I was signed up to a Cambodia Philippines team since the beginning of the year, but I switched teams at the last minute to a Sri Lanka team. I didn't truly want to go to Sri Lanka, but I believed God wanted me to switch to that team. About a week before I was supposed to leave home, I was told the Sri Lanka team had been cancelled due to political problems and the missionary pulling out. The three leaders and seven teenage girls including myself were to be sent to India instead. I was ecstatic about going back to the country I had fallen in love with the year before.
Before going to India, my team trained in the lord's boots camp and learned some basic building and ministry skills. If you are not familiar with Teen Missions' programme, you can read about it at http://www.teenmissions.org/about/
We got to Vijayawada, India late at night after two and a half days of traveling. The next day, we set up our living space and looked around the Teen Missions base. It had developed a lot since my visit eleven months before.
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| Jan 2014, we made the concrete foundation for a duck pond. |
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| Dec 2014, the completed duck pond next to the ready to harvest paddies |
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| Jan 2014, Hanging out on a bench by the palm oil trees. |
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| Dec 2014, Hanging out on the same bench. |
Soon, we began our main project, building a wall around Teen Missions India. This would help them to meet new regulations and ultimately keep their ministry of training young Indian Christians going.
We arrived and it looked like this. Just a trail of concrete with half done steels sticking out of it. We would have to put moulds over the steels, and pour concrete into them to create pillars. Some of the steels needed to be tied first. Then we would be able to start laying bricks in the gaps between the pillars.
Most of the time someone was working in the kitchen helping our cook leader, and someone was on prayer duty, or someone was sick, and we sometimes had only four team members on the worksite, but we stuck to our work constantly. We seemed to get a lot done quickly.
And then we learned -I re-learned, the art of laying bricks "Indian style". The method was not quite the same as the one we practiced every day of bootcamp, because we had different tools and a different kind of brick. This photo was taken shortly before we finished. We finished all the lower level concrete pillars of the wall, half of the upper level pillars, and layed four half sections and a quarter section of bricks. We didn't have enough time or people to finish the entire wall, but we got a good start on it. This wall needs to be eight feet high. Other people in India are finishing it now.
In break times and during our evening devotion sessions, and when they helped us with our work, we got to know the Indian BMW students. BMW stands for Bible, Missions, and Work. These girls and boys went through a Teen Missions summer programme just like ours; their teams travel within India rather than overseas, so they got to help their own people. And now they are studying
In our last week, we got to visit the WON church again. (My other team had worked with them for a week last time) We helped them to level out the rubble of a building they had demolished ready to build the foundations of a new church, and to move some firewood, and to straighten out fence posts and pull weeds. I was really excited to see that they are now running their orphanage out of the sight that we did a lot of work on last year.
We played games with these children and performed a puppet show play for them, telling them a shepherd story Jesus told. Then we gave them each of them some special presents, a pair of slip on shoes, and some writing books and pens, and a wordless bracelet or small gift. They seemed thrilled with their present.
We also visited the leprosy colony, where I had also worked last year. It was set up many years ago as a place to house those effected by the terrible skin disease, leprosy, away from society. Today, there are still a few people living there who have the scars and deformation of leprosy, but their children also live there. We were told this was a begging supported community. Teen Missions has been trying to build relationships with this community. The children performed a little song for us.
We spent a day in Hyderabad before we left, and met some of our awesome brothers and sisters in Christ there. It was really great fellowship. I will always remember the little music session we had in a corner of their church hall where they taught us a song in Telugu, and we jammed, in English, in Telugu, in Spanish, in Maori, and in some other languages, knowing God heard all of it the same.
We also got to do some last minute tourism, taking one last look around the country we had mysteriously fallen in love with along the way.
Following a long wait in Hyderabad airport as our flight was delayed, and trying to stay awake until boarding just before midnight, and a really uncomfortable nap on the plane, and a meal at about 2am, I found myself at Singapore airport trying to work out why everyone didn't look Indian. I was tired. Cut me some slack. We met up with the South Africa Teen Missions team, who were travelling back on the same flight to Australia. We spent five days in Tewantin, Australia, listening to more sermons and thinking about keeping our commitments and relationships with God once we returned home. This is one reason why Teen Missions is a unique experience that changes people.
I hope you enjoyed reading about this trip. Last year my post about my missions trip got more views than any other post on this blog, but I'd really like it if you look at some of my other posts. I'd love it even more if you followed my blog or left comments. But what would be even more wonderful is if you used the information on it to influence the things you buy. That could have a really lasting effect on other people.
