Outreach: Check!

One "Fun Day" Saturday we decided to have face paint and
balloon animals with the girls.

Today was our first full day back in the states. India was amazing; I completely fell in love with the people, country and culture. Unfortunately we were in a place where wifi was not always an option, and the limited wifi did not allow me to post blogs. So, here is a short and concise overview of the past couple weeks.

Hard Moments:

• ·         We went to 3 different slums. It was very difficult in one particular slum; we come around a corner and there is a small baby girl sitting bare bottomed in dirty water on the ground next to her mom who is cleaning things. It is hard to see the children, then leave.
• ·         People were always watching us. They would stare like crazy, even when we were in the Jeeps traveling. People would ask for photos with us in public. It made traveling and ministry difficult, it also limited our opportunities to go out.
• ·         You must have a preaching permit to preach in India, something we did not. This also limited our opportunities because of the press and persecution to believers. We had to cancel a couple speaking engagements because of this.
• ·         We went prayer walking in Calcutta around this temple where human sacrifices of baby girls are still prevalent, and baby girls are also offered as temple prostitutes. Two things that are actually acceptable and encouraged.



After our zoo visit we went to play and have a picnic at a park.

• ·         Saying goodbye to the girls on Christmas night. We gathered all the girls together and debriefed as a large group. We then had the girls all line up so we could say goodbye and hug every one of them. We were crying, they were crying, it was crazy hard. I have never had a more difficult time saying goodbye before that. 

Our Christmas saris!

One of the villages I was able to speak at. I preached out
of Matthew 20 at this church.

Highlights:

• ·         The girls taught us different Hindi songs, words, games and dances. They were so patient with us. Granted they laughed at us more than anything, but it was such a loving relationship.
• ·         Tea was brought to us 3 times a day: 8:00 a.m, 11:45 a.m, and 3:45 p.m. It was brought to wherever we were, even if we were in the garden.
• ·         For a week I was able to teach English to the girls. I learned I really enjoy teaching English, but it is also difficult. The girls were varying in ages and some of them have already learned English. Then of course there are all those grammar rules, past tense, future tense, and so on and so on and so on. It is actually difficult to keep the English language simple.
• ·         We went to a couple different villages. I loved being able to see the different cultures of each village. They were amazing at welcoming us. Some villages welcomed us with parades, some with drums and dancing, others with strands of garland necklaces.
•  Strangers allow you to hold their babies in villages. Naturally I asked to hold the smallest baby at each village
• ·         The food. I would not eat a lot of food in America because it did not look appealing or I simply did not want to try it. Being a guest however requires you to eat a lot of food, and being in a foreign country, you have no other food to eat. Turns out I really like Indian food!
• ·         Each night we had an hour with the girls for Bible time. We had worship, Bible lesson, then an activity. At first it was difficult because of the translator, then we began to simplify and cut straight to the point, a much easier way to get a message across anyhow. The activity was also an amazing time for us to sit with the girls.
• ·         We went to the zoo with the girls. It was so much fun to go out with the girls. The zoo is not anything like American zoos.
• ·         I learned how to use one bucket for showing, which was heated by a light bulb, and fell in love with the squatty toilets. Two things I did not expect AT ALL!
• ·         Christmas!!! Christmas Eve dancing began at 3:00 p.m and ended at 12:00 midnight. Then Christmas dancing began after the morning service for a couple hours, then there was the children’s program then more dancing from 4:00 p.m to 12:00 p.m. There were fireworks and lots of dancing. It was insane! The director and his wife purchased saris for each of us girls for Christmas. It was a beautiful Christmas, by far the best Christmas I have ever had!

We visited Queen Victoria's palace in Calcutta. Naturally we
pretended to drink tea.

As we enter back into the states, I begin the last two weeks of DTS. I have no idea what I will be doing after the DTS, and that is okay. I have had so many, fell in love with so many new people, and have been exposed to so many new possibilities. The crazy thing about conquering something, no matter how small, is you begin to realize how through the strength of the Lord, anything can be conquered. I have come to realize I have limited myself so much in the past. I have believed lies saying I am incapable, I am too young, I have no special gifts. The beautiful thing about God is He lives inside of us. By limiting ourselves, we limited God in us. By living without limits, by living in freedom, we are allowing the limitless God to freely move through us.

India: Check!

After a short hour and a half flight from Kathmandu into Kolkata, followed by a four hour train ride and a ten minute jeep ride, we arrived at our new home for the next 3 ½ weeks. Our new home is shared with 72 orphan and semi-orphan girls who have never seen blonde hair before and 6 other staff. Our new home is a school, orphanage, church and meeting center for these young girls. The 6 of us ODTS girls share two conjoined rooms. There are two single beds and two double beds. The best part however, is the small cat who is very fond of our small abode.

We are extremely spoiled. The girls have morning work duties at 6:30 a.m. which include sweeping the halls, washing floors, and cleaning the bathrooms, we have no work duties or cleaning to do. We have morning tea brought to us in our rooms at 7:30 a.m. as well as mid-morning and afternoon tea brought to us. And oh my, can they make tea! Our meals are prepared for us. We are spoiled with Indian food, orange juice in the mornings, oranges and bananas! Unlike Nepal, we actually have enough silverware, as in soup spoons, spoons, forks and knifes enough for us all. They have several different dish sets and a vast array of tea sets. They even have a dining room complete with table and chairs.

