Tough Stuff

Let me be honest: my first couple weeks here have been hard. Very hard.
I feel like I’ve been constantly sick, tired and just unmotivated. Depressed is a word that accurately describes the majority of my time here so far.
I’ve felt discouraged and almost worthless not coming with a specific gift.

I’ve cracked a couple times and have cried and asked God what I was doing here.
Throughout the discouragement however, God has answered me swiftly.
Every morning when I get up I have all of the kids reaching for me to give me a hug and say “Praise the Lord, Sister.”

Little Naked Johnny runs up to me and wraps his little baby arms around my leg and looks up with his big, white-toothed smile.

Prasad walks up with his limp which just gives him so much character and adds to his cuteness, and jumps into my arms, kisses me on the cheek and just smiles, wide-eyed with his huge, teethy grin.

I will be the first to say that I haven’t thrown myself into this trip. But after talking to Thomas, Dana and Breana, I have felt very encouraged, and I have to think of back to why I felt God was calling me to be here in the first place.

What was God teaching me during this time of severe hardship?
Today it all came together for me, and hit me right in the face.

I have been hearing of the terrible conditions here, and I’ve been seeing it and living it. Although I have my own room and a toilet and a “shower” and get enough food to feed an army (I have it real good compared to most people who live here), I wouldn’t call living here luxurious. But it’s ok because I did not sign up for luxurious.

On our way home from day trips, late at night we see the trucks stopped on the side of the road to pick up the prostitutes. We’ve had to turn away the most beautiful little children who come up begging us for money to bring back to their mother’s. We’ve seen the sick and elderly, so helpless with no one really to care for them.

Dana has been gone quite a bit doing medical clinics in the villages. I only went with them once. Medicine is not my thing. I don’t know what to do, and can’t handle the littlest bit of blood. Therefore, I’ve stayed back here with the kids, and stuck to my hobby of editing photos and putting them up on my Flickr site and have let the girls play with and braid my hair while tossing a ball with the boys..

Over the past couple of weeks, Dana, Breana and Thomas have been going to the house of Mahdu (sp?), one of the staff members here. His dad has had extremely large open wounds on his leg and they recently found out (after seeing him a couple times) that he has AIDS, which is why he is so sick and not really getting any better. When they would come back and talk about “draining” the wounds and the smell, just those words made me feel sick and I decided I would rather do anything than go put myself in that situation.

But God decided to change my heart. Last week after talking to Dana, I asked her if the next time they went to visit him, if I could come with them. Today was the day.

I put on my sari, got into the car and after stopping at the local clinic to get a tour and meet the doctor, we headed over to see the man who was told he basically had no time left to live.
He was in the back of the hut laying on a cot, flies covering him like he was a decaying animal.

His family put him in the back because they thought he was going to die and apparently if someone does in a home, it is considered cursed and they have to leave for 6 months before it’s ok to live in again.

I just saw this man laying there and immediately, Dana started caring for him, squeezing out the infection of the leg wounds while Breana assisted. I was surprisingly not grossed out. The only emotion I felt was sadness. I saw the agony in his face as Dana tried to clean out what seemed like deep holes in his legs.

I sat on a chair up by his face and didn’t know what to do, so I just took a plastic fan and fanned him to try to cool him down and keep the flies away.

Because he had AIDS, no one in his family except for Mahdu would touch him or even come near him.

Can you imagine that? Your family member is dying and you just neglect them because you’re embarrassed and don’t want to catch what they have.

After all of his wounds were changed, we prayed for him.

As I saw the tears coming down his face, I felt my own face covered in tears as Dana and Breana spoke words over him and asked God to heal him both outside and in.
In his language, he looked up at Tom and said all he wanted was Jesus.

Something changed in me. All I wanted to do was hold his hand, stroke his hair and put lotion on his loose, extremely dry skin.

This is what God does. He swoops down into your life and just blows you away when you least expect it.

It’s so sad seeing people have to go through what they do here.

I’ve come to realize that I am so spoiled, and selfish and prideful, and I need to start counting every single blessing I have because compared to people here, I have so much, but yet always have felt so unsatisfied, wanting more.

However, when I look at the faith and passion that Christians here have for God, I see that they are rich with the Holy Spirit, and I am ashamed that I came here following God’s call for me, thinking I was going to teach them, and I am the one being taught about his Faithfulness by 3-year-olds.

I left for India almost three weeks ago and already so much has happened.
This is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I will come back a changed person. You can’t come to a place like this and see and experience things here and not be.

Please pray for these kids. Half of them are gone with their families spreading the gospel. The others are here on summer break. If you go to the website (www.openarmsforasia.org) and read some of their stories, your hearts will break. But they have the joy of the Lord and seeing that joy is what is encouraging me here daily.

Pray for Dana as she departs to go back home tomorrow (Wednesday, May 6).

Pray for me to keep trusting in what the Lord has for me, especially as I deal with physical sickness and home-sickness. I am fasting for 5 days to remind myself that God is sufficient for me and will fulfill my needs.

Thank you all so much for your continued prayers, support and encouragement.

A special thank you to my Mom and Jamie for the books that each of you gave me for while I’m here. They are already a huge encouragement to me and has become a part of my daily routine to spend time reading both.

Feel free to email me privately if you have any specific questions or comments.

Grace and Peace to you,
Jenna

“NEVER BE LACKING IN ZEAL, BUT KEEP YOUR SPIRITUAL FERVOR, SERVING THE LORD. BE JOYFUL IN HOPE, PATIENT IN AFFLICTION, FAITHFUL IN PRAYER. SHARE WITH GOD’S PEOPLE WHO ARE IN NEED.”
[ROMANS 12:11-13]