Hello everyone!
At last, here is my final update from my experience in Kolkata! My apologies that it is long overdue…the busyness of school and the ministry at Trinity has consumed me until now, but I can finally share with you some of the great, and practical, things KCM is doing in Kolkata. Though the trip was a magnificent blessing from the Lord personally, I know it was just a first step in a longer calling the Lord is leading me (and maybe you!) toward for KCM. Since I have already shared so many stories and much of my personal experience, I wanted to take this last chance to give you more of a practical picture of what KCM actually does in being Jesus to the people of Kolkata. If you are truly interested in all the amazing things the Lord is doing through KCM, please take time to read through the update!
The ministry consists of 8 workers and field staff, working in 3 slums (Bagmari, Mundapalli, and Promodnager) and 4 cycle rickshaw communities (of about 30-40 workers each). Each slum varies in size, ranging from about 1500-2500. Overall, KCM reaches approximately 1100 adults and 200 children in the current slums they minister to, not including the additional rickshaw communities they reach as well. All staff spend time in the field, working with the local communities. However, there are 3 field officers that work primarily in the three respective slums, one accountant, one operations manager, one teacher in the Mundapalli slum, one micro-enterprise manager, and Shaji—who is the founder, director, and primary support raiser for KCM.
All of these ministers work together to serve Christ and the community in a variety of ways. Their ultimate vision is to “establish a dignified and transformed community in the name of Jesus”: spiritually, physically, emotionally, and culturally. Here is a detailed overview of what the ministry does: Take a look!
Click here to see the details!
The Lord is truly at work in some astonishing ways through the KCM ministry. One of their biggest needs, however, is one that American’s can most easily provide: our resources. This entire ministry operates on a budget of roughly $4000 a month, though it only pulls in about $2000 on average. In addition, the ministry has deep needs for training, ministry resources, and people in the United States to advocate for them to churches. This is the next step in the calling the Lord has given Kyle and me, and I am excited to take part in it. From here on out, Kyle and I (and hopefully others) will be working toward the goals of connecting others to what the Lord is doing in the city—whether that be through financial support, constructing a website, developing training resources, or visiting the city itself (etc). Opportunities upon opportunities abound for Jesus to use us in His love for the “least of these” in Kolkata.
Over the next several months, we will begin the process of advocacy in all of these ways. The calling is very large and we are under no illusion that we can do it without the Lord’s miraculous hand and many more faithful servants. We are excited to see what happens from here, and we would love for you to continue to be a part of it. Who knows, you might just be hearing from me again soon!
Please continue to pray for KCM and all the people it works with in Kolkata. Pray that Christ would be made known and that he would bring healing and transformation to the poorest of the poor. As you feel led, please pray for the next steps Kyle and I will be taking in the coming weeks as well! I will likely send one more update email over the next month or so, letting you know more. Thank you so much for the partnership you have shown before, during, and after the trip! As I’ve said before, nothing would have been possible without your prayers and support. Please feel free to contact me as you have questions or if you would like to here more!
God Bless,
Jacob Foor
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Comment
Hey everyone,
The post below is extremely long, as I have been writing it for several days now. If you are interested, I suggest you read it by section, as I have broken it up into small sections that take just a moment to read. There is a lot to tell!
I will have one or, at most, two more posts in the next few days. I have safely returned from the city, and would like to summarize the practical things that have come out of the trip. But for now, you can read this one last story!
The post below is extremely long, as I have been writing it for several days now. If you are interested, I suggest you read it by section, as I have broken it up into small sections that take just a moment to read. There is a lot to tell!
I will have one or, at most, two more posts in the next few days. I have safely returned from the city, and would like to summarize the practical things that have come out of the trip. But for now, you can read this one last story!
Shaji's Story
Intro
The person who greeted me at 1:00am last Monday morning was someone I initially knew little about. Shaji, the founder and now head of Kolkata City Mission, waited with a smile for me at the baggage claim, ready to take me into his home and family for the span of my trip. Driving home with him that night, I mentioned that I would love to hear his testimony. He told me it was a very long story, and since that moment, the words, “I will tell you later today” were heard far too often and past many “todays”. There was always a new slum or a new village or a new experience in the city to delay the story.
The delay was fortunate, because it afforded me time to learn about Shaji’s present--full of God’s miraculous movement and work (some of which I’ve shared with you)--which only served to enrich the eventual story of his past. With each passing day of living with him and his family, witnessing KCM’s work in the slums, and enjoying his friendly perspective on life in Kolkata, I developed an amazement and care for a man Christ uses so powerfully in the lives of so many. And so, a greater appetite for his story grew in me over time. Finally, on the heels of returning from our expedition to the village, Shaji sat Kyle and I down late at night and asked if we were ready to hear where he came from.
Early Childhood
God’s mission and Kingdom have always been a part of Shaji’s life, long before he allowed them into his heart, because they originated in the life of his father first. Having become a Christian in his teenage years, Shaji’s father became a missionary to the rural areas of the southern state of Kerala (and eventually, West Bengal) early in life. For him, “being called to the mission” (as Shaji puts it) meant embracing a life of poverty from the start. Much as the disciples were sent out by Jesus without staff or provision for their harvesting work, so his father was sent to the excluded and poor “like a lamb amongst wolves” (Luke 10), working in the remotest parts of India with unreached villagers and living in deadly desperation for basic provision.
Once married, Jesus invited his new family into this lifestyle as well. They often migrated from village to village, literally without money or extra clothing, finding shelter wherever they could as his father did God’s work amongst the Hindu villagers. When his father left for days into the surrounding villages to work with those starving for physical and spiritual sustenance, his family was all too often left slowly dying in a small hut, awaiting his return. Time and time again, Shaji’s mother, two older sisters and younger brother were one vegetable or edible shrub (which can be used for stew for days) away from malnutrition or worse, death. For years, God gave them their daily bread one day at a time, and sometimes after many days without.
Cow Dung
This led Shaji, as a young bout of 7 or 8, to bury in his heart a deep aversion to the weakness and humiliation of poverty. His father’s lifestyle became his Ninevah and he decided to sail the opposite direction in life. Accordingly, the second or third grade boy established a business in these early years: every morning, around 6:00am or earlier, he and his younger brother would travel to the fields, collecting heaps of cow feces, which they would stack in enormous piles. These piles of excrement were then sold to farmers as fertilizer and fuel, bringing in a small amount of pocket change daily, a small sustenance for the struggling family. Unfortunately for Shaji’s plans, his mother believed in school and fought for it, eventually wrestling away the cow dung business from her son and sending him to school. The family could afford one uniform, which he wore every day, washed every day, and rewore the next. For the next few years and through the Lord’s provision, the family eked by a living. Shaji often went hungry but he also went to school. But all that changed when Shaji (10 or 11) overheard a secret conversation no child should ever hear.
"I don't want to die..."
One night, he stumbled upon his parents having an argument. After months of deteriorating conditions, the family had no money and little hope for food for weeks. Shaji’s eavesdropping ears heard his mother wailing in hunger and desperation with her husband. The children were starving, and she could no longer bear watching her children slowly die in agony. In a desperation that we will never understand, she begged her husband to allow her to poison the family, ending their suffering and the threat of slow, painful decay. This may seem absurd to westerners, but many in Kolkata alone live lives that seem worse than death to me, like the teenage girl in the red the light district who is raped dozens of times a day for money. Or the children in the slums I visited, who suffer from malnutrition and all forms of physical abuse from alcoholic fathers. I do not know what that’s like and thank God I never will, but I can guess I would wish for death too if I or my children experienced anything approaching it.
The family did not get death, however. For later that night, Shaji came into his mother’s room and told her he did not want to die, that he wanted to live. She collapsed on the floor in another moment of lost dignity, but conceded to her young child’s request. Fortunately, in these days of despair God again provided in meager daily ways, and starvation distanced itself for a time. This and other episodes, however, convinced Shaji that a return to work was necessary for the family. And he found opportunities in bricks.
Hope in Bricks
Local brickmakers--operating kiln ovens that dot the countryside--offered Shaji a child labor job hauling stacked bricks on his head for several hours a day in withering heat. Now almost a teenager, Shaji began a divided lifestyle. For three days a week, he hauled heavy loads on his head for miles a day, earning living wages. For the other two days, he attended school to appease his mother and recuperate from the work. His skin became a caked and cracked black from extensive time in the sun each day, but he managed to continue in this way for years despite the obstacles. Still set on becoming a business man and providing for his family, Shaji took out a local loan and invested some of his accumulated money in a tool set and basic equipment for fixing bicycles. The move paid off, as Shaji was soon able to upgrade his roadside fix-it service to a small shop. This small shop eventually sold bicycles in addition to fixing them, slowly setting Shaji on the gradual financial footing he so desired.
A Call to the Mission
Through it all, his father and family continued as missionaries, and Shaji developed in wisdom and knowledge of the Lord. Eventually, he came into a personal relationship with Jesus during his brick and bicycle years, recognizing the God his father had sacrificed so much for. In this context, Shaji received an invitation from a friend to a missions program a little ways from the town his family had settled in. After some convincing, he agreed to be a companion to his friend to the program. This decision changed his life forever.
The conference ended up being a invitational interest meeting for new missionaries, and Shaji stood out to Operation Mission recruiters. Representatives of OM eventually invited him to “join the mission” with them, which he promptly refused. They asked him to reconsider and pray about it. He refused again. They assured him he could expect another invitation in the mail in another few weeks. He told them not to bother. The invitation came anyway, and with it, a talk with his father he had never had before. During this talk, Shaji learned his father had been praying that the Lord would anoint him as a missionary since birth. The time had come, so his father said, to walk into a long awaited open door. Despite reservation, fear, and a determination to remain in control of provision for his family, God spoke to Shaji and he agreed to walk through the door.
The training program was to last two years. Shaji agreed to 6 months, pledging to return to his bike shop and go on missions some other time. But as is typical in my experience, God used the time Shaji allotted to knock down as many excuses as it took to extend his time to two years—providing financially for his family and confirming his calling in other ways. When the time came to be “sent”, again he pledged he would only go for one or two years, and once again return to work for the family. He was to go to the physically and spiritually poor in villages, towns, and eventually Kolkata through the holistic ministry of OM—much like his father had done before him (founding Compassion Service Society of India, sister movement of KCM). This ministry and God’s loving will stole Shaji’s heart and turned 1 year into 22, and he never returned to his home or the bike shop.
Living Like Royalty
But he wasn’t needed. God looked after his family and siblings without the bike shop. And later in life, after numerous occasions of the Lord’s provision, Shaji’s mother lay dying in a house that was recently provided for the family. It was the first they ever owned. Shaji told us the story of her lying on her own bed, in her own house, and sharing in her final days. She told him she felt like royalty, looking back on a hard life, rewarded by God in his graciousness, now allowing her to die with the dignity the world denied her when her son had to ask his mother not to poison them in the course of their costly following of Jesus. She and her family never enjoyed worldly pleasure, but their lives changed entire villages, and so they were rich. As, scripture says of great people of faith in Hebrews 11:
“…these people were still living by faith when they died…admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”
Redemption
Shaji is following in his father and mother’s footsteps, advancing the kingdom of God in places few others will go. He founded KCM in 2007, and the Lord has blessed the ministry and changed numerous lives, even in its infancy. Shaji told us that He believes God saw in him those brick fields, laboring like a slave in Egypt as a child. But the Lord pays no attention to the surface, and sees only who we truly are and are to be. Shaji believes God didn’t see a child slave in the fields, but one of his own children, destined by His love to minister to those in future slavery in Kolkata. He saw a child He knew since before time, and even the worst of us and the worst of life washes away when God redefines us as His children with a future.
I really believe that is true. Scripture tells over and over again the story of God’s beautiful redemption: a slave named Joseph who becomes a king in Egypt, an exiled son of pharaoh who becomes the leader of Israel (Moses), a prostitute who becomes the great great great great great (etc.) grandmother of the Christ (Rahab), a poor and unimpressive shepherd boy who become king of Israel (David), and a poor infant born in a barn, destined to be crucified on earth, yet now sitting as the Most High God (Jesus). Because of this, I cannot lose hope for a place like Kolkata, or the people in its slums. God does not see them a worthless or repulsive or hopeless, but with hope and love and an offering of more, in this life and the next.
Invitation
KCM gives people without a worldly future the dignity God gave us, in the hope that some may know Him, even though neither we nor they can earn such a privilege. I am so happy God marked Shaji as the head of such an amazing ministry, that he gave him a past that has set in motion the present, that the fruit of struggling, starving missionaries and their children is still being seen today. Shaji’s parents never saw enough food on their plates or every village come to know the Lord, and Shaji may never see Kolkata come out of physical or spiritual poverty, yet Hebrews 11 continues on to remind us:
“They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in the deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
God intends for us to be part of their story…part of their promise, so that we can be made perfect with them through Jesus. It is embarrassingly sad that I so often turn down the invitation, for the rags of comfort and security. Praise God that Shaji has accepted something better, and that the Lord’s faithfulness blessed me to see and participate in it. I hope that going forward, God will do much more with what He has started on this trip, even if the road is difficult and the rewards are few. Pray that Kyle and I would live the life of obedience we witnesses so clearly in the story of Shaji and his family.
The person who greeted me at 1:00am last Monday morning was someone I initially knew little about. Shaji, the founder and now head of Kolkata City Mission, waited with a smile for me at the baggage claim, ready to take me into his home and family for the span of my trip. Driving home with him that night, I mentioned that I would love to hear his testimony. He told me it was a very long story, and since that moment, the words, “I will tell you later today” were heard far too often and past many “todays”. There was always a new slum or a new village or a new experience in the city to delay the story.
The delay was fortunate, because it afforded me time to learn about Shaji’s present--full of God’s miraculous movement and work (some of which I’ve shared with you)--which only served to enrich the eventual story of his past. With each passing day of living with him and his family, witnessing KCM’s work in the slums, and enjoying his friendly perspective on life in Kolkata, I developed an amazement and care for a man Christ uses so powerfully in the lives of so many. And so, a greater appetite for his story grew in me over time. Finally, on the heels of returning from our expedition to the village, Shaji sat Kyle and I down late at night and asked if we were ready to hear where he came from.
Early Childhood
God’s mission and Kingdom have always been a part of Shaji’s life, long before he allowed them into his heart, because they originated in the life of his father first. Having become a Christian in his teenage years, Shaji’s father became a missionary to the rural areas of the southern state of Kerala (and eventually, West Bengal) early in life. For him, “being called to the mission” (as Shaji puts it) meant embracing a life of poverty from the start. Much as the disciples were sent out by Jesus without staff or provision for their harvesting work, so his father was sent to the excluded and poor “like a lamb amongst wolves” (Luke 10), working in the remotest parts of India with unreached villagers and living in deadly desperation for basic provision.
Once married, Jesus invited his new family into this lifestyle as well. They often migrated from village to village, literally without money or extra clothing, finding shelter wherever they could as his father did God’s work amongst the Hindu villagers. When his father left for days into the surrounding villages to work with those starving for physical and spiritual sustenance, his family was all too often left slowly dying in a small hut, awaiting his return. Time and time again, Shaji’s mother, two older sisters and younger brother were one vegetable or edible shrub (which can be used for stew for days) away from malnutrition or worse, death. For years, God gave them their daily bread one day at a time, and sometimes after many days without.
