can now proudly say that I have not used a fork, knife, or spoon in 23 days. Meals here are communal, they are eaten with only your right hand, and more often than not you eat them on the floor.
I have eaten more rice than I thought humanly possible.
I have worn flowers in my hair, slept in a tent, and “showered” with a bucket all month long.
For a month I felt like I had been given the chance to go back in time. It seemed like nothing outside of our village existed. There was no Internet. There were no coffee shops. We had no place to go and we didn’t have much to do outside of our ministry.
In this small village in the middle of India I found a profound sense of contentment. I have to say a huge thank you to all of you because I know my contentment came from all of the people praying for me and my team this month. We were not only isolated from the rest of the world, but we were insolated by thousands of prayers from hundreds of people. As a team we were able to develop a level of community that had been missing for the first three months. In ministry people were able to focus on their giftings, and one person’s weakness was always covered by another’s strength. This month was full of rest and intimacy with the Lord.
Thank goodness the Lord is more discerning than I am. He knew that I needed to go to a place that time had forgotten, so that I could forget about time.
A month ago I was not excited to spend a month living in an Indian village, but now I am sitting on a bus driving to Hyderabad and all I want to do is go back.
Its in moments like these when I know that the race is worth it. Moments like these remind me that the Lord isn’t finished with me yet. I know that only the power of God could have changed my piss poor attitude into something beautiful.
I know most of you have either read the book or seen the movie, but one of my favorite authors wrote about the idea that some infinities are bigger than others. I wish that my time in Vallala could have been longer, but I know that even though my time there was short, I was infinitely blessed by that place and the people living there.
