After a long year of preparing my heart and mind for this journey, I am finally here. I would like to start off by admitting I don't think I was ready to be "here." On a map, we are in Ongole, India. However, in our minds we are closer to fears, problems, and realities we did not want to face. Who knew you could be in India, 1,000,000,000 some miles from home and closer than ever to your fears?
It is easy to turn the channel when the sad orphan commercials come on, but we are literally face to face with these realities. These realities that happen every day while we sit in our air conditioned homes on the other side of the world.
I tried not to "expect" or guess what was going to happen or what I would see, but I could not help it. I thought maybe we could protect ourselves from feeling these raw emotions of pain and helplessness when we see the children suffering, but oooo I was wrong.
First off, what is an expectation?
Noun: A strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
They told us at launch that we needed to “break our expectations” for what was about to happen, but I didn’t really understand how important that was until we arrived. Nothing here is what I would have guessed it was: the poverty, the people, the environment, the amount of trash, the excitement of the kids at the orphanage, our living arrangements and so on.
The first hug I received when we walked into the orphanage actually brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think anyone has hugged me so hard or smiled so big. God has definitely been here from that moment on.
The past few weeks have been incredibly hard. To see how the kids with mental disabilities live sits heavy on my heart, but seeing how they react when we simply touch them, sing with them, dance with them, or smile at them reminds me of what we are here to do.
It is hard to explain to people why I might choose to go on a mission trip or why I would raise so much money to do work in poverty stricken areas. Those people will never see what I get to see or feel the raw feelings we feel. We might not change the world, but we will affect lives in these 11 countries. We will spread our light to the people we are around, infecting them with the love God gives us daily.
As we struggled to pray over a mentally disabled girl at the orphanage we are working in for four straight hours, one of my teammates said, “I was so tired, but in that moment God was able to take over.” That comment reminded me that we are not in this alone in this.
We are here because of the support of our friends, family, and all others who believe in our stories and the simple love of God and we should never feel alone in this.
1 Timothy 4
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. 14 Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.
15 Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. 16 Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
