Melissa’s Post From Week 3
Because of the problems we had with our internet connection, we were not able to put up this post from Melissa. Continue to lift up Luke in your prayers as he has still been suffering from diarrhea. The kids are having a difficult time with jet lag...they were up this morning about 1:30 AM. We hope that they will be able to re-time their body clocks soon. We've also put up some pictures from our third week along with this post.
Melissa's Post:
Today we are experiencing life in a uniquely Indian way as there is a bundh underway. It appears to be in protest of the price of petrol or the rising price of rice (we have been told both so we’re not exactly sure what the cause is). A bundh is actually illegal – this one has been called by the BJP – but they happen anyway and basically what it boils down to is that no one is allowed to travel by vehicle. The same thing happens but it is called a curfew when it is both official and legal and is called by the government. Anyway, it amounts to an unplanned holiday for many people and so we are particularly thankful as it is a restful day for us to process our experiences over the past several weeks.
We continue to be struck by the need in India that takes on some many forms – there is a need for both great quantity and quality of healthcare, a need for education (especially amongst the poor), a need for a better quality of life that comes with clean drinking water, quality housing, access and funds for shoes, and most of all a need for Christ and the transforming work that only He can bring about both in the lives of individuals as well as entire communities and countries. It is often the sheer volume that makes these issues so overwhelming – there are over a billion people in India and about 70% of them live in rural villages where it is much more challenging to bring about change – but the diversity of areas that need to be addressed also take my breath away. I was greatly encouraged this week by a quote from Edmund Burke that I came across in some reading I was doing which says, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” That is a reminder I am striving to hold steady in my mind – in addition to the amazing thought that God longs to transform our feeble efforts into something that will make His name known among the nations.
Luke in particular has been struggling with illness this week. He is at a difficult age as he is very curious and far too much finds its way into his mouth. Just the other day I was bathing him (using a bucket and cup) and I turned to pick up the towel and in that split-second he had begun using the cup to drink the water that was remaining in the bucket. Of course, this water hadn’t been cleaned or filtered (both of which we must do to get it to a drinkable condition) and so it was one of the last things that he should have been ingesting. Even with Karuna being a couple of years older it was easier for the lesson about all the water being dirty (except for that which was coming directly out of the filter) and for that lesson to “stick”. In that way, it looks like it will be a blessing that the kids will be a couple of years older once we move back here permanently.
This has meant several long days at home with a sick child as well as a lot of time over the stovetop boiling everything that can fit in a pot and that could possibly go into his mouth. This has been much different mission trip for me (Melissa) as I have not felt like I’m doing anything much to advance the cause of Christ but rather am just trying to keep my family alive and reasonably healthy. This is also the case because I don’t know Bengali which has been a strong reminder of how important it is for us to work on learning as much Hindi as we can before we return. It has also been a good trip in that I have been able to spend a lot of time praying for the ministry here – something that it is so easy to neglect when it appears there is so much to do for the sake of the ministry.
The time I have spent at the school has been eye opening. In some ways, they are facing similar challenges to what we faced at ACHS in Tamil Nadu but in other respects the situation here is even more challenging. On the one hand, the students here are also poor and from uneducated families. However, the culture in south India is such that education is highly valued (many of the students I taught during my time in Tamil Nadu are in graduate school now even though they are the first in their families to be educated) whereas here there isn’t a strong vision for education or even much of an understanding of just how much education can do to improve lives for families and entire communities. Many of the students here treat education as a temporary diversion but assume they will eventually end up become paan pickers (paan is an addictive substance similar to chewing tobacco) like most of the adults in the area do. One of the greatest challenges facing Makunda is the need to attract good teachers especially as the school grows both in terms of the number of students they are serving and the grade levels offered. (At present the school is from kindergarten until 7th grade but one grade is added each year and eventually they will be a K-12 school.) We are also still trying to sort out if it would be best for us to serve at a hospital that has a school as part of the ministry so I could help out with teaching or if we should homeschool our kids as this would allow us to serve at a more remote hospital (without a school onsite) that are typically more difficult for EHA to staff.
As our time here winds down, I am getting more and more excited about our short time in Delhi when we will meet with the staff at the central office. We are hoping to get a better sense of the distinctive of the hospitals and projects within the EHA network and move closer to a sense of where we might be able to serve long term. We are probably going to make a trip back here in about four years to visit several hospitals that look to be possibilities and then narrow that list down even further so that we can spend a month working at one or two hospitals before we make the big trip back to move here.
This week has been a blessing for us as we have had relatively consistent electricity. It is amazing how helpful a ceiling fan can be in mitigating the heat. As you might have heard on the news, India is in the grip of a terrible heat wave and so if we don’t have electricity behind inside feels like being in an oven. It has also been a blessing because our neighbor has a TV and so seeing a bit of news has made us feel less disconnected from the rest of the world. Incidentally, as we’ve gotten to know people here I have again been astounded on how “in the know” people are all around the world about what is happening in the US. We are regularly engaged in discussions about the primaries in the US, the war in Iraq, the mortgage/credit crises – and people know enough to discuss these matters in detail. It makes me feel awful to think of how little we know of other countries political systems, economies and current events. I’ve made a note to myself to pay more attention to the BBC!
This will probably be our last email update from Makunda as we are going on Wednesday to Burrows Christian Hospital in Alipore (outside Silchar). This will give us an opportunity to see another EHA hospital as well as meet up with my dear friend Jodi and her husband Nelson who are flying in from Imphal, Manipur. We are so excited to see them and so thankful that they are willing to do this so that we can visit (ironically, we were here in India during their recent trip to the US) in person. We are about an inch apart on our map of India and so I would have been so disappointed to miss out on a visit when we are so close – over course, it’s not an easy inch to travel! Please be praying for us as we travel back to the Silchar area to begin creeping our way back toward the US.
We have learned so much during our time here and are leaving with a stronger sense of what type of ministry we want to be involved with long term so we are also excited to return to the US and get to share with many of you in person about where God is leading us.
