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!