On this morning I had the hour of experiencing a first. I got preach (sort of) from the pulpit. It wasn’t a full sermon at all, and really
can’t be. In India, evangelism is
illegal, and foreigners can’t “preach” at all.
Instead I was asked to lead a morning devotional. I was asked to do it earlier in the week,
with roughly 10 hours notice (right before bed), and I asked for a later
day. Normally I relish public speaking,
and I script nothing. I usually go up
with a few bullet points outlined and adlib it.
However given that I had a pretty negative state of mind, I
didn’t know if I was in good shape to do that.
I got a two day delay and during that time, I was able to change the
passages I wanted to speak on. I had
spent most of my trip thus far feeling pretty down because I hadn’t really
served at all, and I didn’t have much confidence in the message I planned. I prayed about it and God helped me see I had
been planning mostly just based on what I thought would be easy to teach on with
no experience and a down mindset.
Instead, he called me to preach on some of my favorites, a
few passages that have always been close to my heart, and speak with passion. So
with a two day delay to help me get ready to speak, I decided to change my
topic ten minutes before going to bed, with chapel at nine the next
morning. I’m quite comfortable with
public speaking, enjoy it really, but I was still a bit nervous. My confidence has been low because of the
emotional turmoil, and I wasn’t really sure if I would be good at church speaking,
that was a first for me.
I started with something I hadn’t heard from the pulpit the
whole trip: a joke. Indian culture is
not as comical as American culture is.
The people live seriously and don’t joke around much at all. It’s great in the aspect that you get to see
people raw and real, but it is disheartening in that you also see a lack of joy
frequently, and laughter is somewhat rare.
I started with a crack about how if I didn’t speak well, to just blame
the translator because my devotion was great.
The translator has written books in both Hindi and English and is one of
the most respected preachers on the planet, so that certainly wasn’t the
case. Regardless, I got a laugh both
before and after the translation, so I had accomplished at least one thing for
the day, I made the congregation laugh, including the translator.
I spent the next few minutes going over the passages of
Romans 12:1-2 and Isaiah 26:3-4, two of my favorites. In what I took as a sign that I really did
belong up there speaking, I was told I went a little long, which is the
ultimate sign of a preacher’s heart.
Afterwards, my concerns and fears that I shouldn’t be up there at all
were put quickly at ease. Virtually
everyone was telling me I did great up there.
I always feel good about my stage presence, but in this case I wasn’t
sure about the content. In classic
Taylor form, I went up there without a single note, just my Bible and mental
note about where to turn.
The encouragement I received afterwards was, by far, the
largest boost I received on my entire trip.
I felt vindicated in that my aspirations for full time ministry might
not be so far off after all, something my current job hunting struggles have
caused me to doubt recently.
In the afternoon, we took a short tour of the city that the
main campus is located outside of. I
learned some interesting things on the drive, including the fact that “colony”
is really just a word that is used to describe a little zone of housing,
similar to how we might say neighborhood or development. It then struck me that leper colonies were
likely just neighborhoods in town.
The city tour was just a time killer before we headed to the
hospital that is operated by our host organization. The hospital was a big pride point for them;
they had invested a lot of time and resources into making it the best one in
the district of about 1.5 million people.
What I learned quickly is that every American needs to stop complaining
about their health care. Our system
isn’t perfect, but everyone who needs urgent care will always get it, and
virtually everyone will receive adequate care.
The concerns at home aren’t about the quality of care, but the cost.
Keep in mind as I share the following information, that it
is describing the best hospital servicing an area with a population that
exceeds the entire state of Idaho. Among
the most impressive features in the hospital was the single dialysis machine in
the entire district, which pretty quickly connects the mental dots to the fact
that virtually everyone here that needs kidney dialysis will just die. On a good day, they are able to get five
different people on the machine.
Additionally, the hospital features not one, but two surgery
rooms. That’s it. If more than two people need scheduled
operations, they wait. The hospital also
includes the only ICU in the region with air conditioning, so keep in mind that
most people that come in for help, will end up sitting in 100 degrees while
getting it. As we toured the facility,
we just walked straight through the ICU, with patients and their families just
looking at us curiously. In that moment,
the revelation hit me that in our red tape burdened country; a hospital could
be shut down for privacy violations for that one action, while the patients
there were just happy to be getting real assistance.