Cow Dung
This led Shaji, as a young bout of 7 or 8, to bury in his heart a deep aversion to the weakness and humiliation of poverty. His father’s lifestyle became his Ninevah and he decided to sail the opposite direction in life. Accordingly, the second or third grade boy established a business in these early years: every morning, around 6:00am or earlier, he and his younger brother would travel to the fields, collecting heaps of cow feces, which they would stack in enormous piles. These piles of excrement were then sold to farmers as fertilizer and fuel, bringing in a small amount of pocket change daily, a small sustenance for the struggling family. Unfortunately for Shaji’s plans, his mother believed in school and fought for it, eventually wrestling away the cow dung business from her son and sending him to school. The family could afford one uniform, which he wore every day, washed every day, and rewore the next. For the next few years and through the Lord’s provision, the family eked by a living. Shaji often went hungry but he also went to school. But all that changed when Shaji (10 or 11) overheard a secret conversation no child should ever hear.
"I don't want to die..."
One night, he stumbled upon his parents having an argument. After months of deteriorating conditions, the family had no money and little hope for food for weeks. Shaji’s eavesdropping ears heard his mother wailing in hunger and desperation with her husband. The children were starving, and she could no longer bear watching her children slowly die in agony. In a desperation that we will never understand, she begged her husband to allow her to poison the family, ending their suffering and the threat of slow, painful decay. This may seem absurd to westerners, but many in Kolkata alone live lives that seem worse than death to me, like the teenage girl in the red the light district who is raped dozens of times a day for money. Or the children in the slums I visited, who suffer from malnutrition and all forms of physical abuse from alcoholic fathers. I do not know what that’s like and thank God I never will, but I can guess I would wish for death too if I or my children experienced anything approaching it.
The family did not get death, however. For later that night, Shaji came into his mother’s room and told her he did not want to die, that he wanted to live. She collapsed on the floor in another moment of lost dignity, but conceded to her young child’s request. Fortunately, in these days of despair God again provided in meager daily ways, and starvation distanced itself for a time. This and other episodes, however, convinced Shaji that a return to work was necessary for the family. And he found opportunities in bricks.
Hope in Bricks
Local brickmakers--operating kiln ovens that dot the countryside--offered Shaji a child labor job hauling stacked bricks on his head for several hours a day in withering heat. Now almost a teenager, Shaji began a divided lifestyle. For three days a week, he hauled heavy loads on his head for miles a day, earning living wages. For the other two days, he attended school to appease his mother and recuperate from the work. His skin became a caked and cracked black from extensive time in the sun each day, but he managed to continue in this way for years despite the obstacles. Still set on becoming a business man and providing for his family, Shaji took out a local loan and invested some of his accumulated money in a tool set and basic equipment for fixing bicycles. The move paid off, as Shaji was soon able to upgrade his roadside fix-it service to a small shop. This small shop eventually sold bicycles in addition to fixing them, slowly setting Shaji on the gradual financial footing he so desired.
A Call to the Mission
Through it all, his father and family continued as missionaries, and Shaji developed in wisdom and knowledge of the Lord. Eventually, he came into a personal relationship with Jesus during his brick and bicycle years, recognizing the God his father had sacrificed so much for. In this context, Shaji received an invitation from a friend to a missions program a little ways from the town his family had settled in. After some convincing, he agreed to be a companion to his friend to the program. This decision changed his life forever.
The conference ended up being a invitational interest meeting for new missionaries, and Shaji stood out to Operation Mission recruiters. Representatives of OM eventually invited him to “join the mission” with them, which he promptly refused. They asked him to reconsider and pray about it. He refused again. They assured him he could expect another invitation in the mail in another few weeks. He told them not to bother. The invitation came anyway, and with it, a talk with his father he had never had before. During this talk, Shaji learned his father had been praying that the Lord would anoint him as a missionary since birth. The time had come, so his father said, to walk into a long awaited open door. Despite reservation, fear, and a determination to remain in control of provision for his family, God spoke to Shaji and he agreed to walk through the door.
The training program was to last two years. Shaji agreed to 6 months, pledging to return to his bike shop and go on missions some other time. But as is typical in my experience, God used the time Shaji allotted to knock down as many excuses as it took to extend his time to two years—providing financially for his family and confirming his calling in other ways. When the time came to be “sent”, again he pledged he would only go for one or two years, and once again return to work for the family. He was to go to the physically and spiritually poor in villages, towns, and eventually Kolkata through the holistic ministry of OM—much like his father had done before him (founding Compassion Service Society of India, sister movement of KCM). This ministry and God’s loving will stole Shaji’s heart and turned 1 year into 22, and he never returned to his home or the bike shop.
Living Like Royalty
But he wasn’t needed. God looked after his family and siblings without the bike shop. And later in life, after numerous occasions of the Lord’s provision, Shaji’s mother lay dying in a house that was recently provided for the family. It was the first they ever owned. Shaji told us the story of her lying on her own bed, in her own house, and sharing in her final days. She told him she felt like royalty, looking back on a hard life, rewarded by God in his graciousness, now allowing her to die with the dignity the world denied her when her son had to ask his mother not to poison them in the course of their costly following of Jesus. She and her family never enjoyed worldly pleasure, but their lives changed entire villages, and so they were rich. As, scripture says of great people of faith in Hebrews 11:
“…these people were still living by faith when they died…admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”
Redemption
Shaji is following in his father and mother’s footsteps, advancing the kingdom of God in places few others will go. He founded KCM in 2007, and the Lord has blessed the ministry and changed numerous lives, even in its infancy. Shaji told us that He believes God saw in him those brick fields, laboring like a slave in Egypt as a child. But the Lord pays no attention to the surface, and sees only who we truly are and are to be. Shaji believes God didn’t see a child slave in the fields, but one of his own children, destined by His love to minister to those in future slavery in Kolkata. He saw a child He knew since before time, and even the worst of us and the worst of life washes away when God redefines us as His children with a future.
I really believe that is true. Scripture tells over and over again the story of God’s beautiful redemption: a slave named Joseph who becomes a king in Egypt, an exiled son of pharaoh who becomes the leader of Israel (Moses), a prostitute who becomes the great great great great great (etc.) grandmother of the Christ (Rahab), a poor and unimpressive shepherd boy who become king of Israel (David), and a poor infant born in a barn, destined to be crucified on earth, yet now sitting as the Most High God (Jesus). Because of this, I cannot lose hope for a place like Kolkata, or the people in its slums. God does not see them a worthless or repulsive or hopeless, but with hope and love and an offering of more, in this life and the next.
Invitation
KCM gives people without a worldly future the dignity God gave us, in the hope that some may know Him, even though neither we nor they can earn such a privilege. I am so happy God marked Shaji as the head of such an amazing ministry, that he gave him a past that has set in motion the present, that the fruit of struggling, starving missionaries and their children is still being seen today. Shaji’s parents never saw enough food on their plates or every village come to know the Lord, and Shaji may never see Kolkata come out of physical or spiritual poverty, yet Hebrews 11 continues on to remind us:
“They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in the deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
God intends for us to be part of their story…part of their promise, so that we can be made perfect with them through Jesus. It is embarrassingly sad that I so often turn down the invitation, for the rags of comfort and security. Praise God that Shaji has accepted something better, and that the Lord’s faithfulness blessed me to see and participate in it. I hope that going forward, God will do much more with what He has started on this trip, even if the road is difficult and the rewards are few. Pray that Kyle and I would live the life of obedience we witnesses so clearly in the story of Shaji and his family.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Mundapalli
Silpa eats Oreos the same way American children do. Carefully, she pulls apart the respective sides of the cookie and begins licking the sugary coat of cream in the middle. She is about three years old, and is sitting on the cool, black floor of the KCM schoolhouse she visits in the morning--Monday through Friday--in the Mundapalli slum. Twenty other tiny children crowd the rest of the tiny room, some happily devouring their morning snack, others eagerly—but patiently—waiting with their wide eyes fixed on the cookie bag Mongal (a KCM worker) is carrying.
For many of them, this snack may be the only meal they have today. Just two years ago, KCM found the slum filled with children with bloated bellies, slowly starving from their one meal-a-day diet. That meal all too often takes the form of a bowl of popped rice, mixed with water and served cold. For years, infants and young children grow up on this cold bowl of Rice Krispies for their daily nutrition. When KCM came and began the school Silpa now sits in, children had an inability to focus and strained in the agony of hunger pains accorded to them by their rice diet and deformed bodies. Because of a limited budget, KCM is able to provide the children one healthy meal only every other day. Yet the impact has been tangible, as the school room is now filled with happy children singing songs about God.
Brespati stands off to the corner for most of the songs. She, too, is from the slum these children have grown up in. Through KCM, she is slowly coming to faith, while volunteering to teach the children basic school subjects to go with their new found diet. She is from the half of the slum that consists of Hindu villagers who are now displaced residents, many lured here by lies of a better life for a small sum of money. The other half hails from Bangladesh, bringing with them a Hindu/Muslim tension to the slum. Though their religions differ, their job opportunities do not. Most find work in the hard labor market, toting and hauling blocks of concrete or brick or metal tubing through the city streets for construction projects. Some invest this money in alcohol or gambling, like the group of men playing cards just outside the schoolhouse window.
Mongal is back in the slum for the first time in nearly a month. Every day, he bikes 45 minutes to an hour (one way) to care for and work with children like these. He knows all of them by name, as well as the teenagers he spends more one on one time with in the afternoon. On Fridays, he conducts Sunday school for the children, who are slowly coming to learn about Jesus, the main character of the songs they sing to us in the schoolhouse. When not with the children or teens, Mongal busies himself counseling adults in the slum with addiction problems while sharing about Jesus.
This all stopped a few weeks ago when Mongal’s wife Jaia woke up in the night to sounds of her husband having violent seizures. KCM staff rushed him to the hospital, where he awoke the next morning unaware of the night before. It took a week for the doctors to explain Mongal’s near death experience. When they did, Mongal discovered his body to be housing a tape worm. It laid at least one egg in his brain, cutting into central nervous functions that can cause seizures. In the West, we would hardly expect such a diagnosis; but here in Kolkata, Mongal’s experience is simply the result of a city, a slum, and a life Jesus has called him to--the same life the schoolhouse children enjoy as well. Jesus is here, but few others are, and that’s why Mongal’s smile at the children as they sing songs about Jesus is uniquely encouraging—because you know he loves them regardless of the cost.
The cost, this time, is that he must stay at home for the next two years, while his medication eradicates the parasite laying eggs in his body. The risk of more seizures is simply too great, especially for someone who bikes alone and ministers alone and shares about Jesus alone in a broken slum filled with beautiful children and people that God has made. He will stay in the office and do important administrative work from now on. Now there is no one left to go to the slum.
Though KCM requires only $3000 a month to minister effectively in several slums/rickshaw communities and pay its eight staff, it barely scrapes by with the $1750 that comes in every month. Accordingly, it is impossible to hire a new minister for the slum Silpa eats her cookies in for now. Or to buy the motor bike that could have replaced Mongal’s two hour bike ride each day with a 30 minute one. Yet still, these are but obstacles the devil sets up as stumbling blocks for KCM to step over as Jesus continues to expand into the lives and hearts of slum children and their families here.
Someone once told me that our Western gospel is often too small to engage with such things; but fortunately for KCM and us, Jesus is bigger than tapeworms or starving children or funding shortages. And that is Good News. He is the reason Mongal has built a life around this slum and its children, like Silpa, and why there is love in his smile for the kids he can no longer be with. It is hard to believe that death has any lasting hope when Jesus is living here through people like that.
Please pray for Mongal, the Mundapalli slum, and for the Lord’s provision for the ministry.
For many of them, this snack may be the only meal they have today. Just two years ago, KCM found the slum filled with children with bloated bellies, slowly starving from their one meal-a-day diet. That meal all too often takes the form of a bowl of popped rice, mixed with water and served cold. For years, infants and young children grow up on this cold bowl of Rice Krispies for their daily nutrition. When KCM came and began the school Silpa now sits in, children had an inability to focus and strained in the agony of hunger pains accorded to them by their rice diet and deformed bodies. Because of a limited budget, KCM is able to provide the children one healthy meal only every other day. Yet the impact has been tangible, as the school room is now filled with happy children singing songs about God.
Brespati stands off to the corner for most of the songs. She, too, is from the slum these children have grown up in. Through KCM, she is slowly coming to faith, while volunteering to teach the children basic school subjects to go with their new found diet. She is from the half of the slum that consists of Hindu villagers who are now displaced residents, many lured here by lies of a better life for a small sum of money. The other half hails from Bangladesh, bringing with them a Hindu/Muslim tension to the slum. Though their religions differ, their job opportunities do not. Most find work in the hard labor market, toting and hauling blocks of concrete or brick or metal tubing through the city streets for construction projects. Some invest this money in alcohol or gambling, like the group of men playing cards just outside the schoolhouse window.
Mongal is back in the slum for the first time in nearly a month. Every day, he bikes 45 minutes to an hour (one way) to care for and work with children like these. He knows all of them by name, as well as the teenagers he spends more one on one time with in the afternoon. On Fridays, he conducts Sunday school for the children, who are slowly coming to learn about Jesus, the main character of the songs they sing to us in the schoolhouse. When not with the children or teens, Mongal busies himself counseling adults in the slum with addiction problems while sharing about Jesus.
This all stopped a few weeks ago when Mongal’s wife Jaia woke up in the night to sounds of her husband having violent seizures. KCM staff rushed him to the hospital, where he awoke the next morning unaware of the night before. It took a week for the doctors to explain Mongal’s near death experience. When they did, Mongal discovered his body to be housing a tape worm. It laid at least one egg in his brain, cutting into central nervous functions that can cause seizures. In the West, we would hardly expect such a diagnosis; but here in Kolkata, Mongal’s experience is simply the result of a city, a slum, and a life Jesus has called him to--the same life the schoolhouse children enjoy as well. Jesus is here, but few others are, and that’s why Mongal’s smile at the children as they sing songs about Jesus is uniquely encouraging—because you know he loves them regardless of the cost.
The cost, this time, is that he must stay at home for the next two years, while his medication eradicates the parasite laying eggs in his body. The risk of more seizures is simply too great, especially for someone who bikes alone and ministers alone and shares about Jesus alone in a broken slum filled with beautiful children and people that God has made. He will stay in the office and do important administrative work from now on. Now there is no one left to go to the slum.
Though KCM requires only $3000 a month to minister effectively in several slums/rickshaw communities and pay its eight staff, it barely scrapes by with the $1750 that comes in every month. Accordingly, it is impossible to hire a new minister for the slum Silpa eats her cookies in for now. Or to buy the motor bike that could have replaced Mongal’s two hour bike ride each day with a 30 minute one. Yet still, these are but obstacles the devil sets up as stumbling blocks for KCM to step over as Jesus continues to expand into the lives and hearts of slum children and their families here.
