Now It's Time To Say Goodbye

Welcome to my least favorite blog I’ve ever written.

Why’s that? Thank you for asking. It’s because in just about 30 hours from now, Lord willing, our flight home will take off for Heathrow. I’m trying to think of something meaningful to say, but all that I’m thinking about is how lame it’s gonna be to say “Goodbye” to these kids. These kids are the most amazing kids I’ve ever met in my entire life. We spent the afternoon learning Tamil from them and playing a type of “Simon Says”, where they gave commands in Tamil and our team would have to obey. THEN, WE would give the commands in Tamil and we didn’t totally mess everything up! We’ve also learned some Scripture in Tamil and have teaching a verse to the kids - in their language - for them to memorize. We’ve been busting out “Power In The Blood” in Tamil, and over the past 2 weeks, we’ve learned one of their worship songs. And EVERYWHERE we go with them, it’s being sung. Even to day, this incredible 5-6 year old (guessing) little girl, Savitha (Suh-VEETH-uh) was standing in the middle of the field next to the Mission Center - completely by herself - singing the song over and over again. There was no audience except for Jesus- and she wouldn’t stop singing. She then saw a few of us watching her from on top of the 3rd story roof, and then we kept singing together. Ask someone to see the video. She’s remarkable. Whenever we say “Goodbye” for the day, there really isn’t a “Goodbye” to speak of. We say two things: “Yesu unaai nesikaraar” - “Jesus loves you”. Also, “Naan unnai nesikaran” - “I love you”. Again, this is not something that we say to make these kids feel good - out hearts are exploding with love. Every day, we get to experience complex “high five” handshake/fist bump combos. A new one is going around now. You slap hands sideways, slap the backs of the hands on the return and then fist bump. But on the first slap, you say, “Friend”. On the first bump, you say, “Brother”. That is the perfect picture of the relational climate here. These kids are not cute camp kids who we love for a week. These people genuinely feel like family. For the past few nights, the village kids have been sleeping in the Mission Center instead of their own homes. They don’t want this to end and they want to be near their “Aunts” and “Uncles”. It honestly hurts knowing that there’s a significant chance we won’t see them again this side of Jesus. But knowing that, in Jesus, we WILL see them some day is such a joy. We are so thankful for this Hope.

I hope this paints a picture for you about how close we’ve gotten to these people. When you see us at home and we share stories, videos, pictures of these kids, know that behind our smiles and, possibly, tears is a deep longing to be with our Indian family again. There are times when we think, “Man, I wish you could come to America with us”…but we don’t really say that… because we know that, while they may appear needy and underprivileged, they have more joy in the Holy Spirit and they love with the absolutely purest love…and we would never want to spoil that. But, man, these kids are going to be missed so much - and you should be proud of your India 2012 Team. They have loved SO hard and at great cost to themselves. When you see them, tell them “Thank you” for being the on-the-ground carriers of the love of Christ that we as a church and as THE Church want these kids to experience. It is life changing and it is laying so much groundwork for Christ to work in their lives. On this trip, we’ve really been blessed to have Justin Hanneken join the team. With his expertise in Missions, he’s been so helpful in putting things in proper perspective. Tonight as we talked, he shared how David Rajan, these Mission Centers and our partnership with them is so critical to these kids because they are experiencing something their parents never did: a Christian influence and message. It’s no wonder that the villagers are heavily Hindu - they’ve never been told different. As Justin said today, everyone sees kids as the keys to getting the parents. But what we fail to realize is that getting the kids in love with Jesus affects THEIR kids’ generations. These children didn’t have Christ as a part of their development - but the next generation will because of the work going on here now. This is why it is so vitally important that we partner and support David and this ministry. Groundwork for a lasting Christian influence is being set up daily and it is so exciting to see Light shine in the darkness. Remember Morganapriya from an earlier blog? Her family was the one with the gigantic snake pit - she’s the 16 year old….lone Christian in her family? David had the opportunity to talk with her father today for a long time outside the Mission Center. He even stated to David that he might actually show up to see what all of this VBS stuff with the White Americans is about. This is a Hindu man who acknowledges that the large snake in his snake pit has been following him around for 45 years. God is moving! Pray with boldness tonight that Morganapriya’s father shows up tomorrow and that he would be so convicted of his need for Christ that we would see Christ break through!
Speaking of God is moving, we had a great day today. And naturally, as soon as I said yesterday that we have this VBS thing figured out, we had another audible thrown at us. Normally, one(ish) hour in the morning and one(ish) hour in the afternoon. Lately, it’s been TWO hours in the morning, one in the p.m. Today, David tossed us the mic at 10:07 a.m. Lunch is at 1. We’re up to 3 hours in the morning. We had planned for 3 hours total between both morning/afternoon sessions…not solely for the morning session. We kept the Hidden Bouncy Ball game in our back pocket for the afternoon and the India 2012 Team TOTALLY rallied and covered almost 3 hours…only to find out at lunch that we would not need to cover another hour after lunch. But all of the preparation for this trip allowed the Team to totally move in the Spirit, spend time learning with the students and we still had more we could’ve done.

