The Final Entry (at least from India)

Well our Indian travels are over at last. We have trained, planed, and automobiled (not to mention autorickshawed) over only a small portion of this enormous country, but we are ready to return home. The last week especially was basically constant travel broken by brief visits to more project sites. On Saturday, we spent the day with Pastor Sugamar, an acquaintance of my dad's who lives and ministers in Chennai. He took us around to see a day care that he runs for poor children, to a tsunami affected beach and to his church in a rural village. The daycare was SO cute. We stopped on the way and bought some Indian sweets to give to the kids. Sugamar said that the government gives them 2 rupees to buy food for each child each day. That's 5 cents. He said that doesn't buy nutritious food, surprise surprise. They try to make sure the kids get some vegetables and at least one egg a week since they probably don't get much of anything at home. One thing that has struck me over and over here is the almost total ignorance of parents on how to care for their children. We are so often overwhelmed by scientific advice on childcare that we tend to try to block it out and filter it, but most of the information for parents over here is superstitious rather than scientific. In some areas, up to 40% of children die of diarrhea simply because their parents don't know what to do about it. (Sugamar was also telling us that the parents don't follow basic sanitary practices and are often the cause of their children's sickness. His own daughter almost died as a baby because they couldn't get her nanny to wash her hands after using the restroom. (remember, no toilet paper here))

Being at a beach that had been affected by the big tsunami a couple years back was a little surreal. We got to meet some fishermen whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed by a huge wave. You could tell that the government and different groups like World Vision and Sugamar's church had helped out, but it was still extreme poverty. The nets they were given a couple years ago are wearing out and they don't have the money to buy more. I guess they cost $150 each (they're really big) and are shared by the village.

We also visited their church that night and had many more children perform songs and dances for us (this was a constant on our trip and quite a highlight) and handed out more sweets. It was neat to see how many children from the village came to the church that Sugamar built. Their parents are mostly Hindu, but they let them come to church and the opportunity to learn about Jesus. The church also does a lot in the community such as building a clinic and providing nutritious food to the kids.

Sugamar is one of a kind. He is shameless when it comes to asking for money, but that's probably necessary when the needs are so great compared to the response. He himself is by training an attorney and his wife was a nurse in Saudi Arabia, both high paying jobs, but they left those careers to minister to poor villagers near their hometown. I really enjoyed meeting them and their family. (I must point out that Sugamar is quite taken with Ronnie. He called him a “simple man” over and over, which as near as I can tell, is the highest compliment he pays. He was talking about the fact that Ronnie didn't need fancy clothes or a fancy office to be a minister. He told the church about it while we were there and said it was a lesson for all of them.)

We took a train over to Visakhapatnam and then a car over to Vizianagaram to the World Vision project supported by FOCUS. Now I must say that World Vision was, by far, the best organized, highest impact organization we've seen. And it should be. In size it completely dwarfs these other groups. They have ongoing projects in 150 districts in India alone, not to mention other special projects. In Vizianagaram, their work has been nothing short of transformational (or transformative, whichever is actually a word). They've been there for 10 years and around 2000 children have sponsors. They said they only have sponsors visit about once each year, so they really rolled out the red carpet for us. Since we could only come on a Sunday, the entire staff came in on their day off and they organized a big gathering of people, bringing around 200 children to see us. They had big painted welcome signs and everything. We were “Brad Davis and Team.” Joe and I were just Brad's team, so we made him do all the public speaking. Then we pulled aside the 17 kids we came to visit (FOCUS actually sponsors 22, but we couldn't get 5 slackers to get us their kids' names in time) and got to meet them one by one. And by one at a time I mean we were surrounded at all times by a throng of loud people, both adults and children. So we tried to video interview the kids, but they were so quiet and shy compared to all the people whom we had no interest in videoing, that I'm not sure we can hear a single one of them.

Solomon, the man that heads up the project, was awesome to talk to. He has a passion for Christ's mission and has given his life to the poor in India. He was telling us about his first job for World Vision, making $15 a month, sleeping on a hillside with poor people and helping them build roads or some such. He didn't really say, but I gathered that he makes closer to $70 a month now that he has a wife a two children, one in college. It's great to know him because we can work directly with him to support specific projects in that community. He's very pro-education and wants to put 10 computers in each of the region's 10 high schools.

Overall, I must say that the need in India is staggering. Everywhere we looked for the whole month there were new and bigger needs. You could send $100 million and it would be just a drop in the bucket, affecting only a tiny fraction of the massive population. But it's exciting to see how many people are making a difference in their own spheres, in their own small way. And it's exciting to know that we can make a difference from across the world, with just a few dollars. The needs are gigantic and can't be met in a day or a week or a year, but they are slowly being addressed and individual communities are being transformed. Huge organizations like World Vision are doing huge things, but men like Sugamar and Mark Templer and others we've met are filling in the cracks—going to out of the way places and out of the way people. They aren't yet as efficient and effective as a huge worldwide charity like World Vision with decades of experience, but they are learning lessons as they go, staying faithful to their calling.

I think that many of us don't want to do anything unless we can do the biggest thing. We pass over helping one person because we can't impact them all. But the needs in this world are too great and too specific for the big names to meet them all. So much of that is our pride. We want to be the big name, the one everyone recognizes as having made a difference. But God doesn't have that in store for most of us. Most of us can't handle that kind of fame :-). I think He wants us to be faithful in little, and then He might give us more. India will probably never hear of Ronnie Worsham, but we heard some Indians bless his name this week for his generosity. It reminds me that Jesus said, “Use wordly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16). I guess I would encourage us to be content with the roles God has given us and faithful with the opportunities He puts before us. Seek His glory instead of your own and He will ensure that your life leaves a permanent positive footprint in this world.

One interesting note: Two nights ago, I randomly dreamed of Hill-Denton, for those of you who know who that is. We were climbing vines over muddy water in some sort of swamp/jungle place, but she was still immaculately dressed with purple low-heel dress shoes on. Ah, she never changes. So I've decided I must find her and get in touch once again. It's been too many years.

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog and responding and making this a richer experience for me. It's been incredible and enlightening, but now I'm totally ready to come home. Joe and I have been singing patriotic songs for days.