As we rode back to our flat for the final time yesterday evening, I couldn't help but marvel at all we experienced in just one day. We visited the school and got to go into several classrooms to meet the kids. They are all so excited to meet us. I wonder if they know how excited we are to meet them too. Several classes sang us a song when we came to their classrooms..."If you're happy and you know it..." "Light of the world"...so much fun to be able to sing with them! I can't wait to spend more time with them and get to know individual kids. They are all completely precious, clearly brilliant, and beautiful. The school itself is incredible. It's huge...and state of the art, really. The school has soooo much potential, but right now it's just not being used to it's capacity.
We had the opportunity to hear from the woman who started the school, Ananthi. She shared the story of how it all began with one little boy from the slums coming to her home asking for food. She fed him on a regular basis and then began to teach him a 1/2 hour a day. Soon he brought 25 friends with him. The Lord led Ananthi to teach them all, starting in her garage, and then moving to a toilet complex (yes, you read that right), and eventually seeing Him provide this big, amazing school. I was in awe of her thankfulness to Him, even for the facility that was flithy and rank with the smells you'd expect from a toilet complex. As we toured the school, she just kept saying, "This is a great gift from the Father. It's completely a gift from Him." What an inspiring woman!
In the afternoon, we went to a slum where we had the opportunity to meet a few families of children from the school and pray for them. I've
never been so happy to be somewhere so miserable. The temperature outside has been about 110 degrees, give or take, but that goes up by a good 15-20 degrees inside these tiny homes...literally every inch of my skin was soaked with sweat within 3 seconds upon entering one of these homes. But I have to tell you that the privelege of being invited into people's homes to hear about their lives and to pray with them, was completely worth it. In a place so impoverished, with such an obvious presence of pain, and injustice, I saw an incredible representation of faith in those homes. One little girl in particular, Dolsi (not sure on the spelling there), left me with the greatest impression...I first noticed her when we were in the first home praying. She was standing on the bed, in her dirty, blue dress with white polka-dots, her half-inch long hair soaked with sweat. As one of my teammates prayed (in English) for the family in this home, Dolsi stood with her eyes closed, a smile on her face, and her little hands cupped toward heaven. She even chimed in a couple times, “Yes!” I don’t believe she knows much more English than “hello” and “bye bye,” but she knew the Father we were praying too, it seemed. The next house was Dolsi’s house, where she lives with her grandmother, her aunt, and her cousins. Dolsi has no parents – both have passed away – and her grandmother has the sole responsibility of providing for her. When we went into this home, her grandmother did most of the talking at first. But then, the interpreter told us that Dolsi had a testimony. She proceeded to tell us (in Hindi, with an interpreter) her testimony of how she came to know the Him and trust in him fully. I can truly tell you that I’ve never seen a child who was so clearly full of the Spirit. This is not the faith of her parents, just passed down – something she inherited like a recessive gene – she has no parents. This was a genuine knowledge of the Fathe. And he has given her a joy that I rarely see on the face of an American child. It’s hard to describe what I saw in this little girl. But what I can tell you is that it was real. I've never seen so apparently the Spirit in a child. It wasn't like "child-like faith" - it was like adult faith in a child. I'll not soon forget this little girl.
(Thanks to Jackie Sue for her technical assistance in getting my picture to show at the bottom of this posting. :))
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