Someone once told me that our Western gospel is often too small to engage with such things; but fortunately for KCM and us, Jesus is bigger than tapeworms or starving children or funding shortages. And that is Good News. He is the reason Mongal has built a life around this slum and its children, like Silpa, and why there is love in his smile for the kids he can no longer be with. It is hard to believe that death has any lasting hope when Jesus is living here through people like that.
Please pray for Mongal, the Mundapalli slum, and for the Lord’s provision for the ministry.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Village (Part I)
We’ve only been here for 24 hours, but it feels like we’ve been living with, sharing meals, and giving “Good News Messages” to the villages and villagers of the Iduki district of West Bengal for a week. Life here is very different. The villages are stacked, one next to another, for hundreds of miles, living in small communities of 300-400. As we drive, we see thousands of fields stretching beyond sight, filled with villagers farming rice for their subsistence lifestyle. Winding paths and bicycle filled roads weave in and out of the countryside, occasionally interrupted by small, red, dirt roads that lead to collections of mud huts with thatched roofs, under which villagers sort rice, stack foods, cook, recline, and tend to cattle. Providing constant company to the villagers are thousands of small goats, proud and strutting roosters along with their hens, and the ever present meandering of large bulls and cows. Children run about on various missions, chatting and yelling at one another as they play. The older teenagers help with their parents and have more serious faces to match their heightened responsibility. Older men and women of the village often lounge in the shade, or squat on their heels as they invariably manipulate various objects in their hands. We see fewer women, as their lives are lived mostly inside, constantly preparing meals for their male counterparts in the fields and streets and performing chores around the house. These are the communities of the “dalit”, or those more commonly dubbed as “untouchables”. Their thick black skin, scorched by years of hard labor in the streets and rice fields, marks them as permanently “worthless” to the rest of society. The privileges of even a basic civilization have made few inroads here.
This is where Compassion Service Society of India (CSSI) does its work: in the places that no one else goes. Our initial destination is the original CSSI compound, which is a small building located in the middle of the village. The building looks the age of a structure five times its lifespan, and in it dwells the local CSSI head and his family, Sahadeb. As we open the car doors, we are greeted by what will become a common phenomena: the sucking of cool, air conditioned air from our vehicle as it is replaced by the stifling, hot, breezeless atmosphere of the village climate. Kyle, Shaji, and I will be dripping with sweat within minutes, and the frequent blackouts that plague the countryside will make sure we stay this way for much of the next 24 hours. Accordingly, cold showers and the all too brief respite of a ceiling fan at night will become heaven on earth for us.
This particular village is the first of many that CSSI has set foot in. Sahadeb grew up in a nearby community and is a capable servant, leading about 15 ministers and teachers who reach out to the local communities. Here, CSSI has built a small school for the villagers. Almost all are illiterate, and have been for hundreds of years. Like their fathers and mothers before them, they have grown up to be cooks and manual laborers, struggling to get by as they pray to various Hindu deities to bring blessing and protection. A school, then, is a revolutionary sight; and dozens of children crowd into dark rooms lined with windows that struggle to keep the walls lit as the children learn in English, Hindi, Bengali, science, math, and Word classes. Nearby stands the villages first well, built in 1998 by CSSI and since replaced by two newer ones that bring water and life to the villagers.
The children and teachers are excited for our arrival. They greet us eagerly and lead us inside the dimly lit rooms of the schoolhouse skeleton to say hello to the children. After doing so, the children stand up and yell “Good moring!” or “Hello!” and sing us songs—hand motions included—for several minutes. Their faces are both excited and seem, admittedly, a bit confused with the village visitors. This will be first educated generation of children this village has ever seen.
The rest of our night is marked by excursions to various places. After an afternoon nap in the coma inducing heat, we awaken to find that it is now time to travel to a nearby village to see a children’s fellowship (similar to a Sunday school).Several of us crowd into Shaji’s small van as we make the ten minute journey. In this new village, another well is being built to provide clean drinking water. Villagers argue about the site of the well for several minutes before settling on a spot they proudly place their feet on while smiling, as if explorers setting foot on a new land for the first time. We take a picture. After the commotion has passed, we walk over to a mud school house that has also been erected by CSSI. Knowing of our arrival, over 70 children beat us to the spot and form a large crowd. They begin singing songs of the Bible, about creation and Jonah and how great our God is. They are so hopeful and excited. As they sing, the families of the village begin to form a ring around our back, watching…Shaji says,”You share a Bible story!”, and after a few nervous minutes of thinking, I tell the children and villagers a story about the Prodigal son. While the context for such stories is very distant for us in the west, its relevance takes on a new nature for these villagers who more immediately grasp its meaning. It is such a blessing to be able to share the Word so simply, yet beautifully, with those who are truly desiring to hear something new and fresh to their ears. All but a few in the crowd are Hindu, and the story of a loving Father who waits expectantly for His undeserving lost son to return home is something that must be strange and attractive to a people who worship a goddess who threatens death and destruction if they do not make appropriate sacrifices. We do not understand how truly different our loving Father is from that.
Once we arrive back in our original village, we walk to a local house to take part in a night time Christian fellowship with several other Christian villagers. All of them have come to know the Lord through CSSI. We sing songs in Bengali for an hour or so and pray intermittently. As we praise in words I cannot understand, I am struck by how big our God truly, truly is. Halfway around the world, Jesus has reached this village of dalit people, and they are praising Him under a sky filed with fireflies and stars that He has made for them to enjoy in the middle of the rice fields and jungle. Their voices are beautiful as they sing to the same God I do 13,000 miles away in an air conditioned gym in north San Antonio. God’s love and scope and the breadth of His movement are absurd in moments like this.
The power has again gone out, so the light of a couple small candles is all there is to illuminate the small Bibles the villagers produce to “hear the Word” tonight. Shaji, again, motions me to share. This time I talk about the Exodus and God’s faithfulness to the Israelites at the Red Sea, how He always “makes a way where there is now way” and how they are called to be like Moses in pointing their villages toward God and Jesus, who also makes the way toward God’s promise where there is no other way. Shaji translates and proceeds to exhort them in Bengali after I finish. We then pray and conclude our time together, but not before we share one last chai tea time, just before we turn in for the night. Fortunately, the power comes back on 45 minutes after we return, and the electricty survives the night. We sleep soundly on a sturdy, firm, bed that keeps us glued to it until we are awakened by the next power outage and the accompanying heat at 7:45 the next morning.
This is where Compassion Service Society of India (CSSI) does its work: in the places that no one else goes. Our initial destination is the original CSSI compound, which is a small building located in the middle of the village. The building looks the age of a structure five times its lifespan, and in it dwells the local CSSI head and his family, Sahadeb. As we open the car doors, we are greeted by what will become a common phenomena: the sucking of cool, air conditioned air from our vehicle as it is replaced by the stifling, hot, breezeless atmosphere of the village climate. Kyle, Shaji, and I will be dripping with sweat within minutes, and the frequent blackouts that plague the countryside will make sure we stay this way for much of the next 24 hours. Accordingly, cold showers and the all too brief respite of a ceiling fan at night will become heaven on earth for us.
This particular village is the first of many that CSSI has set foot in. Sahadeb grew up in a nearby community and is a capable servant, leading about 15 ministers and teachers who reach out to the local communities. Here, CSSI has built a small school for the villagers. Almost all are illiterate, and have been for hundreds of years. Like their fathers and mothers before them, they have grown up to be cooks and manual laborers, struggling to get by as they pray to various Hindu deities to bring blessing and protection. A school, then, is a revolutionary sight; and dozens of children crowd into dark rooms lined with windows that struggle to keep the walls lit as the children learn in English, Hindi, Bengali, science, math, and Word classes. Nearby stands the villages first well, built in 1998 by CSSI and since replaced by two newer ones that bring water and life to the villagers.
The children and teachers are excited for our arrival. They greet us eagerly and lead us inside the dimly lit rooms of the schoolhouse skeleton to say hello to the children. After doing so, the children stand up and yell “Good moring!” or “Hello!” and sing us songs—hand motions included—for several minutes. Their faces are both excited and seem, admittedly, a bit confused with the village visitors. This will be first educated generation of children this village has ever seen.
The rest of our night is marked by excursions to various places. After an afternoon nap in the coma inducing heat, we awaken to find that it is now time to travel to a nearby village to see a children’s fellowship (similar to a Sunday school).Several of us crowd into Shaji’s small van as we make the ten minute journey. In this new village, another well is being built to provide clean drinking water. Villagers argue about the site of the well for several minutes before settling on a spot they proudly place their feet on while smiling, as if explorers setting foot on a new land for the first time. We take a picture. After the commotion has passed, we walk over to a mud school house that has also been erected by CSSI. Knowing of our arrival, over 70 children beat us to the spot and form a large crowd. They begin singing songs of the Bible, about creation and Jonah and how great our God is. They are so hopeful and excited. As they sing, the families of the village begin to form a ring around our back, watching…Shaji says,”You share a Bible story!”, and after a few nervous minutes of thinking, I tell the children and villagers a story about the Prodigal son. While the context for such stories is very distant for us in the west, its relevance takes on a new nature for these villagers who more immediately grasp its meaning. It is such a blessing to be able to share the Word so simply, yet beautifully, with those who are truly desiring to hear something new and fresh to their ears. All but a few in the crowd are Hindu, and the story of a loving Father who waits expectantly for His undeserving lost son to return home is something that must be strange and attractive to a people who worship a goddess who threatens death and destruction if they do not make appropriate sacrifices. We do not understand how truly different our loving Father is from that.
Once we arrive back in our original village, we walk to a local house to take part in a night time Christian fellowship with several other Christian villagers. All of them have come to know the Lord through CSSI. We sing songs in Bengali for an hour or so and pray intermittently. As we praise in words I cannot understand, I am struck by how big our God truly, truly is. Halfway around the world, Jesus has reached this village of dalit people, and they are praising Him under a sky filed with fireflies and stars that He has made for them to enjoy in the middle of the rice fields and jungle. Their voices are beautiful as they sing to the same God I do 13,000 miles away in an air conditioned gym in north San Antonio. God’s love and scope and the breadth of His movement are absurd in moments like this.
The power has again gone out, so the light of a couple small candles is all there is to illuminate the small Bibles the villagers produce to “hear the Word” tonight. Shaji, again, motions me to share. This time I talk about the Exodus and God’s faithfulness to the Israelites at the Red Sea, how He always “makes a way where there is now way” and how they are called to be like Moses in pointing their villages toward God and Jesus, who also makes the way toward God’s promise where there is no other way. Shaji translates and proceeds to exhort them in Bengali after I finish. We then pray and conclude our time together, but not before we share one last chai tea time, just before we turn in for the night. Fortunately, the power comes back on 45 minutes after we return, and the electricty survives the night. We sleep soundly on a sturdy, firm, bed that keeps us glued to it until we are awakened by the next power outage and the accompanying heat at 7:45 the next morning.
The Village (Part II)
The next day we wake up at about 8:00AM. We are well rested from the long and exhausting day the night before and ready to begin our journey back to Kolkata. Shaji tells us that we will make a few stops at neighboring villages first, and so begins our second journey. The morning air is much cooler than the night we left behind, and I feel excited as Shaji, Kyle, Rajit (a CSSI teacher), Sahadeb, and myself pile into Shaji’s van. The village we are going to begged CSSI to build a school in their community. The parents of the dozens of local children understand that there is no hope or future for them or their children without the benefits of education, so they offered space if CSSI would come and build them a school. As we enter the village, this school proceeds to come into view. Children are already racing on foot toward the schoolhouse over a dusty red road hugged by huts on the left and hundreds of acres of rice patties on the right. The school is made of mud with a tin roof attached to the top. It is crumbling due to the toll of monsoon rains on its soil-composed walls.
With education and Christianity comes a myriad of cultural and societal transformations, Shaji informs us. Often, girls in these villages are married off at the age of 13 or 14. Occasionally, strange men visit from far away towns and court the village’s daughters, taking them away with them once married. They are then sold into sex trafficking rings for as much as $10,000, as Kolkata is a “training ground” for the industry’s “new products”. Once this happens, many of their lives are effectively over, as their futures are now muddied and predetermined to be filled with pain and the most obscene forms of abuse humanity can think up. For their efforts, these “suitors” are paid by the already impoverished villagers for taking their daughters. In other cases, women, men, and families alike are promised jobs in the city if they can afford to pay those offering them a new start a sum of money. They are transported to Kolkata and dumped there with the job offers that lured them away from their homes and families having suddenly evaporated. These now displaced villagers become slum residents and squatters, a statistic amidst the sea of the some 16-18 million people in the city. In still other cases, women and men simply stay home as is. Here, the men become hard, manual laborers whom often struggle to eek by a living for their families. Women become house servants and child rearers for the rest of their lives, working for their husbands. They will continue the subsistance lifestyle that heir ancestors before them lived, hoping to navigate the trials of life and provide for a family as the rest of the world passes them by.
The gospel and education change these realities. CSSI has gone to dwell among these villages, as Jesus certainly would, to bring hope over time to local communities. As we park in front of the mud school house and see the room filled with dozens of children learning about the Word and various school subjects, I think about how great is the love and Kingdom of God, which now gradually encroaches upon the death and destruction of life for these villages. Strangely enough, I reflect on the beauty of the Levitical laws that YAHWEH gave the Israelites—a new people in a new land with a new and uncertain future without preestablished foundations. God so graciously guided them not only to a land of provision flowing with milk and honey, but also to a culture and society defined by structure and laws that brought life, light and thriving in the land. Even in the West, the foundations of everything we enjoy are based upon a history of God’s structuring and cultural guidance through the Church and its influences. Its made plenty of mistakes along the way, but the Lord’s hand is gracious in comparison to the pathetic vacuum of human wisdom we otherwise try to guide ourselves by. Indian village culture, by contrast, is founded upon and guided by Hinduism, which has left its marks as well, both in the form of broken structures as well as in the “untouchable” status of the beautiful children we were watching sing to us in that school house. Through CSSI, God is giving them a hope and a foundation founded in the Good News, along with an ethic of self sacrifice, love, and recognition that all people are made in the image of God Himself. This changes the way people behave and, coupled with education, produces health in a society marked by death. He did this for the Israelites 3,500 years ago and He is doing it for the dalit people of the villages of West Bengal now. It is a privilege to see His gracious hand at work.
Please pray that these villages would not only receive Jesus spiritually, but that the culture, scoiety, and lifestyle of the villages would be transformed for the better with it. Neither CSSI nor myself desire that change to look "western", but that it simply would reflect the beauty of Jesus within Indian culture, which is easy to see amongst the believers we have met so far. Praise God that, despite our own problems, the mark of Christ has been felt in our own culture and society, and we are the better for it. Also praise God that He is sending workers to the fields (literally) to bring Good News to places no one else will go! CSSI is severely underfunded and understaffed, so please also pray that the Lord would bring provision for the ministry while they use what He has already given in the Spirit's wisdom.
