India Mission Trip Tuesday and Wednesday

February 14 and 15

The last two days have been a whirlwind of energy spent and love and joy received!  Yesterday began the phase of our trip where we entered into the routine of devotion, morning manual labor, lunch, afternoon manual labor, learning more about the Compassion ministry at our site, coffee and tea, and then free time with the exuberant, exhausting, and utterly delightful children, and then home to dinner and team debriefing time.  Here are a few highlights:

Devotions:  the project staff (about ten folks) and the Hillside gang sing together and then listen to a short reflection on the Bible and then pray together.  So far, the two pastors have swapped devotions: Jeff yesterday, and Rev. Morris today.  Randy Fischback opens the Word tomorrow.

Manual Labor: we have been helping rebuild the floor of the church.  We arrived yesterday to find the floor all broken up into little pieces of rock. Our task yesterday was to cover the entire floor with about 6 inches of black sand (or so we called it) without wheelbarrows.  We formed a human chain and passed the sand along from an outside pile to the inside of the church by means of sald-bowl sized pans each holding a small mound of the sand.  It really is quite amazing to see how fast a huge pile can dwindle when 30 people are relentlessly chipping away at it like a column of ants.  Today, in similar fashion, we passed fist-sized rocks into the church using the same pan-passing method, and then (same method again) carted in a mixture of sand, cement, and well, some other sand-like substance.  We are dirty, tired, and have called muscles into action that most of us didn’t know we still had available for action!

Lunch: each day we are treated to lunch at a nearby restaurant.  The food has been remarkable, plentiful, and a highlight after a morning of tiring pan-passing.  We eat together with the project staff and are building sweet friendships over savory plates!

Learning:  we have continued to learn more about the multifaceted ministry of Compassion here at Project 521.  Yesterday some ladies from the Self Help Group (mothers of children in the project who have banded together to work on an economic project) demonstrated their entrepeneurial savvy by making for us the donut-like delicacies that they routinely make and sell. They were delicious.  Today we heard from families whose lives have been redeemed from the scourge of alcoholism through Compassion’s DeAddiction Program aimed at alcohol abusing fathers in the community.  We were moved deeply to hear the stories of freedom of 6 families.

The Children: as you can imagine, hanging out with the children is the daily highlight.  They are beautiful, full of energy, practicing their English on us with bright smiles and an eagerness to be with us.  They love to play games and today all over the yard you could see Hide and Seek, Duck, Duck, Goose, jump rope, volleyball (of a sort), soccer, spinning around, nail polishing and painting, Peter (formerly Simon) Says, and much more!  At one point we all got together in a big group and sang together.  The children knew the chorus “Hosanna” and sang it with gusto.  We were amazed that half-way around the world these children would know English choruses that we have sung at Hillside. They sang for us and we sang for them, ending with a rousing rendition of Jesus Loves Me that had the girls and the boys competing to sing the loudest, and ending in a repetition that spiralled faster, and faster, and faster. 

And then home, through crazy traffic, to dinner and a meaningful time of sharing with each other the moments in the day in which God had moved us.  We had no trouble coming up with something to say. Getting moved deeply is getting as regular as drinking from our water bottles.  And that’s saying a lot!