Road of Hope

The title above is a fun worship song in Kannada that we sang in church. It's talking about God, our Father.

India. The question of how my trip to India was just riddles me. There's a wide mix of emotions. In the shortest and fewest words, I would say India was beautiful, challenging, rewarding, & one of the biggest learning experiences in my life. This mission trip around I didn't focus too much on journaling but more so on my pictures and the stories behind them. So here we go! NOTE: for privacy reasons, I can't mention names.

During our first full day, (Jan 7), we had a jam packed day! After our 19.5 hour flight, we arrived in Bangalore's airport at 4:30 AM. From there we unpacked our luggage at the base. That's a picture of the base.

After arriving and unpacking, we all went to the Sunday church service. Talk about going non-stop! I'm really glad we went because we all thoroughly loved the Pastor. What struck me the most was his ability to be transparent. During his message, he felt led to apologize to one of the men in his church. That to me was powerful and sweet to see. Makes me realize again that we're all imperfect and we're on this journey of life together.

The only set of Indian twins that I saw on this trip. These beautiful girls attend the church.

After church and some down time, we played with our new little friends. They're super smart and adorable. We played this weird crocodile game, uno, and they made up words to "teach" us; Portamacalli!!

She showed us how to make a mini handbag out of a leaf! Just goes to show that kids are kids everywhere. These kids in particular use all the resources that they have. Also, I didn't get a video of this but with the same leaf, her brother made a windmill by sticking a skinny, long branch in the middle. When he ran with it, it really worked like a normal windmill. I was so fascinated by them!

1 out of 4-6 languages that these kids know! This is Kannada.

There's more stray dogs here than stray cats in America! Poor pups.

Cows roam the streets like it's no big deal. Hindu people worship the cow as a god.

Breakfast, lunch, & dinner on repeat for 2 weeks! MmMmmMmmm!

My Indian appa(Father) showing us how to eat!

Anyone up for a water baptism?! Kristine is :)

We got to teach a group of kids little nursery rhymes while they sang to us all the New Testament books. Needless to say, they schooled us!

This little boy was in the class right above. You can't miss this cutie!

My group of 6th-8th graders! They LOVED duck, duck, goose and steal the bacon.

Steal the bacon

Our 7th&8th graders! We played heads up, 7 up. HUGE hit. They kept picking us (Mrs. Orange&Mrs. Green aka our shirt colors). And they picked Yesi because she's American haha.

Heads up 7 up doesn't work too well with 5th&6th graders. They play a little differently..

They called this, "Pepsi!" Sounds like it, huh??

Assembly of kids. Practically all the kids we visited at the schools are Dalit children.

We prayed over the principal's land. His vision is to build a 3 story school here. He already has a school of almost 500 kids but the Lord is prompting his heart to expand. So exciting!

Their version of a taxi. These little guys flooded the streets.

Oh, the streets of Bangalore! How you brought fear and smells ranging from 1-35 to us.

This is why I said fear.

Beautiful sunset.

In India, the women wear sari's. It's the most complicated outfit for an American. There's 3 different pieces and a ton of ways to pin it. They reveal the belly a little but that's not scandalous. Scandal is if the top of the blouse isn't covered. For a split second I thought she was carrying a bag of chips. I could have gone for some chips right then and there!

Keaton&Emily enjoying their elephant ride!

For $4/person, we got to ride an elephant. Weeeeee!

"No monkey business!" Haha a great phrase..so great that one of our girls has PJ's that says it ;)

Lauren turned 21 on January 16th!! She was literally bed ridden all day with a fever and some stomach issues from Chung's Chinese food/Baskin Robbin's. We had to take her to the hospital and through everyone's prayers and God's ability to heal, her 102 degree temp dropped to 99.5 degrees from the car ride to actually sitting in the hospital. Ha, I must say that the doctor was a quack. When we finally got checked in (we were purposely called in last..not sure why), the doctor checked all of her vitals, which were in the normal range. After hearing her symptoms, he was like, "Okay, injection time!" We both stared at each other like is he for real?! So of course, I told him no. Who knows what's in that injection! Instead, he prescribed some bogus things like gas relief pills. We passed on those too haha. This picture was taken after she came back from the hospital. Praise the Lord!

