So here's the deal, when things are happening all the time and moving cities every few days is your life – it is hard to find time to write about it. (unless you are in the habit of it). Enough excuses.
Dehradun January 20 – February 12
When I first left off we were in Dehradun, India. This was pretty much the beigining of our trip, and now we are in the home stretch. Regardless, our time in Dehradun was full.
In the mornings three of us would jump into an autorickshaw and head to a rooftop school for the poorest of the poor (at least in that "neighborhood"). Most of the kids worked in a mining camp just out side the "neighborhood" – defiantly child labor, but they got time off for school. At first it was difficult to work with these kids – How do you relate to someone that is living an entirely different life than you? How do you teach kids without adequate books, notebooks or pens? and How do you open your heart enough to let them affect you? We were dealing with our own ish (issues) – culture shock and personal problems.
It took the first week for me to start to deal with these questions. I began to see that the kids were not so different than me. I began to relate to there childness – we were all children once. And in relating to their childness I began to connect with them. Everyone at the age of 6-8 loves high-fives, loves to laugh, loves to be noticed. So that's exactly what I did. I gave them high-fives, I did funny things, and I paid attention to them. Then something magical happened. The fact that we didn’t have the best school supplies didn’t matter, we just did what we could with what we had. The important part is I was there and I interacted with them with a smile. When they said my name I looked and answered their questions. Did we get a lot of actual school teaching in? Some. But that wasn't most important. Then about the second week something even more magical happened. Without realizing it I started letting them affect me. I enjoyed them and cared about them. The more I gave to them the more I received to give to them. The more I cared for them, the more culture shock disappeared and my personal problems became less important. (Not that they were buried – more they rose to the surface and I, with the help of Our father and the team, dealt with them).
The third week we stopped going to the school to teach – our contact had other things for us to do. But during the final week we met with the kids three more times. One afternoon we decided we should pull them out of the factory and play soccer with them. So we did. And again, all that mattered was we were there. They just enjoyed being loved – and who doesn't? The second time was in the evening. Again we decided that we should pull them out of the factory and do an outreach for the factory families. We preformed skits and songs, but what really mattered were the high-fives afterward. It turned into an all out high-five frenzy! The last time we saw the kids was our last day in Dehradun. We visited them at the school and sang some final songs with them. We were all very sad to leave but knew our journey had just begun.
In the evenings our contact Brian would take us on house visits. They mainly consisted of us sitting, him speaking in Hindi for awhile, some songs (in Hindi) and then our testimonies. Before this trip, I hadn't really given my testimony, ever. But I learned early on of the power in a testimony. Growing up I thought your testimony was your life story about how you became a Christian – and it can be. But the testimonies we gave were a little different. We mainly talked about what Out Father was doing in our lives that day or what we felt the people we were talking to needed to hear from Our Father. The greatest part in that is everyone's testimony is different, everyone is going through different things, and everyone has a different life story. And the people got to hear it and connect with it – and they did.
When we weren't doing these thing we had some "free" time – but not really. Dinner was often held at our contacts home and when we weren't there – we were either practicing resting (which I will probably write a whole blog about) or listening to Anth Chapman (which I will write a blog about). Anth Chapman has four sermons that we listened to about the New Covenant that has really shaped my everything with Our Father. Diving into them was a lot of work and processing them was even more. We still aren’t done. We also visited Rajpur, Mussurie and Rishikesh – fantastic cities to visit.
All in all, Dehradun was the perfect transition to India and I enjoyed leaps and bounds. I have very fond memories of the Outreach Centere, Brian and his family, Parvesh (Brian's assistant pastor), the school and Prem (our taxi driver).
