(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
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