Where Do I Even Begin ...

So here I am again. On our living room couch staring at my screen blankly attempting to collect my thoughts.

It is exactly 3 weeks from the day I packed my bags and started my eye-opening adventure in India.

A lot has happened in less than a month and quite frankly, I'm having a hard time processing and recording my thoughts. As I try to convey everything I wish to share, my mind goes a million different directions and my writing becomes pretty scatter-brained. Like it is right now :)

So I decided to first share with you the highlights of the trip and the moments/things that had the biggest impact on me. A day-by-day journal will be posted soon for those interested in my ramblings, but this will hopefully give each of you out there a clear picture of India and how God is working mightily there.

So without further ado, a taste of my India ... :)

My first impression

Wet. Everything was just so wet. And muddy. The people, the auto-rickshaws, the shops, and the streets. Wet, dirty, and covered in garbage. Yes, these were my first opinions of this country. Not exactly the "romantic" ideal I had pictured in my head. My ideals, however, had pretty much taken backseat to exhaustion after spending nearly 20 hours on a plane by this point. Despite these initial thoughts, as the sun began to peer through my rain-covered bus window, I looked into the faces of the people. People Christ loves without limit. In that moment, a part of my heart was moved with utter compassion. Moved with love for each pair of eyes that continually met mine.This was the first time I realized that loving these people was going to be dirty and uncomfortable. But totally worth it.

Ministry

First of  all, ministry on this trip really pushed me to step out of my comfort zone. As many of you know, music comes very easily to me and I thought that God could really use me to minister to the kids this way. As usual, God had other plans. He decided it was time to humble me and force me to trust Him alone as my strength on this trip. So where did He place me?  In crafts. Of everything He could have chosen for me to do, this was the thing that appealed to me the least. I didn't want to plan crafts because I had never done that before. It scared me. Throughout the prepping and planning, however, God used my craft partner and a variety of situations to show me that this project was not based merely on my ability - It is was based solely on Him! Painful and humbling lesson to learn, but worth it :)

During ministry, I also was able to see some answered prayers. One specific thing I prayed for in preparing for this trip was to have real time with the orphans we were working with. I didn't just want to play with them, teach them songs and crafts, and then up and leave. Please note that I am not downplaying the impact of the spending this kind of time with the children, but I really wanted to know who they were and see them uniquely. God totally answered my prayers!! We ended up having the opportunity to spend more time with several orphan homes rather than trying to rush through every single one of them. Because of the extended time with the children, we were blessed to hear many of the children's stories. This impacted our team hugely. I will never forget how it felt to watch children who went from playing joyfully moments before to sobbing painfully through their individual stories. I will never know what it feels like to experience such pain, loss, and desperation at their young ages. More than any other time in my life, I wished there was something I could do to erase every hurt and memory that haunted the hearts of these children. I cried out to God pleading for healing for the tender hearts I saw before me. I cried from the depths of my heart and soul for these little ones.

But their stories did not end in tears. Every single child who shared always had a "but" in their story. This is where despite my tears and questions, I saw God's faithfulness clearly laid out. God was providing faithfully for each little one we met through the church in Hyderabad. He has provided them with clothing, shelter, food, family, and an education. These children are so blessed. This is why the children were joyful, healthy, and in love with Jesus. He had brought them faithfully out of darkness and into His marvelous light through the Church doing what it is commanded to do. Amazing.

Random funny moments

• India made me go bananas ... Literally: For those of you who know me best, you know that I detest and loathe bananas with every portion of my being. In fact, I haven't eaten a banana willfully in years. After this trip, that opinion changed drastically. I was one of the "sickies" on this trip and bananas were one of the few things I could stomach (literally). So guess who loves bananas now??? This girl :)
• Who says it's not acceptable to play with your food?: Shout out to my close friends again! Everyone who knows me well knows without a doubt that I love napkins and hate sticky hands. Well, on this trip I had to learn quickly that napkins were rarely available and sticky hands were the norm. After about two meals, I discovered that eating only with my hands was actually quite fun and I could probably get used to it (sorry to all my easily grossed out friends!)
• Good thing I remembered the deodorant ... : Showering was interesting. We ended up staying in a relatively nice hotel but the bathroom situation was still kinda sketchy. If my memory serves me right, I believe out of the five rooms we were staying in, my room was the only one that had a working shower head. Despite this fact, showering still scared me to death. Dirty, cold water with all kinds of unknown grossness floating around. Yuck. Needless to say I showered as little as possible on this trip (as in 3 times ... maybe)
• Mere suggestion ... : Thanks to my Indian friends, I learned quickly that anything "rule-wise" with driving is only a suggestion if you have enough money. It's suggested you have a license to drive just like it's suggested that you learn how to drive before getting out on the road. After learning this, the entire traffic situation made a lot more sense. The honking, fender benders, and off-roading that occurred so frequently were a little crazy, but eventually I got used to it :)
• Cows J-walking ... : This happened almost everyday ... Yeah it's India :)

Hopefully those little snapshots were able to give you a good laugh and a bit of insight into the culture I stepped into. Yes, there were bumps in the road but there was also a lot of laughter that made these bumps memorable :)

Before I finish off this post, I do want to share what God taught me on this trip and how He is currently working in my heart ...

When I signed up for this trip, I immediately started praying that God would reveal to me what role India may have in my future because it had been laid on my heart for so long. In all anticipation, I expected there to be a very clear "yes" or "no" to India after this trip. That ended up not being the case. After wrestling through scripture and praying a lot, the only clear answer I heard was this 

"Wait on Me"

To be completely honest, I was not too happy with this answer.

God, I thought you were going to finally show me what you wanted me to do with my future! So You brought me all the way to India to tell me to "wait on you"?! Seriously?

I felt so confused and kind of frustrated. It took a good part of the trip to wrestle with His answer (even now I'm still processing through it). Besides His very clear answer of "wait", the other thing that became very clear is that God doesn't need me.

Seriously, He doesn't.

But guess what?

He wants to use me.

God has given me so many opportunities to be a part of His huge plans and my calling is to be faithful wherever He has me in those plans. Whether that is India, South Dakota, or wherever, I need to continually wait on Him and yet do what He has already clearly commanded me to do in His Word. I need to actively be involved in missions here and now.

India may or may not be in my long term future, but I'm at peace with that. In fact, I'm getting really excited to see what God is going to do here in the States as well as overseas :) Can't wait to take each step towards the future trusting Him!

So in the most concise fashion possible (for me at least!) that is my trip in a nutshell :)

Stay tuned for journals :)

All praise and glory be to our great God!! :)