Before pic of our Henna tattoos or as the local call it, Mende.

Apparently nobody told us that mendes are meant for women who are married. Oh well, if it kept creepers away from our group of girls..then good!

At the medical clinic..a little girl said he's a mix but he's not bad, he's nice. Gotta love that!

We spent some time in a women's shelter. This shelter is for human trafficking victims, potential victims, or for women who want to learn tailoring/computers/English.

Kristine and Jessica D. with one of the cutest Indian boys ever! He likes to be tossed in the air and fling poop at Kristine hahah.

These are the friends that Gaby, Kristine, Jessica D., and I made! The lady on the left is Muslim, the one in the middle is Hindu, and the one on the right is Christian. I really enjoyed learning about their culture and beliefs. It was also a learning experience for them too. They don't know what Target is!

I taught some of the staff how to knit. Shout out to my Mama for teaching me!! They picked it up within a matter of minutes. Her small patch of knitted yarn grew into a scarf overnight, I kid you not. From there, they taught a lot of the other staff members how to knit. It was super super!

So, I don't have a picture of this story (probably a good thing) but I'll tell it anyways. During this trip, our girls got abnormally sick. 8/9 of us were sick sometime on the trip. Girls were vomiting (vomit, vomit!), fevers spiked, and stomachs were not happy. We were supposed to travel 3 hours from Bangalore to Dharmapuri to work at a medical clinic. However, when we first went to the slums, we all fell in love with it. We wanted to be back for those relationships that we built. And honestly, we all felt the Holy Spirit's prompting to do whatever we can to get maximum time there. As a team we decided to go ahead and follow the schedule. Big mistake on all of us. The fact that the team leaders and majority of the team were horribly sick, the leaders at the base said there's no way we can go to Dharmapuri. So ultimately, we stayed in Bangalore, which was the biggest blessing. We got to spend more time in the slums and the women's shelter. And within that time, I felt like we were hitting the highlights from our trip. Lesson learned, be obedient to God 100% or He will have to redirect you. Getting redirected isn't so much fun but I'm thankful He does it!

Personally, the most impactful story inside this women's shelter is with this woman. As we were giving hand massages, painting the women's nails, & praying, this Hindu woman approached me. She grabbed me by the hand and said I need you to pray for me. Her story is about her sister who died suddenly, leaving behind her teenager son with no dad. She lives with her brother and together they are the guardians for their nephew. You can tell by just looking at her that she's frustrated and even empty inside. I had the opportunity to share my testimony with her. My story of how I became the first Christian in a family that goes far back into Buddhism. As I shared, she was engaged the entire time through..thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit. She even asked questions like how do your parents feel, what made you change from Buddhism to Christianity, is anyone else a Christian now? All amazing questions that I was blessed enough to answer. One thing that struck her was when I said I felt empty before I knew Jesus and now I'm fulfilled because of Him. Her response was that she feels empty sometimes too and from there we prayed. I will always remember this woman's face, name, and story. And I'm praying specifically for her to feel the joy of the Lord.

I saved the best for last. So if you made it this far, yay!
My team fell in love with the slums in Bangalore. The living conditions of the slums is surreal. The Dalits live in the slums and being a Dalit means you're at the pit of the caste system. Although caste systems are "illegal" in India, it's very corrupted how people are still labeled and treated unjustly.

Overview of the slum.

Houses are made out of mud, poop, and held together by sticks.

These houses are literally 4ish feet tall.

This is their water system. As you can see, it's not sanitary and even hazardous. Thank You, Jesus for being the river of life for people who thirst! "Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them" John 7:38.

A quick walk through of the slums.

Love this.

This is the first family we met. They're one of the few Christian families within this slum. There's 9 of them living in this small house with 3 twin sized beds.

This is one of the girls that I really connected with, from that same family up above. She wants to be a doctor. So when I saw her, I would say, "Hi Doc!" I asked her once if she's happy and she said, "Yes, I'm always happy." I smiled and asked her how. She said, "My secret is that I have Jesus in my heart" (How SWEET). I smiled even bigger and said, "but don't keep that a secret." Then we both laughed. :)

Natalie and Jessica D. praying for a little girl. So cute!