With education and Christianity comes a myriad of cultural and societal transformations, Shaji informs us. Often, girls in these villages are married off at the age of 13 or 14. Occasionally, strange men visit from far away towns and court the village’s daughters, taking them away with them once married. They are then sold into sex trafficking rings for as much as $10,000, as Kolkata is a “training ground” for the industry’s “new products”. Once this happens, many of their lives are effectively over, as their futures are now muddied and predetermined to be filled with pain and the most obscene forms of abuse humanity can think up. For their efforts, these “suitors” are paid by the already impoverished villagers for taking their daughters. In other cases, women, men, and families alike are promised jobs in the city if they can afford to pay those offering them a new start a sum of money. They are transported to Kolkata and dumped there with the job offers that lured them away from their homes and families having suddenly evaporated. These now displaced villagers become slum residents and squatters, a statistic amidst the sea of the some 16-18 million people in the city. In still other cases, women and men simply stay home as is. Here, the men become hard, manual laborers whom often struggle to eek by a living for their families. Women become house servants and child rearers for the rest of their lives, working for their husbands. They will continue the subsistance lifestyle that heir ancestors before them lived, hoping to navigate the trials of life and provide for a family as the rest of the world passes them by.
The gospel and education change these realities. CSSI has gone to dwell among these villages, as Jesus certainly would, to bring hope over time to local communities. As we park in front of the mud school house and see the room filled with dozens of children learning about the Word and various school subjects, I think about how great is the love and Kingdom of God, which now gradually encroaches upon the death and destruction of life for these villages. Strangely enough, I reflect on the beauty of the Levitical laws that YAHWEH gave the Israelites—a new people in a new land with a new and uncertain future without preestablished foundations. God so graciously guided them not only to a land of provision flowing with milk and honey, but also to a culture and society defined by structure and laws that brought life, light and thriving in the land. Even in the West, the foundations of everything we enjoy are based upon a history of God’s structuring and cultural guidance through the Church and its influences. Its made plenty of mistakes along the way, but the Lord’s hand is gracious in comparison to the pathetic vacuum of human wisdom we otherwise try to guide ourselves by. Indian village culture, by contrast, is founded upon and guided by Hinduism, which has left its marks as well, both in the form of broken structures as well as in the “untouchable” status of the beautiful children we were watching sing to us in that school house. Through CSSI, God is giving them a hope and a foundation founded in the Good News, along with an ethic of self sacrifice, love, and recognition that all people are made in the image of God Himself. This changes the way people behave and, coupled with education, produces health in a society marked by death. He did this for the Israelites 3,500 years ago and He is doing it for the dalit people of the villages of West Bengal now. It is a privilege to see His gracious hand at work.
Please pray that these villages would not only receive Jesus spiritually, but that the culture, scoiety, and lifestyle of the villages would be transformed for the better with it. Neither CSSI nor myself desire that change to look "western", but that it simply would reflect the beauty of Jesus within Indian culture, which is easy to see amongst the believers we have met so far. Praise God that, despite our own problems, the mark of Christ has been felt in our own culture and society, and we are the better for it. Also praise God that He is sending workers to the fields (literally) to bring Good News to places no one else will go! CSSI is severely underfunded and understaffed, so please also pray that the Lord would bring provision for the ministry while they use what He has already given in the Spirit's wisdom.
Mamuni
After singing and dancing from the villagers (see above), we moved on to a new village and a small, modest house. Outside, cows reclined in hay and we side stepped their excrement left all over the road and doorway as we entered a dark hallway. A mat is laid out on the floor and we sit down. This is the household of Mamuni, a young Christian woman we have come to visit in this community. She is pregnant with her first child, due in a matter of weeks, and her warm smile invites us into her home. We’ve come to pray for her and her family, but first we are treated to a variety of snacks and, of course, tea.
Mamuni is not from this village. She is actually from a nearby town and well educated, having gone to secondary school and received a university degree. Accordingly, she is the most educated person in the entire village. After her education, her marriage was arranged and she traveled to the village she will now likely spend most of her life in. At the time, neither her nor anyone else in the village were Christian. Soon after her arrival, CSSI came to the village and initiated a relationship with her, gifting a Bible. Being one of the only literate people in the village, Mamuni began reading the New Testament and, after getting through the Gospels, became interested in accepting Jesus as her Lord. She took initiative and decided to takte steps to bring her closer to Him.
For anyone in the village, let alone a woman, this has dire consequences. With no Christian community, Mamuni began traveling several miles by bike to come to a Sunday service orchestrated by CSSI. This alone generates visceral social ostracism, as married women are strictly forbidden from traveling alone. Mamuni did so anyway, enduring hours of questioning concerning where she was going and withstanding suspicions to her motives and purity (after all, why would a married woman need to travel alone to unknown places for a few hours?).This is an enormous cost in communal, village culture, where the 300 people living around you are your entire life. Mamuni’s stubbornness and education, along with the grace afforded her by the Holy Spirit, enabled her to continue on like this for nearly year. Eventually, she began witnessing to her uncle and he soon became a companion on her trips to the church. After some time, he became a Christian as well. Now, there are two Christians in the village. As a new believer in these villages, one instantly becomes a missionary, stranded alone in a community ready for apostolic work. Mamuni and her uncle continue to labor for and reflect Jesus to the rest of their community, and those in CSSI hope they will some day bring the spark that brings many more to faith. Mamuni has opened the door for the gospel to an entire community. In doing so, she has also allowed for CSSI to do new work in the village in the future, bringing education and children's learning centers to another community. As of right now, there are not enough workers or funding to go.
Within this context we arrived and drank her tea. It is a blessing to be served by a woman who has taken on more of a cost in her relationship with Jesus from her family and community than I ever will. She and now her uncle are a light to a community where there was previously no hope of the Good News. The persistence of God’s faithfulness and love through CSSI born in the stubbornness of a woman in a small village no one knows exists has created a foothold for God to change an entire community. For the rest of her life, she will likely continue on in a very humble, simple (and to Westerners, likely insulting) life of servitude to her family and Hindu husband, yet she will probably be the start of more eternal things than many of us will ever do. Even through this blog and my future testimony, God is being faithful to her in taking her story of His love to places she will never visit or know. Though I did not even get the pleasure of speaking to her (she doesn’t speak English), Mamuni is yet another example of why Jesus so often identifies Himself with the poor and calls us to them. It is humbling to see the ways He shows up once we go.
Mamuni is not from this village. She is actually from a nearby town and well educated, having gone to secondary school and received a university degree. Accordingly, she is the most educated person in the entire village. After her education, her marriage was arranged and she traveled to the village she will now likely spend most of her life in. At the time, neither her nor anyone else in the village were Christian. Soon after her arrival, CSSI came to the village and initiated a relationship with her, gifting a Bible. Being one of the only literate people in the village, Mamuni began reading the New Testament and, after getting through the Gospels, became interested in accepting Jesus as her Lord. She took initiative and decided to takte steps to bring her closer to Him.
For anyone in the village, let alone a woman, this has dire consequences. With no Christian community, Mamuni began traveling several miles by bike to come to a Sunday service orchestrated by CSSI. This alone generates visceral social ostracism, as married women are strictly forbidden from traveling alone. Mamuni did so anyway, enduring hours of questioning concerning where she was going and withstanding suspicions to her motives and purity (after all, why would a married woman need to travel alone to unknown places for a few hours?).This is an enormous cost in communal, village culture, where the 300 people living around you are your entire life. Mamuni’s stubbornness and education, along with the grace afforded her by the Holy Spirit, enabled her to continue on like this for nearly year. Eventually, she began witnessing to her uncle and he soon became a companion on her trips to the church. After some time, he became a Christian as well. Now, there are two Christians in the village. As a new believer in these villages, one instantly becomes a missionary, stranded alone in a community ready for apostolic work. Mamuni and her uncle continue to labor for and reflect Jesus to the rest of their community, and those in CSSI hope they will some day bring the spark that brings many more to faith. Mamuni has opened the door for the gospel to an entire community. In doing so, she has also allowed for CSSI to do new work in the village in the future, bringing education and children's learning centers to another community. As of right now, there are not enough workers or funding to go.
Within this context we arrived and drank her tea. It is a blessing to be served by a woman who has taken on more of a cost in her relationship with Jesus from her family and community than I ever will. She and now her uncle are a light to a community where there was previously no hope of the Good News. The persistence of God’s faithfulness and love through CSSI born in the stubbornness of a woman in a small village no one knows exists has created a foothold for God to change an entire community. For the rest of her life, she will likely continue on in a very humble, simple (and to Westerners, likely insulting) life of servitude to her family and Hindu husband, yet she will probably be the start of more eternal things than many of us will ever do. Even through this blog and my future testimony, God is being faithful to her in taking her story of His love to places she will never visit or know. Though I did not even get the pleasure of speaking to her (she doesn’t speak English), Mamuni is yet another example of why Jesus so often identifies Himself with the poor and calls us to them. It is humbling to see the ways He shows up once we go.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Update
Hey everyone,
I hope you are all doing very well. Just wanted to give you a quick update on how everything is going. Kyle and I are both doing very well and enjoying our time here in the city. We spent all of Friday traveling around the inner city of Kolkata and visiting some of the boys I built relationships with during my last visit. It was great to see them, as the Lord has been doing so much through the ministry they are a part of over the last few years. A couple of house fellowships have even sprung up! We also visited Kalighat, the biggest temple to Kali--the oppressive and evil goddess of death and destruction that the city worships--and returned to the place in the middle of the city that I lived in 2008.
The trip was good for both Kyle and I to get reacclamated with Kolkata, and to engage with some of the deep brokenness and death that is present in the city. Unfortunately, I ended up with a horrible heat stroke from the stiffling heat and spent the entire night with a fever and a lot of nausea, until I got rehydrated. Praise God that he has brought be back to full health!
We will visit a village outside of Kolkata tomorrow, where a sister organization is doing work, and will return to Kolkata on Monday, when we will visit the last of the slums KCM is working in. From here on out, we are trying to get a lot of planning and prepping work done for the long terms commitments we are making with KCM. More on that to come. Please pray that the remainder of our visits would go smoothly and that we would integrating the experiences and knowledge we are gaining into a framework that helps us to do good advocacy once we return.
Overall, I am seeing some amazing things that KCM is doing and it is bringing a lot of hope to my heart. This trip has been significantly different from my last, in the sense that I can see Jesus clearly moving and calling me on mission with Him in areas that I can clearly see His Kingdom expanding into. PRay that I would listen to His voice well and know what He is calling Kyle and I to do! Towards the end of the trip, I will try to update you more comprehensively on all the specifics of what KCM is doing!
Thank you so much for all of your prayers and please continue to remember us before God. We've still got a long way to go!
God Bless,
Jacob
I hope you are all doing very well. Just wanted to give you a quick update on how everything is going. Kyle and I are both doing very well and enjoying our time here in the city. We spent all of Friday traveling around the inner city of Kolkata and visiting some of the boys I built relationships with during my last visit. It was great to see them, as the Lord has been doing so much through the ministry they are a part of over the last few years. A couple of house fellowships have even sprung up! We also visited Kalighat, the biggest temple to Kali--the oppressive and evil goddess of death and destruction that the city worships--and returned to the place in the middle of the city that I lived in 2008.
The trip was good for both Kyle and I to get reacclamated with Kolkata, and to engage with some of the deep brokenness and death that is present in the city. Unfortunately, I ended up with a horrible heat stroke from the stiffling heat and spent the entire night with a fever and a lot of nausea, until I got rehydrated. Praise God that he has brought be back to full health!
We will visit a village outside of Kolkata tomorrow, where a sister organization is doing work, and will return to Kolkata on Monday, when we will visit the last of the slums KCM is working in. From here on out, we are trying to get a lot of planning and prepping work done for the long terms commitments we are making with KCM. More on that to come. Please pray that the remainder of our visits would go smoothly and that we would integrating the experiences and knowledge we are gaining into a framework that helps us to do good advocacy once we return.
Overall, I am seeing some amazing things that KCM is doing and it is bringing a lot of hope to my heart. This trip has been significantly different from my last, in the sense that I can see Jesus clearly moving and calling me on mission with Him in areas that I can clearly see His Kingdom expanding into. PRay that I would listen to His voice well and know what He is calling Kyle and I to do! Towards the end of the trip, I will try to update you more comprehensively on all the specifics of what KCM is doing!
Thank you so much for all of your prayers and please continue to remember us before God. We've still got a long way to go!
God Bless,
Jacob
"My Name is Juwa"
We started off for our second visit into the slums late in the Thursday afternoon. For Kyle, it was his first chance to see Kolkata in the daylight. For twenty minutes or so, we rode with Shaji as we twisted and weaved through the streets toward the Pramodnager slum. We are going to see Rana, who works in the slum primarily with children, but also with their families. The streets are packed with people going here and there, carrying bags of fruit, toting sacks of recycled plastics, and doing any number of other things. The roads into the slums were especially bumpy and in need of repairs. The car often sways and jolts as we drive through the various potholes and crevices, all the while Shaji honks people, bicycles, and cars out of the way as we motor past them. The sun is beginning to set and it blazes into our eyes a very brilliant orange as we drive mostly west.
Thr car comes around one of the last corners as a large pond and a huge pile of trash behind it comes into view. “That is the dumping site for the northern district,” Shaji tells us. The garbage is many feet high and overshadows the back side of the small lake. “This lake is called ‘Gil’. It is known for people dumping dead bodies in it. People don’t like to go around this lake alone at night.” Shaji continues. “What?” I reply. “This lake is known for where they rape and kill the young girls. They throw their bodies into the lake after they are done. Later at night and early in the morning, drunkards gather around here. Then they bring the girls. That’s why people don’t like to come here alone…” says Shaji. He goes on to tell us that the Pramodnager slum land has been given to the slum residents to build on, now 20 years after its initial establishment. Accordingly, the families living in the slum have begun to build small houses made of hollow concrete, standing one or two stories high. This slum is known for housing criminals. Whenever there is crime locally, police will come to this slum and round up the “suspects”. Though the slum consists mostly of Bangladeshi migrants who moved into Kolkata for a better life, outsides look upon it with disdain, thinking it to be merely a group of thieves and murderers.
A couple of minutes later Shaji pulls into the slum and we park the car at the corner of a soccer and cricket field. Kids are running all around, yelling and enjoying the last few minutes of daylight they have to play in. As we get out of the car, a man tells Shaji that he cannot park there. Shaji responds in Bengali and the man nods his head slightly to the left, acknowledging that “it’s ok”, and we continue on. People are on the street everywhere: women coming out of their homes for various chores, children staring curiously at us as they talk to one another, men with mobile kitchens cook food on the side of the dusty road, and others are simply lounging around, apparently relaxing as the sun sets.
