As our time comes to an end in India, I wanted to give you a little inside look into what our time here looked like.
This month we had the privilege of working with an organization that helps children in severe poverty attend private schools for a better education while teaching them about God. We traveled to 5 different villages taking pictures, interviewing children, leading children’s ministry, and joining the community.
For the past few years, I have struggled to feel real joy. I was living a lifestyle that wasn’t pleasing to God and surrounding myself with people that didn’t build me up and it smothered me inside. I lost my ambition and adventurous spirit one step at a time.
I applied for the World Race 3 years ago and was rejected. I was crushed. I had found a perfect trip that would give me the spiritual high I had experienced on my short-term mission trips and also gave me the opportunity to travel the world. What more could I want? Looking back on that now, I was not in the right place to go on the World Race then.
When I reapplied this past April, I had a glimpse of that joy I was missing. I was excited and sitting on edge reading the blogs of current racers and waiting for my interview. This time around, even though I was still struggling to find joy, my heart was in the right place. I wanted to share the love of God and just show people what true joy feels like even if I couldn’t find it myself.
The first two weeks here were rough. God was stripping me of the hard case that I had put around my heart and showing me things that I never knew I needed to grow in. A week ago in one of the villages, there was a little boy that sat in front of me at church. He kept turning around and making faces at me (of course I actually started it) and would just giggle uncontrollably. In the middle of the service, he dashes outside and comes back in just a minute with a flower for me. Even though we cannot communicate because of the language barrier, he showed me compassion. My heart melted. He did this several times during church and eventually brought me an entire branch full of flowers.
(The boy in the plaid shirt)
It was a joy that you feel all the way down to your toes and it changed my heart. God used that little boy to tear down the walls that I had built over the past few years to protect me from bad relationships and friendships. I finally felt like myself again and caught myself dreaming of the adventures that I once craved.
We are only in Month 1 and God has changed me. We head to Nepal in 3 days and I can’t wait to see what He is going to do this month.
