I’m sitting on a bus for the next 16 hours leaving a place I would call home any day. For the past four weeks I’ve lived in a remote village in India. My favorite place by far. We lived in a small house on a school campus. Our main ministry was teaching English and making relationships with the kids who also live there. At first this made me sad. I’ve already taught for two months on this trip and I didn’t want to do it again. However this time it was very different. It was hard at times but I learned how to love the kids well and teach them different things they were working on. I learned to balance the time spent learning and the time singing songs and playing games. By the last week we each taught a class by ourselves. I can confidently tell you this was all through The Lord’s strength. I am not qualified to teach in a class alone. Good thing he is!
After teaching English we would have lunch cooked by Julie (our favorite cook!). Julie lived in the house with us along with her husband and her three incredible children. The kids names were Emmanuel(13), Bula (9), and Ruth (5). These two girls became my best friends and favorite faces to see in the morning. I spent many hours sitting in my hammock with them, running around, tickling each other, holding hands, and them sitting on my lap in the evenings as we relaxed.
In our afternoons we would go on house visits. They looked different every day. We would go to Muslim, Hindi, and Christian villages. Normally we would go to the houses of the students from the school. We met many families and prayed blessing over them and their houses. When someone was sick we would pray healing over them. The most incredible thing about house visits is how hospitable each family is. They offer us their very best, making us tea and giving us cookies or baked goods. They always made sure we had chairs or somewhere to sit. Most of the time we were not able to communicate what we wanted because of the language barrier. This became very discouraging very fast. So of course God spoke into this for us.
Our last day of house visits was incredible. Going into this day we knew God was going to move. We strategically made a team to intercede for us. This team would stay back where we live and pray over us and the people we would meet. We had the entire day for house visits because the students didn’t have school. So we hoped in the back of a truck and rode to a nearby Hindu village. At each house we asked the lord to reveal what they needed prayer for. We went to a total of 4 houses today. Each one being a little different. But God really showed himself to us and spoke through his word, visions, songs, and prayer.
I couldn’t be more content with how I left this village. God is with them.