We walk down the narrow road past a few buildings and turn into the second or third door. Inside we see Rana, teaching and playing with about twenty or so children. Most are very young, with the oldest being about 13 years old. Rana motions for us to take a seat at the front of the class, and Kyle & I sit down on two, old, plastic chairs. Then Rana has the children sing for us. It is beautiful to see so many small children singing—some with their eyes closed, other with their hands clasped together as if in prayer—and it is a joyful, hope filled experience. After the song, I ask Rana what they are singing. He tells me that it is a song about Jesus being our eternal friend and companion. We take pictures of the children after the song as they are all very eager to be part of the picture, shouting and laughing as they all try to get a head into the frame. Rana calms them down and then has them do introductions. They are so excited and happy to practice their English, and even happier when we reply with a “Very good!” or “My name is Jacob”.
Afterward, we take more pictures and the kids are dismissed. Once this happens, chaos breaks loose and they begin running around the room while having fun and playing. Little kids begin shaking my hand and saying “Thank you”, even though we didn’t do anything. A little girl—maybe 10 or 11 years old--eventually walks up and says, excitedly, “My name is Juwa”. “My name is Jacob,” I reply. “Thank you,” she exclaims, and then runs away laughing and smiling.
All of these children are reaping the benefits of the hard work Rana and KCM are doing in the slums. In otherwise dark and dismal circumstances, Jesus is showing up through this work…and in the smiles and songs of these young children, singing about their eternal friend Jesus. I feel as if these early days spent in Kolkata are full of these experiences. There is the city and communities that are beaten down by the spiritual and physical realities of sin, but there is also those children, bringing a tangible hope in the dark.
Thr car comes around one of the last corners as a large pond and a huge pile of trash behind it comes into view. “That is the dumping site for the northern district,” Shaji tells us. The garbage is many feet high and overshadows the back side of the small lake. “This lake is called ‘Gil’. It is known for people dumping dead bodies in it. People don’t like to go around this lake alone at night.” Shaji continues. “What?” I reply. “This lake is known for where they rape and kill the young girls. They throw their bodies into the lake after they are done. Later at night and early in the morning, drunkards gather around here. Then they bring the girls. That’s why people don’t like to come here alone…” says Shaji. He goes on to tell us that the Pramodnager slum land has been given to the slum residents to build on, now 20 years after its initial establishment. Accordingly, the families living in the slum have begun to build small houses made of hollow concrete, standing one or two stories high. This slum is known for housing criminals. Whenever there is crime locally, police will come to this slum and round up the “suspects”. Though the slum consists mostly of Bangladeshi migrants who moved into Kolkata for a better life, outsides look upon it with disdain, thinking it to be merely a group of thieves and murderers.
A couple of minutes later Shaji pulls into the slum and we park the car at the corner of a soccer and cricket field. Kids are running all around, yelling and enjoying the last few minutes of daylight they have to play in. As we get out of the car, a man tells Shaji that he cannot park there. Shaji responds in Bengali and the man nods his head slightly to the left, acknowledging that “it’s ok”, and we continue on. People are on the street everywhere: women coming out of their homes for various chores, children staring curiously at us as they talk to one another, men with mobile kitchens cook food on the side of the dusty road, and others are simply lounging around, apparently relaxing as the sun sets.
We walk down the narrow road past a few buildings and turn into the second or third door. Inside we see Rana, teaching and playing with about twenty or so children. Most are very young, with the oldest being about 13 years old. Rana motions for us to take a seat at the front of the class, and Kyle & I sit down on two, old, plastic chairs. Then Rana has the children sing for us. It is beautiful to see so many small children singing—some with their eyes closed, other with their hands clasped together as if in prayer—and it is a joyful, hope filled experience. After the song, I ask Rana what they are singing. He tells me that it is a song about Jesus being our eternal friend and companion. We take pictures of the children after the song as they are all very eager to be part of the picture, shouting and laughing as they all try to get a head into the frame. Rana calms them down and then has them do introductions. They are so excited and happy to practice their English, and even happier when we reply with a “Very good!” or “My name is Jacob”.
Afterward, we take more pictures and the kids are dismissed. Once this happens, chaos breaks loose and they begin running around the room while having fun and playing. Little kids begin shaking my hand and saying “Thank you”, even though we didn’t do anything. A little girl—maybe 10 or 11 years old--eventually walks up and says, excitedly, “My name is Juwa”. “My name is Jacob,” I reply. “Thank you,” she exclaims, and then runs away laughing and smiling.
All of these children are reaping the benefits of the hard work Rana and KCM are doing in the slums. In otherwise dark and dismal circumstances, Jesus is showing up through this work…and in the smiles and songs of these young children, singing about their eternal friend Jesus. I feel as if these early days spent in Kolkata are full of these experiences. There is the city and communities that are beaten down by the spiritual and physical realities of sin, but there is also those children, bringing a tangible hope in the dark.
Story of Praia
Praia herself has a long history in Kolkata. Raised in a Christian family, Praia grew up with a middle class background and spent her early years navigating her school classes and living with her family. In her twenties, Praia's parents arranged for her to get married to a man from the city. The marriage proved to be disastrous. The man she married regularly abused and beat her severely, taking out his anger and frustrations physically on his wife. Praia considered leaving, and after the beatings continued, she finally did—returning to her family after a year. Her husband subsequently remarried, without consulting Praia, and the couple eventually divorced. His second wife met an end that Praia likely avoided by leaving, as her former husband, in a moment of rage, took his second wife and doused her with gasoline, setting her on fire. The wife died and the husband was arrested and sent to prison.
Now alone, Praia began her initial volunteering with work in the city. Shaji was the first to train and work with her, and a relationship of trust eventually developed. Shaji went on leave from Kolkata as his work with OM led him to new ministry in Gudjerat. After a few years, Shaji returned and founded KCM, which Praia eagerly agreed to work for. She volunteered her services for free, as there was no means of paying her in the early years of the organization.
This began in 2007, and Praia tirelessly works to care for and reflect Jesus to the women and children of the Bagmari slum today. Day by day, Praia meets with children in the community to lead schooling and tutoring sessions for children from age 3 to age 18. In the morning, Pria holds schooling for the youngest of the children. In the afternoon, old teenagers filter in and she begins tutoring for each of their respective classes. Education Is one of the primary hopes for building a better community and life in Kolkata, and children & families tirelessly seek to excel in a system where the odds are often stacked against them due to overcrowding and a lack of basic necessities. Accordingly, schooling is a crucial season for most people’s long term futures and is a strategic place to minister to children in need.
After these tutoring sessions, Pria proceeds to host meetings with various women in the slum. During these meetings, the women explore the Word, discuss the issues their families are going through, and take time to pray. It is a time of sincere spiritual openness, a great place for the Good News to be proclaimed and investigated.
Praise God for the faithfulness the Lord has shown Praia in walking with her through trials and tribulations that have bred perseverance and strength. Please pray that the Lord would continue to work in mighty ways through Praia as she seeks to advance His work in the slums of the poorest of the poor. Pray that KCM would be a beacon of hope in the Bagmari slum where she works, and that the Good News would be made known in the women and children she works with!
Now alone, Praia began her initial volunteering with work in the city. Shaji was the first to train and work with her, and a relationship of trust eventually developed. Shaji went on leave from Kolkata as his work with OM led him to new ministry in Gudjerat. After a few years, Shaji returned and founded KCM, which Praia eagerly agreed to work for. She volunteered her services for free, as there was no means of paying her in the early years of the organization.
This began in 2007, and Praia tirelessly works to care for and reflect Jesus to the women and children of the Bagmari slum today. Day by day, Praia meets with children in the community to lead schooling and tutoring sessions for children from age 3 to age 18. In the morning, Pria holds schooling for the youngest of the children. In the afternoon, old teenagers filter in and she begins tutoring for each of their respective classes. Education Is one of the primary hopes for building a better community and life in Kolkata, and children & families tirelessly seek to excel in a system where the odds are often stacked against them due to overcrowding and a lack of basic necessities. Accordingly, schooling is a crucial season for most people’s long term futures and is a strategic place to minister to children in need.
After these tutoring sessions, Pria proceeds to host meetings with various women in the slum. During these meetings, the women explore the Word, discuss the issues their families are going through, and take time to pray. It is a time of sincere spiritual openness, a great place for the Good News to be proclaimed and investigated.
Praise God for the faithfulness the Lord has shown Praia in walking with her through trials and tribulations that have bred perseverance and strength. Please pray that the Lord would continue to work in mighty ways through Praia as she seeks to advance His work in the slums of the poorest of the poor. Pray that KCM would be a beacon of hope in the Bagmari slum where she works, and that the Good News would be made known in the women and children she works with!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Mittu's Story
Here is my first story...several KCM ministers told me the story and I have paraphrased below:
Mittu is a young girl living in one of the slums KCM ministers in. She is very bright and, as she got involved with KCM programs, became increasingly interested in learning more about Jesus and accepting Him as Lord and savior. She desired to go to Sunday school KCM hosts every week, but her father prohibited it because accepting Christ would reflect poorly on the family and change traditional values.
One day, the father came down with a terrible headache that neither rest nor medicine would get rid of. As he tried to sleep the pain and aches away, his daughter approached him and told him that "her" Jesus would heal him of his migraine. She asked if she could pray for him. Begrudgingly, he agreed, because he had tried everything else. After the little girl prayed for him, he was immediately healed. He let the girl go to Sunday school.
After a short time period, the father’s friends began pressuring him about his daughter, saying that KCM was trying to manipulate her and convert her to Christianity. Their appeals won him over. One night, Mittu returned from Sunday school only to find her father, belt in hand, ready to punish her for indulging in foreign religions. He beat her badly and forbade her from going back to Sunday school.
A couple of weeks later, her father once again came down with sickness. This time, it was fever, chills, and a cold. Again, despite everything he tried, he could not shake the illness that had overcome him. Mittu approached her father once more and asked if she could pray for him, telling him that Jesus would heal him again. And Jesus did. Since then, her father has allowed Mittu to continue to attend Sunday school, as he has encountered a God that he may not understand yet, but whose love has touched his life through his own daughter. It is a beautiful picture of the Gospel at work.
Please pray for Mittu and that her whole family would come to know Jesus. Pray that they would be transformed by a love that has physically healed Mittu’s father (twice) and, just as importantly, healed a daughter’s heart toward an abusive and hateful parent—so much so that God could use her to love her Father as Jesus loved her.
Mittu is a young girl living in one of the slums KCM ministers in. She is very bright and, as she got involved with KCM programs, became increasingly interested in learning more about Jesus and accepting Him as Lord and savior. She desired to go to Sunday school KCM hosts every week, but her father prohibited it because accepting Christ would reflect poorly on the family and change traditional values.
One day, the father came down with a terrible headache that neither rest nor medicine would get rid of. As he tried to sleep the pain and aches away, his daughter approached him and told him that "her" Jesus would heal him of his migraine. She asked if she could pray for him. Begrudgingly, he agreed, because he had tried everything else. After the little girl prayed for him, he was immediately healed. He let the girl go to Sunday school.
After a short time period, the father’s friends began pressuring him about his daughter, saying that KCM was trying to manipulate her and convert her to Christianity. Their appeals won him over. One night, Mittu returned from Sunday school only to find her father, belt in hand, ready to punish her for indulging in foreign religions. He beat her badly and forbade her from going back to Sunday school.
A couple of weeks later, her father once again came down with sickness. This time, it was fever, chills, and a cold. Again, despite everything he tried, he could not shake the illness that had overcome him. Mittu approached her father once more and asked if she could pray for him, telling him that Jesus would heal him again. And Jesus did. Since then, her father has allowed Mittu to continue to attend Sunday school, as he has encountered a God that he may not understand yet, but whose love has touched his life through his own daughter. It is a beautiful picture of the Gospel at work.
Please pray for Mittu and that her whole family would come to know Jesus. Pray that they would be transformed by a love that has physically healed Mittu’s father (twice) and, just as importantly, healed a daughter’s heart toward an abusive and hateful parent—so much so that God could use her to love her Father as Jesus loved her.
Off and running...
Hello everyone! I have safely arrived in Kolkata and have been in the city for two days now.I am being hosted by a wonderful missionary family, Shaji and Beena (and their two sons Martin and Adarsh). They have been taking good care of me since the first moment of my arrival and I feel extremely blessed to be welcomed into their home and to share in life togethr for the next several days.
My first two days have been spent mostly with the family, as I have been recuperating from the trip and getting my feet on the ground ministry-wise. I've learned a great deal about KCM and their ministry thus far, and suffice it to say that they are doing amazing work in three slums of Kolkata, amongst approximately 1500 adults and children living in these communities. They work to provide a holistic healing experience for thousands of families living on app. $0.85 a day in the midst of deep socio-economic and spiritual poverty. When they began ministering three years ago, not one family in the slums was Christian. In these communities, they orchestrate child sponsorship programs for children's education, spiritual formation and training for new Christians, Bible studies for seekers,healthcare assistance, physical necessities assistance, and Sunday spirtiual fellowshop services in the slums. The ministry literally began three years ago when one man (Shaji) moved in Kolkata with his wife and two young boys and tirelessly worked at building the kingdom among the poorest of the poor. Now KCM contains several ministers and their work is extensive (with even bigger plans to come!). There vision is from the words of Jesus in Luke 4:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Please continue to pray for us I visit sites and sort out planning with Shaji and the other ministers. Their two biggest needs are funding and workers. It is literally a miracle that they sustain themselves every month, but the Lord always provides.
Today, my second day, I spent most of my time touring around the city to many places I have never been before. Kolkata has changed, even in three years. To gather a visual, picture a street lined with dilapidated buildings with black smudge all over them; thousands of people crowd the sidewalk (some of them traveling and many of them living there); they are talking, yelling, shopping, carrying various things, bathing, (you name it and they are doing it); hundreds of cars, buses, autorickshaws, bicycle rickshas, hand pulled rickshaws, motorcycles, and large dumping trucks constantly honk at one another and clog the lanes...there are few traffic laws and the biggest car is the king of the road; sewage and refuse are all over the sidewalks and streets, mostly coming from the thousands of tiny shops, restaurants and markets that are everywhere; and the temperature is about 110 degrees. It is an intense experience. However, there is a great deal of beauty in the activity, and the city has a life to it that grows on you and is quite befuddling. The obvious poverty is heartbreaking, but there is still a great deal of life in the people of the city and it feels like a place ripe for the gospel so many ways. Slums, high rises, broken down shops, hills of garbage,loud noises, fruit markets and wandering cows are all parts of the city God desparately loves and I feel blessed to be in.
Though I have already begun, the next several days will include a lot of travel throughout the city and to the three slums KCM ministers in, along with extensive planning concerning where God might be leading the ministry and how we can support it. I will kepp you updated on all of these things!
Praise God that He has been doing an amazing work already and has more than provided for me. The more I hear about the work He is doing here, the more hope I have for the city, and I am so thankful that His love and gospel are advancing in dark places. Also, praise the Lord that Kyle has received his visa! He will be joining me tomorrow evening when he arrives. I am very excited to minister alongside him.
Please continue to pray that Jesus guides our next steps as we move into some of the more intensive planning and traveling over the next few days. I fully expect to be challenged and overwhelmed, but I know the Lord is capable of all things. Please pray for KCM as they do Kingdom work in the slums with the hopes of inviting Bengalis to come to the Lord.Please pray that the Lord would distribute the provision both KCM and the families in the slums desperately need for survival.
