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Mother Teresa.
Standing outsede the headquarters of Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.Hi again everyone,
Well we (Bronagh, Pastor Kumar and myself) have returned from North India and we had a fantastic experience. We flew to Calcutta (now called Kolkata) on Saturday morning (2 hour flight) and spent a few hours around the city. The poverty was very obvious even compared to where we are in South India. With 1 million people living on the filthy dirty streets there was a general feeling of oppression wherever we went. It was a very common sight to see people washing themselves on the public footpath while here and there, water was flowing up from the street to serve this purpose.
We had the privilege of being able to visit Mother Teresa’s ministry and the fantastic work that they are doing. Within her headquarters, which is open to visitors, is her tomb where she is buried and across the courtyard is her tiny room where she lived for the last 44 years of her life. Her room is smaller than my kitchen at home! She headed her ministry from there and held her board meetings and wrote thousands of letters. Her room consisted of a bed and a small table and chair. She can
only be admired for her lifestyle and dedication. Just down the road from her headquarters is the orphanage where they currently have 118 abandoned children awaiting adoption. It’s not unusual for them to find an abandoned baby lying on their doorstep in the mornings from parents who cannot look after or don’t want their children.
We then got the overnight train from Calcutta to our destination. Unfortunately we didn’t get an air conditioned cabin but at least we had a bed to lie down on. For the first hour the train was very crowded as there were a lot of commuters travelling home and even though our cabin was reserved everyone sits everywhere so you haven’t a chance of lying down on your own bed until the crowd clears. A while into our journey we were greeted by a transvestite into our cabin. It’s a weird site to see a man dressed as a woman in a full sari so ‘she’ started giving us abuse so that we would pay ‘her’ to leave. If anyone doesn’t pay up with the verbal abuse that ‘she’ gives then ‘she’ will resort to inappropriate behaviour. We got rid of ‘her’ with 10
The Bridge
I think this bridge is a way of getting people to pray before they enter the village, it certainly worked for us!!! rupees (about 12p) and we were glad to see ‘her’ go.
12 hours later we arrived at our destination and took the short trip by jeep to the mission’s base where one of their schools operate. The ministry has 90 staff in this part of India including pastors, church planters, teachers etc to run their three schools and the 39 churches that they have planted in the last 10 years (in which only 7 actually have a church hall, the others meet under a tree). We travelled to one of these villages on Sunday to take part in their service, it was an amazing experience. After travelling for over an hour by jeep we arrived at a dirt track that was to lead us to the village. We had been told that during the rainy season teams had to wade through waist deep water to get there. Thankfully it’s not the rainy season here. So with our eyes peeled for snakes we took off across the fields. To get to the village we had to walk across the most frightening bridge that has ever been constructed. It was made entirely from bamboo. Bamboo is very strong but it is
Village Life
An elderly lady in the village taking the corn off the cob so it can be sold at the local market. also very, very flexible, which meant that with every step we took the whole bridged bounced. Forget Disney rollercoasters for a thrill ride, this tops them all!
