I'm humbled

to realize it is I, who needs India, not the other way around.

I like weekends

Ever since I have been working I don't think I have had a weekend that I thought flew by and wished was longer. Weekends are so perfect. There is enough time to relax, have fun, enjoy not working and get things done. This might be because I'm boring, but so far weekends are the best perk to the real world. I finished my 3 essays I had to write on three different books. All the books have been insightful and challenging. I'm actally still reading one of them and its the one that is specifically about Calcutta. There is a slum in the city where the poorest and most destitute people live. The area is called the City of Joy and this book details the stories and experiences of both westerners, christians and the indians who live in this slum. It has been the greatest wake up call to what I'm getting into. I feel like I will never survive what I'm getting into and at the same time I'm questioning how I am ever going to leave the people i meet. The new adjective I have decided to best describe the way the poor in India live and are treated is inhumane. It makes me thing of the death camps in Germany and the jews in the holocaust. The poor and ill in India aren't getting gased and slaughtered, but they are in some ways being exterminated, left to die. Despite all this, the message from the slums in joy. There is no way to grasp that. The Lord has challenged to believe for not just joy, but hope for those I meet.

The thing that drives me the most and terrifies me the most about India is that for the first time in my life there will be no satisfication, no peace, no joy, no compassion, no hope and no love in me except through the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. There will be no way to fake it, no way to rely on something else or turn to my own strength. I seriously mean nothing else, no other way, totally impossible. There is no humanly way for me to come away from India with any positive experience without fully relying on God and his promises. I will have nothing else and I'm getting the sense there will be nothing to live for except for eternity.