I will be updating you with stories I hear as the trip continues, along with various journal entries. I hope you are all doing well and I thank you for praying for us fervently!
Jacob
My first two days have been spent mostly with the family, as I have been recuperating from the trip and getting my feet on the ground ministry-wise. I've learned a great deal about KCM and their ministry thus far, and suffice it to say that they are doing amazing work in three slums of Kolkata, amongst approximately 1500 adults and children living in these communities. They work to provide a holistic healing experience for thousands of families living on app. $0.85 a day in the midst of deep socio-economic and spiritual poverty. When they began ministering three years ago, not one family in the slums was Christian. In these communities, they orchestrate child sponsorship programs for children's education, spiritual formation and training for new Christians, Bible studies for seekers,healthcare assistance, physical necessities assistance, and Sunday spirtiual fellowshop services in the slums. The ministry literally began three years ago when one man (Shaji) moved in Kolkata with his wife and two young boys and tirelessly worked at building the kingdom among the poorest of the poor. Now KCM contains several ministers and their work is extensive (with even bigger plans to come!). There vision is from the words of Jesus in Luke 4:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Please continue to pray for us I visit sites and sort out planning with Shaji and the other ministers. Their two biggest needs are funding and workers. It is literally a miracle that they sustain themselves every month, but the Lord always provides.
Today, my second day, I spent most of my time touring around the city to many places I have never been before. Kolkata has changed, even in three years. To gather a visual, picture a street lined with dilapidated buildings with black smudge all over them; thousands of people crowd the sidewalk (some of them traveling and many of them living there); they are talking, yelling, shopping, carrying various things, bathing, (you name it and they are doing it); hundreds of cars, buses, autorickshaws, bicycle rickshas, hand pulled rickshaws, motorcycles, and large dumping trucks constantly honk at one another and clog the lanes...there are few traffic laws and the biggest car is the king of the road; sewage and refuse are all over the sidewalks and streets, mostly coming from the thousands of tiny shops, restaurants and markets that are everywhere; and the temperature is about 110 degrees. It is an intense experience. However, there is a great deal of beauty in the activity, and the city has a life to it that grows on you and is quite befuddling. The obvious poverty is heartbreaking, but there is still a great deal of life in the people of the city and it feels like a place ripe for the gospel so many ways. Slums, high rises, broken down shops, hills of garbage,loud noises, fruit markets and wandering cows are all parts of the city God desparately loves and I feel blessed to be in.
Though I have already begun, the next several days will include a lot of travel throughout the city and to the three slums KCM ministers in, along with extensive planning concerning where God might be leading the ministry and how we can support it. I will kepp you updated on all of these things!
Praise God that He has been doing an amazing work already and has more than provided for me. The more I hear about the work He is doing here, the more hope I have for the city, and I am so thankful that His love and gospel are advancing in dark places. Also, praise the Lord that Kyle has received his visa! He will be joining me tomorrow evening when he arrives. I am very excited to minister alongside him.
Please continue to pray that Jesus guides our next steps as we move into some of the more intensive planning and traveling over the next few days. I fully expect to be challenged and overwhelmed, but I know the Lord is capable of all things. Please pray for KCM as they do Kingdom work in the slums with the hopes of inviting Bengalis to come to the Lord.Please pray that the Lord would distribute the provision both KCM and the families in the slums desperately need for survival.
I will be updating you with stories I hear as the trip continues, along with various journal entries. I hope you are all doing well and I thank you for praying for us fervently!
Jacob
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Here we go!
At long last, the beginning of my journey has finally begun. As I sit here in the San Antonio airport, waiting for the first leg of my 35 hour flight, I can't help but feel a sense of excitement and relief that the Lord has faithfully brought me this far...it's hard to believe it.
As I stayed up all night (to adjust for Kolkata's app. 12 hour time difference) with my fiance and a couple of close friends, the tension of the moment slowly crept up on me. Fortunately, by God's grace and through my friends prayers, that tension has just as quickly passed and I feel a deep sense of God's presence and the lightheartedness of feeling at peace in His will. It is wonderful to know that Jesus is with us and, indeed, goes before us. Who else can we say that of?
I do not know what to expect once I reach the city, but that is ok. I have known for a long time that Jesus did not call me here to "have everything under control", and it is nice to feel at peace with that which is now reality. Aside from the occasional anxiety, there is great freedom in it.
I was encouraged yesterday when I felt the lord leading me to Luke 10:38-42. In it, we find Jesus at the home of two women; one, frantically preparing and agonizing over the demands of the moment; the other, sitting (unforgiveably unaware of the other's strivings) at the feet of Jesus, listening to His words. My mind and natural tendencies are currently racing to "prepare" for the perceived demands at hand, while I feel Jesus nudging me toward peace and listening. Thank goodness. Would you pray that I be a listener, rather than a "preparer", for this trip? If I manage to be still, I know Jesus will fill in the details of the the Father's will and His voice will be food for my soul, regardless of what challenges I encounter in the city.
I can't wait to see the people I will come to know and love over these next several days. I can't wait to see my soccer boys from three years ago. I can't wait to see Jesus in all the ways I know he will manifest Himself in the lives of the poor of the city. Praise God that He is up to something big, and pray that He does a mighty work through me that reflects His hope for the people He so dearly loves in Kolkata.
I will be in touch soon! Please continue to praying for big things, and that the trip continues to go on without any glitches! Please offer up praise to the Lord that He has taken care of everything thus far, and will continue to do so.
Jacob
As I stayed up all night (to adjust for Kolkata's app. 12 hour time difference) with my fiance and a couple of close friends, the tension of the moment slowly crept up on me. Fortunately, by God's grace and through my friends prayers, that tension has just as quickly passed and I feel a deep sense of God's presence and the lightheartedness of feeling at peace in His will. It is wonderful to know that Jesus is with us and, indeed, goes before us. Who else can we say that of?
I do not know what to expect once I reach the city, but that is ok. I have known for a long time that Jesus did not call me here to "have everything under control", and it is nice to feel at peace with that which is now reality. Aside from the occasional anxiety, there is great freedom in it.
I was encouraged yesterday when I felt the lord leading me to Luke 10:38-42. In it, we find Jesus at the home of two women; one, frantically preparing and agonizing over the demands of the moment; the other, sitting (unforgiveably unaware of the other's strivings) at the feet of Jesus, listening to His words. My mind and natural tendencies are currently racing to "prepare" for the perceived demands at hand, while I feel Jesus nudging me toward peace and listening. Thank goodness. Would you pray that I be a listener, rather than a "preparer", for this trip? If I manage to be still, I know Jesus will fill in the details of the the Father's will and His voice will be food for my soul, regardless of what challenges I encounter in the city.
I can't wait to see the people I will come to know and love over these next several days. I can't wait to see my soccer boys from three years ago. I can't wait to see Jesus in all the ways I know he will manifest Himself in the lives of the poor of the city. Praise God that He is up to something big, and pray that He does a mighty work through me that reflects His hope for the people He so dearly loves in Kolkata.
I will be in touch soon! Please continue to praying for big things, and that the trip continues to go on without any glitches! Please offer up praise to the Lord that He has taken care of everything thus far, and will continue to do so.
Jacob
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Kolkata 2008 Update III
Hey Everyone,
Well it is finally here...my last update. I have been home for a few days now, getting back after a two or so days trip from Thailand to Seoul to San Francisco to here. I actually started writing an update a day or so after I got back. By the time I got to 4,000 words (about 15 double-spaced pages) and still wasn't finished, I decided not to send it out in order to spare you some time. There is simply no way to concisely, yet specifically, tell you about how I am feeling or how the trip went. I tried. If you want me to send you the long e-mail, please let me know. I would me more than happy to and would be overjoyed that you care to hear more (a lot more), but I won't subject you to it unwillingly.
Anywho though, in a nutshell, it feels like I am in a very good and bad place simultaneously after being back a few days. I can't convey how much loss I feel, how much I miss my community, the churches, the people, the ministries, the ways God spoke, and the joy he gave. I've simply never heard God speak so clearly and so consistently as He did in Kolkata, and I've never seen so many Biblical truths become actual realities. His Gospel has been made real to me in ways that I cannot explain, unfortunately, in an "update" e-mail. He's shown me that Life is found repeatedly in sacrifice and the giving up of oneself while depending on and seeking to glorify Him. He's shown me the fruits of complete dependence in Him, finally having trapped myself in a situation where I couldn't afford to do otherwise. He's given me a faith derived from experience after experience in which he came through for me in every situation of personal weakness, and shined through shortcoming and faults and personal failure. He conquered darkness (in its variety of senses) and redeemed it for good so many times that I can't even keep count. He's made me trust and believe in Him by showing Himself in so many people, so many ministries, churches, acts of loving kindness, through words, and even through suffering. The obviousness of His light in the midst of darkness is indescribable, and the joy and completion it brings is the same. I saw his love and transformation in everyone I met: from missionaries who had been working alone with people in sexual slavery for years to Indians who found satisfaction and Life in his presence despite horrible physical circumstances to the boys I worked with who lived in the slums to teammates to countless other Christians I met almost by chance. How can I thank God enough for that? How can I thank Him for giving me more than I could ever ask for every day for six weeks? How can I convey what that feels like? I don't know, but I desire now to follow him as faithfully and ernestly as I can for the rest of my life--knowing full well that I will not do so at many points--and I wish that I could somehow share a fraction of the blessings He's given me with you.
On the flip side, however, is the hurt and pain and darkness that I left behind, which is the reality for millions living without Christ and without much of any kind of spiritual, emotional, or (most of all) physical sustenance in Kolkata. The horribleness of man is in full display in Kolkata and I urge you to pray with all your heart for that to change. I urge you even more to let a part of that aspect of Kolkata into yourselves, whether you find it in your neighborhood, town, country, or in some far away place like Kolkata itself. Having been unable to avoid the terribleness of what humanity is like without Christ, I now see the inescapable need for him all the more, and it is much more difficult to remain apathetic and cold (as I was) about injustice that is easy to not see and hurt that is easy to never feel. Yet it is what most people in the world see and feel everyday and, having taken care of and loved some of those people trying to live life in the most abysmal of slums, or those who die in a Sister's of Charity home after being beaten down their whole lives (and feeling loved for one of the first times), apathy and the general trivialness of American concerns is no longer acceptable or an option--and that makes me very happy. It is a blessing of Christ to truly love and give yourself to those who need it. I pray that you will seek to explore and find that truth wholeheartedly and with joy, for it is where God is. I know that most of you and my other friends reflect Christ far more than I do in my life, so I am not trying to be patronizing but merely encouraging. Kolkata, as well as (I'm sure) countless places in America, need people who follow Christ and God. They need money and prayers, yes, but they also need so much more, especially people who are willing to follow Christ to them...and we need that too. God has designed our faith to be integrated with it and dead without it. I don't know what that looks for for everyone specifically, but I know it involves complete submission to God that Kolkata has only allowed me to taste, yet that is enough to want much much more. So I pray for that for Kolkata's sake, for America's sake, for mine and for yours.
I wish I could have shared more stories, because the stories of my experience are what lie behind everything I wrote above. They have really been amazing and, clearly, change my life. I'm excited to see where they lead next, and I ask that you pray that God will lead me in the right direction. Thank you again for everything you have given me in terms of encouragement, prayers, and general updates. I'm sure I will never know how much I owe you. Every e-mail you sent brought me happiness and made things a little less hard. So thank you! Thanks, also, for being willing to listen to and put up with these long and ranty e-mails. That means a lot too and I hope God has given you something through them, as he has for me. Hopefully I will get to share much more with many of you in person and hear what God has been doing for you as well!
In Him,
Jacob
P.S.--My other e-mail wasn't working for a little bit, that's why I used this address. Still send e-mail to my other one though. Thanks!
Well it is finally here...my last update. I have been home for a few days now, getting back after a two or so days trip from Thailand to Seoul to San Francisco to here. I actually started writing an update a day or so after I got back. By the time I got to 4,000 words (about 15 double-spaced pages) and still wasn't finished, I decided not to send it out in order to spare you some time. There is simply no way to concisely, yet specifically, tell you about how I am feeling or how the trip went. I tried. If you want me to send you the long e-mail, please let me know. I would me more than happy to and would be overjoyed that you care to hear more (a lot more), but I won't subject you to it unwillingly.
Anywho though, in a nutshell, it feels like I am in a very good and bad place simultaneously after being back a few days. I can't convey how much loss I feel, how much I miss my community, the churches, the people, the ministries, the ways God spoke, and the joy he gave. I've simply never heard God speak so clearly and so consistently as He did in Kolkata, and I've never seen so many Biblical truths become actual realities. His Gospel has been made real to me in ways that I cannot explain, unfortunately, in an "update" e-mail. He's shown me that Life is found repeatedly in sacrifice and the giving up of oneself while depending on and seeking to glorify Him. He's shown me the fruits of complete dependence in Him, finally having trapped myself in a situation where I couldn't afford to do otherwise. He's given me a faith derived from experience after experience in which he came through for me in every situation of personal weakness, and shined through shortcoming and faults and personal failure. He conquered darkness (in its variety of senses) and redeemed it for good so many times that I can't even keep count. He's made me trust and believe in Him by showing Himself in so many people, so many ministries, churches, acts of loving kindness, through words, and even through suffering. The obviousness of His light in the midst of darkness is indescribable, and the joy and completion it brings is the same. I saw his love and transformation in everyone I met: from missionaries who had been working alone with people in sexual slavery for years to Indians who found satisfaction and Life in his presence despite horrible physical circumstances to the boys I worked with who lived in the slums to teammates to countless other Christians I met almost by chance. How can I thank God enough for that? How can I thank Him for giving me more than I could ever ask for every day for six weeks? How can I convey what that feels like? I don't know, but I desire now to follow him as faithfully and ernestly as I can for the rest of my life--knowing full well that I will not do so at many points--and I wish that I could somehow share a fraction of the blessings He's given me with you.
On the flip side, however, is the hurt and pain and darkness that I left behind, which is the reality for millions living without Christ and without much of any kind of spiritual, emotional, or (most of all) physical sustenance in Kolkata. The horribleness of man is in full display in Kolkata and I urge you to pray with all your heart for that to change. I urge you even more to let a part of that aspect of Kolkata into yourselves, whether you find it in your neighborhood, town, country, or in some far away place like Kolkata itself. Having been unable to avoid the terribleness of what humanity is like without Christ, I now see the inescapable need for him all the more, and it is much more difficult to remain apathetic and cold (as I was) about injustice that is easy to not see and hurt that is easy to never feel. Yet it is what most people in the world see and feel everyday and, having taken care of and loved some of those people trying to live life in the most abysmal of slums, or those who die in a Sister's of Charity home after being beaten down their whole lives (and feeling loved for one of the first times), apathy and the general trivialness of American concerns is no longer acceptable or an option--and that makes me very happy. It is a blessing of Christ to truly love and give yourself to those who need it. I pray that you will seek to explore and find that truth wholeheartedly and with joy, for it is where God is. I know that most of you and my other friends reflect Christ far more than I do in my life, so I am not trying to be patronizing but merely encouraging. Kolkata, as well as (I'm sure) countless places in America, need people who follow Christ and God. They need money and prayers, yes, but they also need so much more, especially people who are willing to follow Christ to them...and we need that too. God has designed our faith to be integrated with it and dead without it. I don't know what that looks for for everyone specifically, but I know it involves complete submission to God that Kolkata has only allowed me to taste, yet that is enough to want much much more. So I pray for that for Kolkata's sake, for America's sake, for mine and for yours.
