India the Beautiful

India. Oh boy, where do I begin?

Let’s start with the noise. Taxis, motorbikes, autos, and rickshaws honking and screeching. The dull roar of millions of people living.

India smells like dirt and sweat and car exhaust. Animal dung and urine from public bathrooms. Sweet, sticky incense and Engage cologne.

When you first arrive, it’s easy to be blinded by the poverty. The slum housing that lines the streets. The beggars that extend their hands as you walk by. The children that pull at your clothes as you try your best to avoid their eyes.

India reminds me of a woman. A woman who’s witnessed thousands of years of change and tradition. A woman who’s been abused and abandoned by history. A woman who, despite her scars and rough edges, is achingly beautiful. In the slums, the houses are painted pink and blue and yellow. Ropes of laundry crisscross the narrow pathways and makeshift bridges cross canals of dingy water.

India has mothered many children, and they, like their mother, are beautiful. They sing and dance and clap their hands. They smile and laugh and tell stories. They invite you into their homes and offer you cups of sweet chai. They ask and listen and lay a hand on your arm.

There were times when I hated India. Times when the reality of hunger and sickness and injustice made me sick. But, there were times when I realized that past the circumstances are people. People who are happy and people who are not. People who are slaves to greed, lust, and pride and people who’ve been freed. People who want a little more and people who have the only gift any of us need.

It sounds like a Christian cop-out, but India showed me that it’s true. The only thing people need is complete, redeeming grace—everything else is a bonus.

You can see two things when you look at India; two pictures of the same situation. You can see a socio-economic disaster that demands money, time, expertise—solutions to problems, and believe me, there are plenty of those. Or you can see people. People who need to be healed of the same lies that once blinded you. People who need to be saved from the same sins that once  controlled you. People who are enemies with the same God who now calls you friend.

We don’t need to fix India, we need to free India.

Glimpses of Everest

   I’m not sure if you noticed, but I haven’t posted in a while. About 3 months to be exact. Yeah, umm…sorry about that. Not that I didn’t have anything to write about—the past 3 months have been one big, crazy, amazing adventure—I’ve just had some difficulty getting my life into words. Anyways, I’m going to make it up to you. No, honest, I am.

   As I’ve mentioned before, the second half of DTS is a 3 month outreach that offers opportunities to apply the knowledge of lecture phase. My DTS was split into 2 outreach teams—one team traveled to South Africa and India and my team traveled to Nepal, India, and Thailand.

   In the beginning of October, my team flew from Perth, Australia to Bangkok, Thailand, spent 18 hours in the Bangkok airport—which, coincidentally, is not as big an airport as you would imagine—and then flew to Kathmandu, Nepal. We spent 2 nights at a backpacker’s hotel which boasted spectacular views of the Himalayas. Through the smog that always clouds the city, you could almost make out the staunch point of Everest, or so we were told.

  
   After a few days acclimating to Nepali culture, we boarded a teeny tiny plane at the teeny tiny airport bound for Biratnagar, Nepal. There were 20 seats on that plane, and I was painfully aware of the lack of space, until we reached a few thousand feet and the Himalayas started floating past my window. I’ve seen mountains before, heck, I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I’ve never seen anything as spectacular as those snow capped peaks, jutting up from the clouds.  

   
   We landed in Biratnagar alive and with reasonably good circulation…phew! I snapped a picture with an airport official because I won a gift certificate for a spa while in transit—literally the second thing I’ve won in my life. We spent the night with a young missionary couple and their wide-eyed, German-English-speaking, son. In the morning, we caught a bus for Birtamode. I’d like you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine riding down pocked dirt roads, your knees pressing into the seat in front of you, your shoulder glued to the person next to you, sweat trickling down your back, the smell of body odor and incense swirling in the sticky air, Nepali pop music blaring in the background—it was glorious. If there’d been any doubt as to where I was before, after that 3 hour bus ride, I knew I was in Nepal.

   In Birtamode, we stayed with an amazing family who gave us beds to sleep on, cooked us 3 meals a day, did our laundry, and taught us Nepali dance moves in their spare time. For the next 10 days, we traveled all over the Nepali countryside doing open-airs. Open airs are public programs designed to catch and hold people’s attention. Our open-airs focused on human-trafficking prevention—we usually presented a drama about human trafficking, gave some general information about trafficking, presented a personal testimony, did a skit or two, and ended with a presentation of the gospel. The open-airs presented excellent opportunities to talk with people about trafficking, God, or politics and I was able to have some excellent conversations despite the language barrier.

   On the weekends, we taught at several church services and were given the opportunity to present a 2 day seminar on human trafficking at a local church. We drove to and from all our events in the same yellow taxi, 12-15 people crammed in the back, jamming out to Nepali pop. It was in these times that our hosts taught us such popular dance moves as the “screwing in the light bulb,” “macarena with a twist,” and the oh-so-hilarious “how-to-eat-a-fly-and-still-look-swag.”



   Our time with this loving, sacrificial family ended too quickly. At the end of our time in Nepal, we drove to the Indian border in our beloved yellow taxi, stayed the night in a terrifying hotel, and said goodbye to our friends before boarding a train bound for our next great adventure: Kolkata!