There are multiple differences that two months ago I would have been annoyed with but now I barely even notice. We take bucket showers we have to warm up with a light bulb. One bucket I learned is actually more than enough water. In the afternoons from 1:00-4:00 the electricity does not work. Occasionally it does not work at other times as well. Our home is the very last on the electric line, so sometimes there is no electricity left for us. And the wifi is very difficult to use and does not allow us to upload photos. It is very slow; what would be a five minute internet usage time back even in Nepal here turns into twenty minutes.

The orphanage is Christian based and ran by a YWAMer. The girls have 6 a.m. worship time, work duties, personal devotion time, schooling, and then we work with them in the afternoon. We teach English and music, we are preparing a Christmas program with them, organized Christmas decoration time, then we play with them for an hour outside. The Christmas program is going to be 3 hours long, something we though was very long, but then they told us the Christmas celebration begins December 24 and goes until December 26 with dancing all through the night. After dinner is 30 minutes of out loud prayer time, then the girls usually have an hour of studying, but the director decided to change that and have us lead a hour of Bible time.

I have teaching the girls English which I find to be very difficult. The girls can read English and pronounce the words, but it is the sentence and conversation formation that is difficult for them. They are drilled in memorization. Their schooling is very structured. We have found it difficult when we ask for creative responses or if they have any questions, they do not have either.

The girls are complete servant hearted young women. I was going to do my laundry the other day so I took my clothes to the water pump in a bucket. Instantly a group formed around me. One girl took the bucket from my hand, said, “Sister, sister,” and waved her hand at me. A couple other girls filled four other buckets with water and they washed my clothes for me. At first I was shocked, then amazed, then embarrassed at how dirty my clothes were, I definitely have not been washing my clothes the right way. They took a bar of laundry soap and scrubbed each of my clothes, balled up the clothing article, pounded it into the ground, then rinsed each piece in all four buckets. In my defense, most of the clothes I had worn while on our four day trek, which actually was just two different outfits. I was very embarrassed. They took my clothes, hung them on the line, and I found them folding my laundry later in the evening.

I find myself in a service based culture, not knowing what to do. It can be rude of me to try to help, and yet I feel inadequate not helping. One morning we came back to our room which they cleaned for us. It does not feel right to expect them to serve us, yet that is what this culture expects. The way the girls are serving us, is the way they would be serving their parents. This is the service Jesus talks about in Matthew 20:28 when He says, “The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve.” The girls service with a cheerful heart, no complaining, no arguing. In an honor based, service based society, I find myself struggling both to service and to be served. I am learning to serve sacrificially in new ways, such as giving up time alone, playing duck duck goose for the 80^th time, and to be patient while teaching Hindi speaking preschoolers English Christmas carols. I am very much loving all my new sisters! 

Village Life Round 2!

My "Birthday baby"

It was a long, bumpy 5 hour van ride. There were squatty stops, snack breaks, and a stop for those who got motion sick. Sunday night I slept in a strangers house, a believer who had only two rooms in their mud house. I slept with another gal from our DTS on a board under a mosquito net, a first for me.

December 1, my 19th Birthday, I woke up feeling well rested. I was greeted with a "Birthday cake". It was an Oreo cake mix brought from America put inside a semi-empty old peanut butter jar. 2 years ago I would have laughed at it, 1 year ago I would have called it a poor college kid cake, 5 months ago I would have called it a ghetto cake, now I call it a love missionary cake. The more God moves me around locationally, the more I fall in love with where I am. Being away from my family for the first time on my Birthday did not bring me to tears, being surrounded by all these people who love me did.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we hiked over 25 miles, over 358 stories, for hours and hours. We

Acquiring drinking water out of a bamboo spiket on the side
of a cliff. 

were soar, hungry and thirsty. We drank from streams, crossed rivers, washed our faces in waterfalls, trekked through marijuana fields, avoided goat stampede, and treed lightly on the edge of cliffs. We ate dole beans with pebbles in it, ate honey with bees and bee larva still in it, had to wait for dinner because our rice was being carried up a mountain, and drank water that had to be hauled from a 3 hour hike away. The tropical jungles and the fields of poppy, mustard, and rice were screaming with the beauty of creation.

We were able to to stop in 7 different churches to share a message to encourage the congregation. The churches were either mud huts with thatch roof or a tin roof, or they were bamboo walls with boards for floors with stables underneath. The floors were either mud or dirt and the walls crawling with spiders. The people were dirty, had head lice, and the babies did not wear diapers. We even road on top of a bus through water, as in the bus drove through rivers and sandbars.

We had an incident where our base director was drumming and yelling at us to hurry up and pack one morning. One of our translators rushed into the mud church and said he must stop, he sounded like a witch doctor.

On top of the bus that crossed the river.

I would often stop to catch my breath and I had to shake my head when I realized what I was doing. I am living what I always dreamed of. It is not easy. There were many moments when I wanted to sit on the trail and cry. I was in physical pain. I did not see the point of what we were doing at times. We stopped at churches, we did not need to go because they were already reached. It was worth it. It was worth the hike just to be in fellowship for 20 minutes with one church. It was worth the pain to meat my brothers and sisters for just one time and never see them again until I join them in eternity.

I have never pushed myself so hard. In Philippians it says, "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength," Paul means anything. When we are in the will of the Lord, we will be given extraordinary strength. There were people in our group who kept falling, rolling their ankles and they would stand up fine. We were beyond dehydrated, but not one of us got sick from dehydration. The energy and physical strength needed for us to complete the trek was not our own. The strength and protection of the Lord is often unseen. It is up to us to stop and realize we are living, breathing miracles. Everyday is not our own. We do not live according to our own will and ability. We live in accordance to Him who gives and takes away. There is no other place I would rather live than in that presence.