I wish I could have shared more stories, because the stories of my experience are what lie behind everything I wrote above. They have really been amazing and, clearly, change my life. I'm excited to see where they lead next, and I ask that you pray that God will lead me in the right direction. Thank you again for everything you have given me in terms of encouragement, prayers, and general updates. I'm sure I will never know how much I owe you. Every e-mail you sent brought me happiness and made things a little less hard. So thank you! Thanks, also, for being willing to listen to and put up with these long and ranty e-mails. That means a lot too and I hope God has given you something through them, as he has for me. Hopefully I will get to share much more with many of you in person and hear what God has been doing for you as well!
In Him,
Jacob
P.S.--My other e-mail wasn't working for a little bit, that's why I used this address. Still send e-mail to my other one though. Thanks!
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Kolkata 2008 Update II
Hey everyone!
Sorry for the longer than expected absence, things have been very busy around here. I have gotten a chance to read most of your e-mails and they have all been a real encouragement. Thank you. I am sorry I have been unable to respond to them!
So, we have only a little less than a week left…it is hard to believe that the time has passed by so quickly. Much has happened since my last e-mail but, once again, it's hard to know where to begin. I have been doing more or less very well over the last couple of weeks, though that is a confusing way of putting it. Every day is a roller coaster, split into a dozen different instances of extreme happiness and joy one second, followed by sorrow and compassion (and usually crying) for this or that thing the next. I've been doing a lot of reflecting about my now almost completed trip lately, I can't thank God enough for all of things I've been discovering about his blessings. For one, t seems like I see God everywhere here…in the ministries I work with or hear about, in the churches I go to, the boys in my program, my house and my friends, and a multitude of other usually unexpected places. It's not that this is necessarily untrue in the United States, but it is much more tangible and obvious in my life here for some reason. I've never been in a situation before where you see the most dire, nearly hopeless and depressing need everywhere everyday all the time, yet also the most loving, sacrificial, and committed people living in the midst of it. So many have given up their families, friends, comfort, and previous life style to serve others with absolute neglect for themselves. There are so many people who work alone with prostitutes--who continue to be forced into sex dozens of times a day at no pay--trying to show them through the only way they know how (loving relationships and Christ—who is the strength behind them) that the world is not only hatred and exploitation and death, and one day hoping to pull them out of sex rings by creating microenterprises for them to work in. There are so many people taking care of child after child who has been abandoned due to an AIDS infection, or left for dead because they were female or the family could not afford to care for them or they have some sort of deformity or mental disability. There are so many people working hours and hours a day to help people addicted to heroine or cocaine or any other variety of drugs when nobody else will even look at them, let alone help them, because they are of a lower caste or are "dirty" or because apathy is a general rule for the city as a whole. Just as I can't describe what it's like to experience suffocating poverty in nearly every sense every day, I can't describe the love and dedication that emanates from people who have given everything up because of Christ to take care of others. I also can't describe the joy and the hope that you can see in those they given everything up for. There so much joy—as well as confusion and sadness and compassion and on and on—that you can't even contain it within your heart, but have to just simply let it exist. That being said, the sum of all those experiences and feelings, fully comprehended at the time or not, have left me and immeasurably more blessed person. Every hardship I have been through (sickness, constant heat exhaustion, depression, constant displacement, confusion, poor living conditions, and a thousand other things) I treasure and am glad for, and so many others I know think the same. The amazingness of this reality is that God has given me equal blessings to match the hardships, but the joy he offers is so much than that, because He has transformed any and all hardships into wisdom, compassion, perservance, patience, joy, world understanding, various forms of personal growth, personal recognition of faults, and many others things. For one of the first times in my life, and definitely for the longest time and in the most intense way, I realize that true joy is found in following Christ and the displacement that path brings, in all the many contexts and ways that might manifest itself. More happiness and joy has been found in serving the most seemingly hopeless and depressing places on earth, and giving oneself up in many more ways than I expected to, than I ever could have hoped for. It's the command and path I've been reading about for so long in Christ teachings and it, along with all of his other promises of peace, strength, wisdom, guidance, and the rest have all become a constant reality. I am tempted to believe that there is nothing more I could ever ask for, but God has already over exceeded so many lofty expectations. Everything is gain in Christ, no matter the sacrifice, and I finally have the experience to bolster my previous more weak and blind faith.
My placements have been going amazingly. All of the guys are wonderful and we have been getting so close. I have been doing another ministry opportunity with THE spiritual leader of Kolkata, which is astounding. I can't say what it is over the internet but I look forward to saying more later. My experience at the Sister's of Charity death and dying house has been very hard but very good as well. The city's needs have been increasingly closing in on me, but that has only generated more compassion and love for people, even if the reality of my helplessness hurts. I can't emphasize enough the need for your prayers for those who are in desperate need here, which is some five San Antonios worth of people. Continue to pray that they would find Christ and vice versa. As much and as real as the physical need is, there is a spiritual and emotional deadness that immobilize and destroys people, and you can see it. There are many many evils brought about by the Hindu caste system, and millions of people are restricted or openly oppressed by that teaching and its associations with karma. Outside of the outright oppression it generates, Hinduism here just produces an apathy and even a hostility to the helping of others. So pray against that. Women are even worse off than men, Muslim and Hindu alike, as the large majority are segregated and restricted from nearly every service , opportunity, or privilege and placed behind men. When added to caste barriers (and class ones), the hardships can be devastating. Some of the women on the trip have been consistently harassed physically, verbally, and non-verbally by Indian men. So pray both for them (physically, emotionally and spiritually) and for the men, that they may find Christ and that we may love them.
My house has continued to be wonderful, I care so much for everyone. God speaks through them everyday and give me joy. I hope that I have been a part of that for them as well. Church has been amazing too, God is so present in every service. The people who attend are truly "alive", if that makes sense. You can feel a vibrancy and thankfulness and dedication to God that is awesome. My trip to the beach was good, though I actually missed my time in Kokata itself. There were many great things I experienced and God showed me there as well though. It was good to see the whole team for an extended period of time. I'm sorry for the lack of concrete stories to give you. There are soooo many. It would take me pages and pages to list and describe even a few of them and I can't possibly decide which. Every day just seems filled with a thousand crazy, exciting, hard, and interesting things that happen and it has almost become normal to me. I'll have to share when I get home. The food is still great here. I have not gotten tired of it and we have found so many hole in the wall places to eat at that I've been pretty excited. I'm pretty sure I find a hair in my meal and who knows what else every other meal, but that kind of bespeaks of the absolute filthiness of the city in general, and I hardly even notice anymore. The food is too good to care anyway. My teammates have been doing very well too, though many of them are still trying to figure out exactly what the trip for them is about and what it means. So pray for their discernment of God's purpose in that area for them. I have had an amazing call to a particular line of work in the United States when I get back, but I could never even come close to doing it justice in an e-mail, so I won't try. I'm very excited though. So pray that my excitement will be sustained and that God will give strength to carry out what has been given to me, because I will personally be devoid of any skill or knowledge or many other things to fulfill it.
Alright, I must go, I've already exceeded my time limit. I know the e-mail was very schizophrenic and all over the place but it was the best I could muster. I am still praying for all of you and it has been great to here of your news. I look forward to seeing/talking to you in a little over a week or so! Take care.
In Him,
Jacob
Sorry for the longer than expected absence, things have been very busy around here. I have gotten a chance to read most of your e-mails and they have all been a real encouragement. Thank you. I am sorry I have been unable to respond to them!
So, we have only a little less than a week left…it is hard to believe that the time has passed by so quickly. Much has happened since my last e-mail but, once again, it's hard to know where to begin. I have been doing more or less very well over the last couple of weeks, though that is a confusing way of putting it. Every day is a roller coaster, split into a dozen different instances of extreme happiness and joy one second, followed by sorrow and compassion (and usually crying) for this or that thing the next. I've been doing a lot of reflecting about my now almost completed trip lately, I can't thank God enough for all of things I've been discovering about his blessings. For one, t seems like I see God everywhere here…in the ministries I work with or hear about, in the churches I go to, the boys in my program, my house and my friends, and a multitude of other usually unexpected places. It's not that this is necessarily untrue in the United States, but it is much more tangible and obvious in my life here for some reason. I've never been in a situation before where you see the most dire, nearly hopeless and depressing need everywhere everyday all the time, yet also the most loving, sacrificial, and committed people living in the midst of it. So many have given up their families, friends, comfort, and previous life style to serve others with absolute neglect for themselves. There are so many people who work alone with prostitutes--who continue to be forced into sex dozens of times a day at no pay--trying to show them through the only way they know how (loving relationships and Christ—who is the strength behind them) that the world is not only hatred and exploitation and death, and one day hoping to pull them out of sex rings by creating microenterprises for them to work in. There are so many people taking care of child after child who has been abandoned due to an AIDS infection, or left for dead because they were female or the family could not afford to care for them or they have some sort of deformity or mental disability. There are so many people working hours and hours a day to help people addicted to heroine or cocaine or any other variety of drugs when nobody else will even look at them, let alone help them, because they are of a lower caste or are "dirty" or because apathy is a general rule for the city as a whole. Just as I can't describe what it's like to experience suffocating poverty in nearly every sense every day, I can't describe the love and dedication that emanates from people who have given everything up because of Christ to take care of others. I also can't describe the joy and the hope that you can see in those they given everything up for. There so much joy—as well as confusion and sadness and compassion and on and on—that you can't even contain it within your heart, but have to just simply let it exist. That being said, the sum of all those experiences and feelings, fully comprehended at the time or not, have left me and immeasurably more blessed person. Every hardship I have been through (sickness, constant heat exhaustion, depression, constant displacement, confusion, poor living conditions, and a thousand other things) I treasure and am glad for, and so many others I know think the same. The amazingness of this reality is that God has given me equal blessings to match the hardships, but the joy he offers is so much than that, because He has transformed any and all hardships into wisdom, compassion, perservance, patience, joy, world understanding, various forms of personal growth, personal recognition of faults, and many others things. For one of the first times in my life, and definitely for the longest time and in the most intense way, I realize that true joy is found in following Christ and the displacement that path brings, in all the many contexts and ways that might manifest itself. More happiness and joy has been found in serving the most seemingly hopeless and depressing places on earth, and giving oneself up in many more ways than I expected to, than I ever could have hoped for. It's the command and path I've been reading about for so long in Christ teachings and it, along with all of his other promises of peace, strength, wisdom, guidance, and the rest have all become a constant reality. I am tempted to believe that there is nothing more I could ever ask for, but God has already over exceeded so many lofty expectations. Everything is gain in Christ, no matter the sacrifice, and I finally have the experience to bolster my previous more weak and blind faith.
My placements have been going amazingly. All of the guys are wonderful and we have been getting so close. I have been doing another ministry opportunity with THE spiritual leader of Kolkata, which is astounding. I can't say what it is over the internet but I look forward to saying more later. My experience at the Sister's of Charity death and dying house has been very hard but very good as well. The city's needs have been increasingly closing in on me, but that has only generated more compassion and love for people, even if the reality of my helplessness hurts. I can't emphasize enough the need for your prayers for those who are in desperate need here, which is some five San Antonios worth of people. Continue to pray that they would find Christ and vice versa. As much and as real as the physical need is, there is a spiritual and emotional deadness that immobilize and destroys people, and you can see it. There are many many evils brought about by the Hindu caste system, and millions of people are restricted or openly oppressed by that teaching and its associations with karma. Outside of the outright oppression it generates, Hinduism here just produces an apathy and even a hostility to the helping of others. So pray against that. Women are even worse off than men, Muslim and Hindu alike, as the large majority are segregated and restricted from nearly every service , opportunity, or privilege and placed behind men. When added to caste barriers (and class ones), the hardships can be devastating. Some of the women on the trip have been consistently harassed physically, verbally, and non-verbally by Indian men. So pray both for them (physically, emotionally and spiritually) and for the men, that they may find Christ and that we may love them.
My house has continued to be wonderful, I care so much for everyone. God speaks through them everyday and give me joy. I hope that I have been a part of that for them as well. Church has been amazing too, God is so present in every service. The people who attend are truly "alive", if that makes sense. You can feel a vibrancy and thankfulness and dedication to God that is awesome. My trip to the beach was good, though I actually missed my time in Kokata itself. There were many great things I experienced and God showed me there as well though. It was good to see the whole team for an extended period of time. I'm sorry for the lack of concrete stories to give you. There are soooo many. It would take me pages and pages to list and describe even a few of them and I can't possibly decide which. Every day just seems filled with a thousand crazy, exciting, hard, and interesting things that happen and it has almost become normal to me. I'll have to share when I get home. The food is still great here. I have not gotten tired of it and we have found so many hole in the wall places to eat at that I've been pretty excited. I'm pretty sure I find a hair in my meal and who knows what else every other meal, but that kind of bespeaks of the absolute filthiness of the city in general, and I hardly even notice anymore. The food is too good to care anyway. My teammates have been doing very well too, though many of them are still trying to figure out exactly what the trip for them is about and what it means. So pray for their discernment of God's purpose in that area for them. I have had an amazing call to a particular line of work in the United States when I get back, but I could never even come close to doing it justice in an e-mail, so I won't try. I'm very excited though. So pray that my excitement will be sustained and that God will give strength to carry out what has been given to me, because I will personally be devoid of any skill or knowledge or many other things to fulfill it.
Alright, I must go, I've already exceeded my time limit. I know the e-mail was very schizophrenic and all over the place but it was the best I could muster. I am still praying for all of you and it has been great to here of your news. I look forward to seeing/talking to you in a little over a week or so! Take care.
In Him,
Jacob
Friday, July 8, 2011
First Kolkata E-mail...summer 2008
(I'll try to post one of these for the next few days. There's definitely plenty to read! Afterward, I'll try to post as regularly as discipline or time allows)
Hey Everyone!!!
Where to begin...
I am kind of in a hurry so I assure you that this e-mail will be jumbled and slightly incoherent (most likely). The good news, however, is that I will get 2 e-mails to send to you!!! So you can look forward to another one in a couple of weeks. Anywho though...
So, I am doing very well! I can't begin to explain all of the many experiences and wonderful and diffcult things that have happened to me thus far. Orientation at Bangkok went very well and I got to really get to know all of the people on my team as well as many of those going on other treks to thailand, cambodia, and the phillipines. The orientation was a bit of an overload of info but overall it did me a lot of good as far as spiritual preparation goes and I gfelt as prepared as possible to go on the trip. We stayed in a fairly western hotel and spent most of our time in a missionary complex learning and praying and praising and getting to know each other. We spend evening and a two or three hours span during the middle of the day getting food at various street vendors in the city. The food was sooooooooo good. Very spicy, but not as much as you would expect. The streets were exceptionally loud and crazy, but the city itself was fairly modern, with nice cars and buildings and street vendors everywhere saling this and that. I left Bangkok on a spiritual high, feeling very confident in the coming weeks and the provision of God.