But here’s one of the best stories of the day. For the two VBS programs, we purchased materials for a total of 300 salvation bracelets. 150 at Poonthanthalam and 150 at North River. No sweat. Until you have 250 kids show up at Poonthanthalam. And, while that was awesome, we felt bad about not having anything for the North River kids. So, around 2 p.m., the ladies did inventory on the remaining bracelet supplies and discovered that we only had 53 bracelets remaining. We have discovered that, in India, you cannot give something to just one kid - you have to give something to EVERY kid…and usually twice. So, I was sent to do a headcount. We knew there were about 35 boys, so it wasn’t looking good. I went down and head counted. Guess how many kids.

53.

I counted AGAIN just to be sure.

53.

So, I go back to the ladies working on putting together the bracelets and I begin to count. I counted 5 times. I counted 5 times because every time I counted, I made a mistake. So, after all of the bracelets were completed, 3 of us sat down and counted. 53 exactly. Hallelujah.

But wait - there’s more. There’s always more.

I was bummed because we literally did not have a single extra salvation bracelet and some of the adults in the village seem to like them. After teaching on the bracelet colors and their meanings, Pastor Nandekumar did a great skit and memory aid to help the kids remember what they were wearing. We don’t speak the same language, but the Holy Spirit was clearly speaking through Him and He completely got it. The kids all line up to get a bracelet as they exited. We had two extra and everybody who wanted one - adults included - got one. There were 53 bracelets. It was counted repeatedly. The bodies/heads were counted repeatedly. We had extras. Loaves and fishes.

As they made their exit, they were instructed to run around the MC to the other side of the building…where the guys were waiting to hit them with water balloons. From the roof. It was amazing. We had so many water balloons and the kids were so excited to get drenched. Probably because the temperature was 108 degrees today. And I can hear you already - what was the teaching behind the water balloon game? It’s a very simple answer: the teaching is that water balloons are really fun to play with and American men will turn into little boys when given a water balloon to throw. They’re just fun. That’s all it was. We are planning on doing the same thing tomorrow, too. The issue is, we only have 475 water balloons left - will that be enough? Also, could we be done filling them up before June? The second question is the real hurdle. Following the VBS session, David offered to take anyone on the team out boating on the river. Jen, you will be happy to know, I kept my promise and got nowhere near the water today. Still no crocodile attacks on my life.

I need to bring this blog to a close - not because I couldn’t find something else to say, but because I just fell asleep typing mid-sentence and the page was filled with ‘L’’s and ‘K’’s. That’s code for, “Go to bed, dummy - everyone will be up at 5:30 a.m.” So, it’s that time again. Time to hunker down, pray for breeze and have God’s Spirit just pour over us for one more great day tomorrow. Please pray fervently for Morganapriya’s father. I would LOVE to testify tomorrow that he showed up. As we’ve playing outside, Betty Jo noted tonight that the villagers are always watching us out with the kids when they drive by - they’re so interested to see what’s going on. David even shared tonight that at the first mission center, Poonthanthalam, it took them 2-3 years to really get ingrained and develop relationships with their community. In 6 months, the North River Mission Center has grown a reputation in the village as the place to turn for help. God is blessing North River’s presence here and it is positioned in such a way that it could reach whole villages for Chris - please pray for this!

Please pray for rest tonight!
Please pray for breeze. It was crazy hot today and without a breeze (which there is none right now), we’ve got nothing.
Please pray for Morganapriya’s father. Pray that tomorrow would be the start of a village-wide revival. Pray that the snake following him for 45 years is killed. Pray that the snake pit worship site is destroyed.
Pray that the India 2012 Team would hold nothing back tomorrow and that we would love the kids with everything we have in us.
Pray that the kids would know that they are valued and precious to Jesus and that He wants a relationship with them.
Lastly, please pray for the Team and the kids as tomorrow is probably going to be a pretty emotional day of “Goodbyes”.

One more day. That’s it. Thank you for your support. We couldn’t do this without you.