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
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