My first experience of Kolkata was overwhelming. I can't even begin to accurately describe it to you. As we came in from the air you could see a thick brown layer of smog engulfing it, thicker than any kind of pollution I have seen by far. We took a taxi cab for about an hour to a Baptist mission house that we stayed at for Kolkata orientation (which lasted for a few days). I wish I could describe the level of poverty appropriately and descriptively, but I can't. Nearly every building looks like it might crumble in the next few years with smudge and posters plastered all over them. The pollution is so thick that you can hardly breath and heat is feels like it's in the hundreds. The streets are excessively crowded and the poor are stewn out along the pavements in large numbers. The traffic is hopeless...there are no lanes and it seems like you are going to get in a wreck every five seconds, with cars hinking nonstop, auto rickshaws swerving in and out of cars, bicycle rickshaws swerving in and out, and pulled rickshaws with people who look like they're on their last legs pulling them are pulled on the side of streets, buses swerving and moving at will through traffic, and all other sorts of chaos. The law is literally "bigger always has the right away", which means pedestrians must beware. We stayed in the Baptist mission house for a few days and I immediately became sick with fever, aches, and diarhea (I can't spell that). This continued off and on for about a week. It was hard in the sense that I thought I was going to die, but wonderful in the sense that I have never felt closer to God. It ended up being a huge blessing in retrospect, teaching my dependency on Him and weakness in the face of things out of my control.
The poverty here is astronomical. Many people look like they are literally starving to death on the side of the pavement, though they are generally getting by (in the worst possible ways). Women with children, the crippled, and the otherwise destitute were begging all of us for money from the first second we got there, which was horrible. Some work for orgranzied begging rings run through a mafia like structure that teaches even the youngest of children (2 or 3) phrases to beg westeners. The rest are simply in complete need, even though they are finding ways to make it. We can't help them. Mafia run or in actual need (though the former are in need too), there is simply nothing we can do...there's too much. I can't stress enough how much economic support is needed here, but even more so, how much Christ is needed. The people are wonderful people and they work so heard to survive, yet there is an aura real and imagined hopelessness to the city that is crushing, and nothing but love, sacrifice for others, and a dependence on Christ can even begin to make a difference here. With that being said, I have great hope in the ministries I have seen and in the wonderful people that are trying to make a difference here. At most, all I can offer is love, care, compassion, and prayer for people, but those who have committed their lives to serving here have done so much, even if there is so much more to do.
One example is the soccer ministry I am a part of. We basically play soccer for two and half hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7:30 in the morning until 10:00. It is exhausting and hot but so much fun. The boys range in age but most are between 10 and 18. On Monday and Wednesday we teach English to them on their varying levels of understanding. I treasure these times as they are opportunities to provide a service in a loving way and get to know the better. On Tuesday and Thursday we do "coffee time" (chat time) and discipleship time respectively. They are very rrewarding times as well. Edmar, the Brazillian who has run it for 4 years now, is wonderful. He provides so much hope and joy and guidance for children who have a lot of other opportunities to do less fruitful and harmful things. He genuinely loves them and they are drawn to them, and the hope that he offers them through teaching them about Christ's love and promise of life (both presently and eternally) gives them a hope that their economic situation and/or the terrible structuring of Hinduism cannot.
My secondary placement, which I usually go to on Saturday and other time I get time, is the Sisters of Charity house that it dedicated to serving the sick and the dying. The house is situated directly next to Kolkata's most famous temple, dedicated to Kali--the god of death and destruction. I went in it yesterday. As much as you might suspect that it would be glorious and beautiful, it's not. It was one of the most dirty and disgusting places I have been to here, with icons of the black goddess with red eyes and places for the sluaughtering of animals in order to appease the goddess here and there. So, with that said, the Sisters' house is a beautiful juxtapostion of love and kindess for those who have been generally been left for dead on the streets, right next to a shrine set up to a goddess who recquires appeasement for her wrath. The Sisters' building is wonderful. There are many who are close to death, and many who are not, but the care and love that is given to them, and the way it enable so many volunteers such as myself to give it as well is beautiful thing. I generally give them medicine, feed them, massage them, talk to them, do laundr and dishes and whatever else might be needed.
As destitute and impoverished as I made the city sound earlier (which it is), it is also a place where God has so much work and service to offer those who are will to take it, and so much hope and provision to offer for those who are in need. It is an amazing testimony to the power of Christ whenever one meets the Christians here, though there are few. Side note: the rural areas of India are thriving with Christianity but the cities are very resistant. They are people who are very dedicated to Christ and to seeing his work carried our for those who need it most, which means millions of people. They are an ecnouragement to me in every way.
My house is amazing as well. We cook all of our food, take bucket showers, live with a TON of conckroaches (I picked one off my head the other day), get to eat together as a community every night, and much more. Five guys are in my room and there is literally no room to walk after we lay our mats on the ground to sleep, so it's pretty cramped. There is no ar conditioning in most of the city and it is always hot, but you get used to living in your own sweat so it's not so bad. I have to drink about five liters of water a day just to keep up! Every hardship, discomfort, and challenge has been a blessing however. And all has made myself and others more dependent on God and more thankful for what we get. We are all in good spirits and our community is strong and encouraging. Though we are very different individuals, we care for each other a lot and there is a strong bond developing. I thank God for the comforts he has withheld from me and the lessons he has taught we through it. I doubt will get many such opportunities for growth in the future. I thank Him also for my friends, both in the house and outside of it, they are ways God supports me. I am truly blessed to be here, though I feel challenged and sometimes pulled down at times too. Pray fervently for this to continue in the future, for others and myself. And thank God for what he has done.
There is so much else to share but, alas, I cannot share much more. I thank you al so much for you support spiritually. It means so much to me. I thank you for your prayers and pray for you often as well. Please continue to pray for the list I already gave you and for anything else you picked up in the e=mail. I will provide more in my next one. Oh, and by the way, I got to give a sermon to a few dozen Indians today and it was great, but that is a tale for another time. I mention it only because I want to remind you, as God has reminded me constantly through such opportunities, that He gives us so many opportunities to serve Him and their so much fruit, joy, and completion in the process. It is easy for me to find that here, because opportunities and need appear everywhere. However, I want to encourage you to seek back home as well, as there is a different kind of need there as well and an equal amount of service and opportunities that God offers. I miss you all of you and I look forward to my return, but am thankful for the remaining time I have here and can't wait to share more with you.
There is so much need but so much of Christ as well, and that makes all the difference, literally. Pray for that to manifest itself powerfully in the future as it already has now, and thank God for being the only thing that truly redeems and makes a difference in the hearts of people, and that the difference and life he offers is eternal and full of hope, rather than the fleeting pleasure that so many other things are. That is so apparent here and I thank God every day for it. Anyway though, I am rambling haha. But I once again hope that you are all doing well and hope to respond to your e-mails, which I have tried to skim. SO keep sending them!
Until next time.
God bless,
Jacob
Hey Everyone!!!
Where to begin...
I am kind of in a hurry so I assure you that this e-mail will be jumbled and slightly incoherent (most likely). The good news, however, is that I will get 2 e-mails to send to you!!! So you can look forward to another one in a couple of weeks. Anywho though...
So, I am doing very well! I can't begin to explain all of the many experiences and wonderful and diffcult things that have happened to me thus far. Orientation at Bangkok went very well and I got to really get to know all of the people on my team as well as many of those going on other treks to thailand, cambodia, and the phillipines. The orientation was a bit of an overload of info but overall it did me a lot of good as far as spiritual preparation goes and I gfelt as prepared as possible to go on the trip. We stayed in a fairly western hotel and spent most of our time in a missionary complex learning and praying and praising and getting to know each other. We spend evening and a two or three hours span during the middle of the day getting food at various street vendors in the city. The food was sooooooooo good. Very spicy, but not as much as you would expect. The streets were exceptionally loud and crazy, but the city itself was fairly modern, with nice cars and buildings and street vendors everywhere saling this and that. I left Bangkok on a spiritual high, feeling very confident in the coming weeks and the provision of God.
My first experience of Kolkata was overwhelming. I can't even begin to accurately describe it to you. As we came in from the air you could see a thick brown layer of smog engulfing it, thicker than any kind of pollution I have seen by far. We took a taxi cab for about an hour to a Baptist mission house that we stayed at for Kolkata orientation (which lasted for a few days). I wish I could describe the level of poverty appropriately and descriptively, but I can't. Nearly every building looks like it might crumble in the next few years with smudge and posters plastered all over them. The pollution is so thick that you can hardly breath and heat is feels like it's in the hundreds. The streets are excessively crowded and the poor are stewn out along the pavements in large numbers. The traffic is hopeless...there are no lanes and it seems like you are going to get in a wreck every five seconds, with cars hinking nonstop, auto rickshaws swerving in and out of cars, bicycle rickshaws swerving in and out, and pulled rickshaws with people who look like they're on their last legs pulling them are pulled on the side of streets, buses swerving and moving at will through traffic, and all other sorts of chaos. The law is literally "bigger always has the right away", which means pedestrians must beware. We stayed in the Baptist mission house for a few days and I immediately became sick with fever, aches, and diarhea (I can't spell that). This continued off and on for about a week. It was hard in the sense that I thought I was going to die, but wonderful in the sense that I have never felt closer to God. It ended up being a huge blessing in retrospect, teaching my dependency on Him and weakness in the face of things out of my control.
The poverty here is astronomical. Many people look like they are literally starving to death on the side of the pavement, though they are generally getting by (in the worst possible ways). Women with children, the crippled, and the otherwise destitute were begging all of us for money from the first second we got there, which was horrible. Some work for orgranzied begging rings run through a mafia like structure that teaches even the youngest of children (2 or 3) phrases to beg westeners. The rest are simply in complete need, even though they are finding ways to make it. We can't help them. Mafia run or in actual need (though the former are in need too), there is simply nothing we can do...there's too much. I can't stress enough how much economic support is needed here, but even more so, how much Christ is needed. The people are wonderful people and they work so heard to survive, yet there is an aura real and imagined hopelessness to the city that is crushing, and nothing but love, sacrifice for others, and a dependence on Christ can even begin to make a difference here. With that being said, I have great hope in the ministries I have seen and in the wonderful people that are trying to make a difference here. At most, all I can offer is love, care, compassion, and prayer for people, but those who have committed their lives to serving here have done so much, even if there is so much more to do.
One example is the soccer ministry I am a part of. We basically play soccer for two and half hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7:30 in the morning until 10:00. It is exhausting and hot but so much fun. The boys range in age but most are between 10 and 18. On Monday and Wednesday we teach English to them on their varying levels of understanding. I treasure these times as they are opportunities to provide a service in a loving way and get to know the better. On Tuesday and Thursday we do "coffee time" (chat time) and discipleship time respectively. They are very rrewarding times as well. Edmar, the Brazillian who has run it for 4 years now, is wonderful. He provides so much hope and joy and guidance for children who have a lot of other opportunities to do less fruitful and harmful things. He genuinely loves them and they are drawn to them, and the hope that he offers them through teaching them about Christ's love and promise of life (both presently and eternally) gives them a hope that their economic situation and/or the terrible structuring of Hinduism cannot.
My secondary placement, which I usually go to on Saturday and other time I get time, is the Sisters of Charity house that it dedicated to serving the sick and the dying. The house is situated directly next to Kolkata's most famous temple, dedicated to Kali--the god of death and destruction. I went in it yesterday. As much as you might suspect that it would be glorious and beautiful, it's not. It was one of the most dirty and disgusting places I have been to here, with icons of the black goddess with red eyes and places for the sluaughtering of animals in order to appease the goddess here and there. So, with that said, the Sisters' house is a beautiful juxtapostion of love and kindess for those who have been generally been left for dead on the streets, right next to a shrine set up to a goddess who recquires appeasement for her wrath. The Sisters' building is wonderful. There are many who are close to death, and many who are not, but the care and love that is given to them, and the way it enable so many volunteers such as myself to give it as well is beautiful thing. I generally give them medicine, feed them, massage them, talk to them, do laundr and dishes and whatever else might be needed.
As destitute and impoverished as I made the city sound earlier (which it is), it is also a place where God has so much work and service to offer those who are will to take it, and so much hope and provision to offer for those who are in need. It is an amazing testimony to the power of Christ whenever one meets the Christians here, though there are few. Side note: the rural areas of India are thriving with Christianity but the cities are very resistant. They are people who are very dedicated to Christ and to seeing his work carried our for those who need it most, which means millions of people. They are an ecnouragement to me in every way.
My house is amazing as well. We cook all of our food, take bucket showers, live with a TON of conckroaches (I picked one off my head the other day), get to eat together as a community every night, and much more. Five guys are in my room and there is literally no room to walk after we lay our mats on the ground to sleep, so it's pretty cramped. There is no ar conditioning in most of the city and it is always hot, but you get used to living in your own sweat so it's not so bad. I have to drink about five liters of water a day just to keep up! Every hardship, discomfort, and challenge has been a blessing however. And all has made myself and others more dependent on God and more thankful for what we get. We are all in good spirits and our community is strong and encouraging. Though we are very different individuals, we care for each other a lot and there is a strong bond developing. I thank God for the comforts he has withheld from me and the lessons he has taught we through it. I doubt will get many such opportunities for growth in the future. I thank Him also for my friends, both in the house and outside of it, they are ways God supports me. I am truly blessed to be here, though I feel challenged and sometimes pulled down at times too. Pray fervently for this to continue in the future, for others and myself. And thank God for what he has done.
There is so much else to share but, alas, I cannot share much more. I thank you al so much for you support spiritually. It means so much to me. I thank you for your prayers and pray for you often as well. Please continue to pray for the list I already gave you and for anything else you picked up in the e=mail. I will provide more in my next one. Oh, and by the way, I got to give a sermon to a few dozen Indians today and it was great, but that is a tale for another time. I mention it only because I want to remind you, as God has reminded me constantly through such opportunities, that He gives us so many opportunities to serve Him and their so much fruit, joy, and completion in the process. It is easy for me to find that here, because opportunities and need appear everywhere. However, I want to encourage you to seek back home as well, as there is a different kind of need there as well and an equal amount of service and opportunities that God offers. I miss you all of you and I look forward to my return, but am thankful for the remaining time I have here and can't wait to share more with you.
There is so much need but so much of Christ as well, and that makes all the difference, literally. Pray for that to manifest itself powerfully in the future as it already has now, and thank God for being the only thing that truly redeems and makes a difference in the hearts of people, and that the difference and life he offers is eternal and full of hope, rather than the fleeting pleasure that so many other things are. That is so apparent here and I thank God every day for it. Anyway though, I am rambling haha. But I once again hope that you are all doing well and hope to respond to your e-mails, which I have tried to skim. SO keep sending them!
Until next time.
God bless,
Jacob
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