I started out my time there working in the hills of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Well, everybody else called them hills, but they sure looked like mountains to my Louisiana eyes!

My days were filled with walking back and forth between my hut and the school / group home that hosted about sixty tribal kids. These children either lived too far away to walk to school every day, were from extremely poor families, or they had no families at all.

I guess I was like some kind of houseparent for them. They liked to think of me more as a brother, which made things sticky when I had to crack down on them when they needed some discipline. My job description included everything from leading the devotion time to bathing them to playing games to taking them out and having some intense bonding time when they needed to be told off for something---in other words, disciplining them. (I never got very good at that!) I really loved the kids and we had amazing times together during my three months with them.    Watching those kids and hearing their stories brought so many things to life that I’d never seen so close up before---like the demonic realm, persecution, and miracles. I wish that I could have brought each one of them back (one at a time, of course). I would have gotten them to tell their stories and share the wisdom that they’ve gained over their few years of living with families who persecute them in a place that’s against them and being truly desperate to hang on to the only One Whose love is the one reason that they’re still standing.

After three sweet months there with those little ones and after some pretty sappy goodbyes and lots of tears and runny noses, I set off to backpack around India with a friend who’d also been living there with me since January. I guess we didn’t think about it so much at the time, but now I can see that we’ve got only God to thank that we’re not still standing with all our worldly possessions on our backs in some far out train station somewhere in the middle of somewhere we had no clue about. (God and my grandma’s fervent prayers which were fired up all the more by every hair-raising story that I surely told her.) But with Him at our side, we managed to see India from top to bottom and from sea to shining sea.     

Starting all the way down south, we worked our way up to the very northern tip at the border with China where we saw the Himalayas which dwarf the Rockies. When I saw the Rockies a long time ago I was convinced that they must be the biggest things in the world.

Lastly, we spent a few days at the Arabian Sea basking in the sun and zooming around the countryside on little scooters we’d rented. [One small interjection---one thing I’ve been very thankful for about being in India for four months is the tan I came home with. So if we bump into each other on the street, be sure to mention it as it was hard work to attain and cost me many sleepless nights as my body burned with invisible fires!]

And finally, we made our way across to the eastern coastal city of Chennai where I flew out and landed eighteen hours later, the happiest man in Timisoara, Romania. It’s good to be home.

That’s a big lesson that God has taught me since coming home. Maybe we’ll never see it or realize it until we get home up in the skies, but if we live life--even an ordinary life--holding His hand and following His call, He’ll make an amazing work of art out of our lives that will shine for Him. People will look at it and know that only an awesome God could paint something so beautiful.