Having made it across the bridge we were brought to the local Pastor’s house where we were greeted with some chi tea. Then we went to one of the most humbling church services we have ever experienced. The Pastor led praise and worship on a tiny keyboard/accordion kind of thing and a couple of members in the congregation played a drum and what looked like home made maracas. Their worship was so genuine, totally from the heart, and then a few people gave some testimonies of healing etc. For us the most poignant part of it all was when they were giving their offerings as well as their tithes. Everyone willingly came forward to give and you knew that they were doing it out of an act of love to their Father. Some were giving their days wage - £1.20. It was easily one of the most humbling experiences we have had yet. One member in the congregation use to be the village witch Dr and once a year he would climb
Clean Water
Bronagh making use of one of the few sources of clean water in the village. to the top of a large pole to dance to the gods. When another member and his wife got saved the people of the village wouldn’t let the midwife go to his wife when she was about to give birth so the church pastor and the ladies husband had to deliver the baby and cut the umbilical cord with an agricultural knife. I gave a brief word about where we were from etc in the service and we had an opportunity to pray with these people after. Kumar also spoke to the congregation for about 20 minutes and at the end he asked how many of them had bibles, 5 or 6 people put up their hand. He then asked them how many could read and out of about 60 people that were there, no more than 9 people put up their hand! It was amazing to see God working in the lives of people like that. They were lucky to be one of the villages to have a church building but they have no electricity which isn’t unusual for that part of the world. I will look forward to the day when I can join with these people in
The Village Pastor
Here I am standing with the Pastor of the village and in the background you can see the pole that the witch Dr use to climb once a year to dance for the god's. worship again. It’s strange to think that to these people the two world wars never took place, the Holocaust or 9/11 never happened. The outside world just simply doesn’t exist. Most of the people probably haven’t travelled more than 10km from the village in their lifetime. But as of 6 years ago Jesus now lives in that village where his name was never heard before in the history of that place, and there are thousands of surrounding villages like that. We have a responsibility! In one of the other villages there is an illiterate pastor who has delivered 11 mentally insane people out of their condition. His wife reads the bible to him and prepares his sermons and he preaches them.
The next day (Monday) we went to visit the two other schools that belong to the ministry. There is a stretch of road between two of the schools where there was 11 murders in the space of 10 days. People are murdered for a few rupees or for their bicycle, life simply has no value to a lot of people, it’s a tough area. Within the three schools there are approximately 500 children being educated, about 1 in
The Believers
This is how the church believers use to meet before their church was built. 5 children in this area receive an education and I want to promote a monthly school sponsorship programme when I get home to help run these schools. I’m searching for 100 people to give just £10/month, these schools, teachers and children deserve our support especially giving the conditions and the environment they are growing up in. We spend money so flippantly at home, I’m always conscious of that.
After our two days on this mission field we made our 12 hour return trip back to Calcutta on the overnight train (this time in an air conditioned cabin) and thankfully we didn’t have any unwelcomed guests. The one way train ticket cost just £18. When we arrived back in Calcutta we got a taxi which took us over the Ganges river. The Ganges is a very sacred river in north India as millions oh Hindu’s go there to bathe to wash away their sins. The taxi driver pulled over to ask a policeman for directions and when he saw me holding a camera in the back of the car he demanded that I hand it over. I quickly took the chip out of it and shoved the camera into my
The New Church
Their recently constructed church building. Many more are needed. ruck sack. Speaking in Hindi to the driver and to Kumar he insisted that we hand over the camera as we are not allowed to take photos….of course there was no warning signs about this, it was the policeman’s way of trying to get money out of us. I ended up giving the camera to Kumar who then showed the policeman that it wasn’t working (because the chip was out of it) and the policeman tried to take it off him and demanded that we pay 10,000 rupees (£120). Well he had no chance of getting that or the camera but the debate was continuing and we were going to be late for our flight so Kumar was forced into giving him 100 rupees (£1.20) and that kept him happy. The system is so corrupt its unbelievable!!!
So we got our flight back to south India and when we landed it strangely felt like we were home (that’s not a prophetic statement by the way…….I hope). It was a short trip but an extremely adventurous one. We know that there was a lot of people praying for us over the weekend and we sincerely thank you all for that,
How many people can read?
This was the response to the question. 9 people put up their hands. 'To those who have been given much, much will be required'. The ones that can read are required to read the Bible to those who cannot! How much more is our responsibility??? we were well protected and had a fantastic experience. Sorry it’s a long blog entry this time but I wanted to share that all with you. Thank you for reading to the end.
We hope everyone is keeping well back home, we are looking forward to seeing everyone again.
For now, God Bless
Stephen (and Bronagh)
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Helen Poots
non-member comment
Uve had an amazing time over...luved reading all ur blog...so interesting...it really was am experience u had...we are having a heatwave here at the mo but the odd thunder shower with it...so clammy!!!! looking forward 2 seeing u again soon.....God Bless!!!!!