Sights & Sounds of India

Well, we've now spent time in Chennai, Mumbai, and Nagpur. We've met a lot of people and experienced a slice of life here. We are bombarded with new visual images every day. It takes a while for Westerners like us to process all that we see here.

Sights I'd only ever seen on PBS or TLC I'm now seeing with my own eyes... abject poverty; trash strewn everywhere; people sleeping under bridges with rats and dogs crawling over them; posh five-star hotels located right next to little shantytowns where hollow-eyed people sit crouching all day under the shade of makeshift tents; cows wandering across busy streets; a dozen different and strange kinds of vehicles all occupying the same narrow roads, jockeying for position with horns beeping incessantly (all the time, day and night); children with no apparent supervision hanging on shaky wooden scaffolding rising four stories high, dogs wandering around everywhere, people urinating alongside the road ... it's all a bit overwhelming.

And then there's the sheer volume of people--that's overwhelming too. The main city streets are teeming at all hours with tens of thousands of dark-skinned Indian people--coming and going, sitting and crouching, walking and talking, riding and biking. On the streets of America people are in their cars so we peer at them through tinted glass. Here, relatively few own cars so you can actually watch people as they travel, including (surprising to me) many women young and old in bright-colored saris motoring along the road on bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and other interesting contraptions, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic (the traffic lines here appear to be only suggestions). It's been interesting to look into the eyes of these people. Some sparkle with the joy of God, but many, many appear empty, dead, and lifeless. It's been a constant reminder of the need for Christ in India and the important work HBI and others are doing here to reach more than a billion people with the Gospel of Jesus.

To me India is a study in contrast. For example, while riding to our ministry location yesterday here in Nagpur I was struck by the sight of a huge state-of-the-art domed stadium looming above the landscape ... right behind a trash-filled, dirty shantytown with animals and naked children running around. I find myself constantly thinking, "Why does it have to be this way?"

Of course the prevailing Hindu religion that permeates India contributes to some of these conditions, with it's fatalistic, deterministic, cyclical worldview. I don't know exactly how the virtue of compassion plays out between the castes in that Hindu system, but I do know that the work of Christian ministries here--including HBI, IJM, World Vision and others--is vitally important in helping address some of the injustices and oppression we see here.

All in all, it's been an incredible time for me. I've never experienced anything quite like it before, and there have been a number of 'firsts' for me on this trip (including sanitizing my silverware at each meal :). Joe and Steve have been absolutely awesome teammates and ministry co-laborers, and our Lord is using them to help train Indian believers in vital discipleship skills.

Thanks again for your interest and prayers sent up on our behalf. Soon we return to the comforts of the U.S. but hopefully the lessons learned and expanded vision we've acquired on this mission will stay with us forever.

SB