India: Part 1

Well I’m back from Bihar India and I’ve tried to blog about this for a couple weeks now but have had the hardest time processing everything, but I’ve got to immediately jump back on this blogging train before I forget (not that that will ever ACTUALLY happen, but you know what I mean) about the amazing amazing things the Lord has done. To say that I’m a little overwhelmed would be the understatement of the year. I think that the best way for me to get all of this out without you missing anything of importance and me rambling too much (lets face it, we all know that’s going to happen regardless), is for me to spilt up my whole trip by topics and just blog about each one separately. So I’m going to start today with the conferences that we were apart of.

The first day that we were over there we got to go to a women’s conference. I know that I’d mentioned this before to y’all but let me tell you, the Lord is really working in the lives of those sweet women. First things first though, my flesh hasn’t ever been as tired as it was then though. Somehow the car I rode in to the church was one of the last ones there and the church was packed, so guess who ended up sitting up on the stage? Yep that’s right, this girl. Knowing that everyone in the church could see you and would know if you fell asleep was more then enough incentive to keep me awake (honestly I still struggled though). However after a couple of hours of great speakers and some Hindi worship music, one of the speakers told all of the missionaries to just go out into the crowd of women and begin praying with/for them. At this point every thing in me that was tired was immediately restored and I was energized. I found my way through the crowd stopping to pray whenever I felt led and eventually ended up with this one woman and her daughter. The woman looked no older then 19 and her daughter was 2 and she immediately handed her to my friend Maggie and we began praying for her without really knowing what was going on due to the language barrier. The baby began having seizures while we were holding her and other people began to gather around us and we quickly had a few extra hands reaching out to touch this child as we prayed. As the four of us were praying the seizures started happening less and less frequently until the baby seemed at peace and was close to falling asleep. We then had an interpreter come over and we found out that the baby had been to the doctor many times but they had never been able to diagnose what was going on. Due to the seizures she was still only eating foods in liquid form and had never spoken or walked. The mother was in tears and said that she had prayed to so many different gods but had never seen results like this and wanted to know why. We got to share the gospel with her for the first time! If that had been all that I went to India to do, that would have been fine with me at that point but that funny Jesus had so much more up his sleeve.

The second day over there we got to be apart of a youth conference and it was the largest conference in the states history! So many eager young people just looking for a change from the darkness that is Bihar India. I was on the front row this time instead of on the stage, thankfully. The speakers were great again as usual and after a couple of hours we were released again to go out and pray with the youth. I ended up spending the whole time with this one girl who was a year younger then me. She was already saved and with us both able to speak English we struck up a conversation easily, her name was Gracie and she is the sweetest woman. She told me that because she lives in India she can’t worship freely and her family thinks that her being a Christian is really evil spirits in her, so they abuse her every chance they get. It was heartbreaking to hear that. I’m so so so blessed to call this place home. Even though there are things going on that we don’t all agree on, it’s still a country that was founded on Christian beliefs and we’ve been given freedom through that. Freedom in Christ and freedom in the world we’ve been given as American citizens.  

Like I said earlier, there will be more posts coming your way but this was such a BIG trip for me that I’m still having a hard time processing everything that’s happened and is still happening. But your prayers have meant everything to me so keep them coming! Love you all!!