While I was playing with the kids, one of our girls, Yesi Clark ran around the corner and said, "You need to come over here now. There's a man who's dying and you need to pray for him." I followed her and saw this old man on what looked like his deathbed. Immediately in my head, I thought, "What the heck! Why are you calling me over to pray for this old man with failing organs. He's looks like he's gonna die and what am I going to do?" And exactly in that moment, God spoke to me and said, "It's not what you are going to do but it's what I am going to do." That brought me back to how God revealed Himself through a burning bush to Moses in Exodus 3. God said to Moses, "I am who I am." Because of this moment, I fully understand what God meant when He said, "I am who I am." So as a team, we all laid hands and prayed in faith. We prayed for spiritual healing and even physical healing. I've seen Jesus physically heal a blind boy so I never want to limit what He can do. After praying, the old man's wife shook our hands and kissed her own hand. I asked our leader if someone will share the gospel with him and he said that the Christians in the same slums will. We didn't because in their culture, it's rude to walk into their house and stay for too long, unless they really want us to stay and talk. Fast forward a few days and we return to the slums. He's not there but we found out that someone drove him to the hospital. That in itself was a way God provided healing. It may not be a radical healing where the old man jumps up and walks around but I know God's will is better. His better is simply better.

This family had the most precious baby. This baby boy is 4 mo. old, crazy! He only felt like he was 3-ish lbs. And as you can see, his foot is bowed inward. Living in the slums, they have little to no money. For that reason alone, he is malnourished and they can't possibly afford a surgery to fix his foot (surgery costs around 11,000 rupees = around $250). They brought him out for us to pray over him.

We prayed for him, anointed him, and even dedicated him to God. As a team, we felt the burden on our hearts to help financially. We gathered our money and collectively, we gave them enough money for food that will last weeks and for his surgery as well. It's insane how far an American dollar goes in India.

A woman who can smile because all she needs is Jesus. After her 13 year old son's death and her husband leaving her because she became a Christian, she lives solely for Jesus. Keaton said, "If everything was stripped away from me, would I still follow Jesus?" Profound question.

If you recognize this little girl, you should be on NCIS because you have amazing face recognition. She's in the school picture with the group of girls who loved duck, duck, goose. I feel like everywhere we've been, she's been there too! I know her from the school and she's also the youngest girl (11 years old) in the women's shelter. Her story is one of restoration. She grew up in the slums as a Dalit child. The pictures of the slums I posted are nothing in comparison to the one she grew up in. She said the one we visited is a lot nicer than hers. We were supposed to visit hers but due to the high number of Muslims, it was advisable for us not to go. Anyways, as a child, she was tortured by her grandmother. She has scars all over her arms because of that. 4 months ago, a couple from the women's shelter found her and rescued her. Today she goes to a good Christian school, she's protected inside the women's shelter, and she has hope in Jesus. She has been a Christian for 4 months and her faith blows me away. She told me, "I want to become a doctor and tell my patients all about God." What a heart to serve others after what she's been through. I admire and love this little girl so much. At the shelter, one of the staff members said that they couldn't afford to pay for her school (1,000 rupees = $22). They had no idea where they would come up with the money for her. To us, we are baffled by how easy it is for us to contribute. And that we did. Crazy. Her story has touched my heart so much that I am committed to praying and sponsoring her. My sister had a birthday party and instead of gifts, she's only asking for donations to go to this girl. Special thanks to Jacky.

From Biola's team to you, we want to thank you for your endless prayers and support before, during, and after our trip. Those prayers saved more lives than we'll ever know. At the end of this trip, I can walk away saying I'm absolutely in love with Jesus and His people.Through His supernatural love for me, it translates into me falling in love with these people. I'm blessed by all the relationships I made. These short term mission trips are harder each time because we have to leave after making incredible relationships. It's tear jerking to leave them and come to the realization that I may never see these people again.. but thank you God for using me for Your glory and through You, we are an extended family. You are good and at the end of the day, my heart rejoices in Your goodness.