One thing I learned throughout this trip was that we in
America underestimate the durability of the human body. These people had virtually no options for
quality health care. They eat primarily a
diet that guarantees diabetes at some point because it’s so heavy on
carbohydrates, and options for fresh, uncooked vegetables are almost
non-existent because of the pollution and filth in the country. The fresh water is also completely undrinkable
here. Few places have real indoor
plumbing, and even when they do, the waste management system just ends up with
it in a place that is bad for the general population. India is the second most populous country on
earth, 40% of the citizens live beneath the poverty line, and is the most
polluted country on the planet. Despite
all this, the average life span is 66 years.
That’s obviously well short of most of the developed world, but given
that every aspect of their life seems unsurvivable to the North American eye,
it’s about 36 years longer than I think most of us think we could actually
survive in the same conditions.
Later I got to share a lunch with the same teacher I had
joked at the expense of from the pulpit that morning. Unfortunately, I can’t really share too many
details of that conversation, but it was a great encouragement as well. He did give me some encouragement that there
are ways that I could be helping their efforts on a permanent basis, and was
hopeful we could speak again at a later time about some specifics.
In the afternoon, some of the preachers from the
organization came to speak with us about their testimonies. I had heard horror stories about persecution
from India before, but hearing about it first hand is a different matter
entirely. Probably the hardest moment
for me was one pastor who shared that he had once been beaten unconscious and
his wife killed by attackers. He was
unconscious long enough that he did not even get to attend his own wife’s
funeral. That happened nine years ago,
he had surely told the story countless times since then, and still he could not
get through it without weeping.
How can one process that?
In a country where so many don’t share their faith because they don’t
want to get in a debate about it, or are scared of being judged, sitting in
front of me was a man who still preaches in the same village where that attack
happened because his belief that God wants him there hasn’t changed. Again, as throughout this whole trip, people
were ecstatic to have us pray over them. Even this man, for whom I can’t see any real
basis for caring about what a persecutionless American thinks or feels about
his story, was overjoyed to have one of our own pray over him. Our man couldn’t get through it without
choking up himself. That was raw and
powerful emotion.
Later, I was asked to pray over one of the pastors as
well. He spoke no English at all, and
translators aren’t active during prayer, so no words get through to the
person. I was told later by someone else
that the man I was praying over had tears in his eyes as I prayed for him (they
were dry when I started). I know God
heard me, and my team did too, but his emotional investment in my power to help
was so strange to hear. He had a faith
in both God and myself to truly bless him, and again I was blown away by how
much simply hearing encouragement went to these people.
Throughout the afternoon we got to hear more horrifying
stories that had incredible endings.
Among them were the stories of one pastor who woke up one morning to find
that twenty babies six months or younger had just been left on his doorstep,
all of which he was able to ensure were provided for. The story of a baby who someone just randomly
found out of curiosity inside a plastic bag on the street, and another taken in
with the umbilical cord still attached as the baby was never even cleaned once
born. The most powerful though was of a
man who watched a persecutor rape his wife right in front of him. Two years later, as he persisted to preach in
the same area regardless, he baptized that same rapist into his church.
Later that night, we attended their weekly youth group
event. It was pretty similar to all the
other church or chapel visits we had made, and after the emotional exhaustion
of the days other experiences, honestly didn’t leave much of an
impression.
Another day, another failure on the dog petting front, I was
scolded away from one more, and had another chased off right in front of me by
a kid who pelted a dog with a rock. So
that was sad.
The last observation I have for the day is that I want to
point out the awesomeness that is the marble floors. In the US, we look at this as a sign of
luxury, marble is crazy expensive, and almost no one has it in their homes. Here, it’s essentially carpet. Every building that is at least a middle
class household has it throughout, and even the lower income places seem to at
least have it for the stairs. It’s just
crazy easy to come by here. I find a
simple beauty in the consistent contrast of the beauty of the floor itself, and
the filth that often surrounds it. The
dirt here is essentially just reddish clay, and it tracks everywhere. Floors are always coated with it, and usually
there are beetles and flies everywhere.
The contrast of the marble and the filth being commonplace together is
something I never seemed to adjust to throughout the visit, and always
appreciated the simplicity and beauty of.
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