February 6, 2013

We make our plans, and it appears that both God and India laugh at them.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I had some plans I thought were pretty solid.  I was going to come here, get the testimonies of the boys, and put them together in a book.  I thought I had the necessary approvals from the right people and stuff.  However, this week the staff has asked me not to do this.  They have concerns about the fact that I’m a girl talking to the guys, and there are problems with even publishing the stories themselves.

They have instead asked me to teach the girls to write in English. 

This is a huge undertaking.  Most of them don’t speak English well.  They don’t use it around me.  I’m teaching this English class on grammar with a translator, and I just taught them what a conjunction is and how to make things past tense.  I have books, but I don’t have a curriculum for this.  I don’t have a way to call the US to get some help from my friends who are teachers.  I don’t even have access to the internet right now.  I didn’t prepare for this one.

But that’s what they need, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I don’t know how in the heck I’m going to do this.  Remember the movie Freedom Writers?  The movie is playing itself out here, in India: Sister Erin, teaching girls coming out of sex slavery to write their testimonies in English. 

Wait, stop . . . what?!

Good Lord . . . I just got goosebumps typing that.  That’s way better than my plans.  This is seriously good stuff here.

If I can pull this off . . . If I can help them make some progress in writing in the two months I’m here, Lord God Almighty, this could work.  Also, I may be useful in other ways.  There is a desire to have the girls express themselves more in art, music, and drama.  Um . . . hey, I can help with that too.

It’s not my plans, but Thank You Lord, this is bigger and better.  It will have many more lasting returns for these girls.  Heck, there might end up being a book that the girls wrote themselves: Setting Beautiful Free: Our Stories.

Whoa . . . hello, that’s so crazy it just might work.  And seriously, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.  This can totally happen.  Not in two months . . . but it could happen.  If God is with me, I can really do this.

Is this it?  Not the job, but the cause I have been waiting for since I graduated from college?

Keep praying guys, this is big.  Like, movie plotline big.  This can happen.

But right now, I somehow have to teach them what the heck the past participle is.

I have settled into life here pretty well.  My appetite is in a more usual place for me, but the aunties still insist that I’m not eating enough.  I have a feeling that they would be saying that no matter how much food I ate.  I have found the point where I’m comfortable and functioning well, so I’m sticking with it for my own self-preservation.  There are a few girls here that have taken it upon themselves (I would never ask them to do this) to come into our room and do whatever we need.  So far, they have helped us do our laundry (a huge help, you have no idea how infuriating it is to wring out and rinse a pair of jeans 6 times using a bucket, and somehow they still have soap in them) and they reorganize and clean our room.  The reorganizing thing is taking a little getting-used to.  I usually leave things within easy reach (often leading to a pile) but these girls have found places for everything.  However, I still can’t find my toenail clippers.  I’ve looked.  I have no idea where they put them. 

I’m actually spending quite a bit of time with the smaller boys, ages about 7 to probably 13 or so.  One night, I was in their house watching a Veggie Tales movie with them in the common room.  When the movie was over, the house leaders sent the boys to their bunks to get ready for dinner.  Akram was sitting on a couch across the room from me while the house leader had a chair in the other corner.  I picked up one of the dozen pillows they have in the room and pitched it Akram.  the house leader made a smart comment and I pitched another at him.  He took it and bopped the kid standing next to him in the chest as I took one upside the head from Akram.

I should have known what was going to happen.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what the end result of these actions would be until I was very much stuck in the middle of it.  Within 30 seconds, I had 24 boys running into the room, tossing pillows everywhere.  I was getting pummeled from all sides because I was still in the middle of the room.  I kept watching to see if the leaders would get angry with the pandemonium, but they were lobbing pillows past me at the guys coming into the building to see what in the world was going on.  There were no bystanders in this one.

Eventually, the leaders broke it up when they yelled for the boys to line up for dinner.  Akram and I started putting the pillows back in their cases.  He had a huge grin on his face.  I said, “Come on now, you guys have never done that before?”  “Not like that,” he said, “We usually stop them, not join them.”  I cracked up.  “You guys probably don’t start them either!”

The next night, I finished teaching a Bible study on Romans for the older guys and went next door to say hi to my little guys that had just gotten home from school a half an hour before.  The little guys leave at around 10:30 and get back at around 7.  When I walked in, the house leader was making a show out of wanting to do something important looking on the computer.  All the boys packed around him, asking him silly questions just because they wanted to be near him.  He acted like they were annoying him, but they all knew that they were welcome.  I pulled out my music player and went looking for something to distract them when I got another bright idea.  I asked the little guy standing next to me if he knew this song, turning on Gangnam Style.  He threw back his head and yelled, “OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE!”

Once again, I was right in the middle of it.  All the boys came running back into the room.  This time, I was ready with my video camera.  I then proceeded to get the funniest footage I have ever had the privilege of shooting.  All these boys not only knew the dance, but were experts at it.  They danced and flailed around the room, laughing at each other.  The house leaders stood by with huge grins on their faces, watching me laugh so hard I couldn’t hold the camera straight. The guys from outside came wandering in the front door, laughing at the chaos.  Kartik stood by the front door and gave me a look that said, “Causing trouble again?”

This is why I love being here.  I love teaching and helping the kids . . . and shaking things up a little too.

My Bible Study with the aunties is going really well too.  Yesterday, we were reading Romans 5 where it talks about God producing perseverance, character and hope in us.  I asked a question: when was a time when God strengthened you and gave you hope?

Sometimes you can forget where you are.  Sometimes, I am so at home here that I forget that I’m at a Teen Challenge facility.  Heck, sometimes I kind of forget that I’m in India.  I apparently was guilty of all of those at once, because somehow I had forgotten that this is Ashagram.  It’s a residential facility for people coming out of the red-light districts and drug addictions.  I guess I was expecting the answers I would usually get in the States when I asked this question: answers of “I prayed for my aunt and she got saved” or “I was feeling really bad about my life and God helped me through it.”  These are really awesome things, and they are important.

But this is not what I got.

Instead, I got: “I grew up really poor, living on the streets.  My family married me off young to an older man.  My husband used to do drugs and he would beat me and my son.  So, we ran away.  We met a man I thought would help us, but I was sold and made to do ‘the work’ (yes, they do mean that).  My son had to live there with me, and it was very bad.  Then, a staff member from BTC found us and brought me and my son here.  God gave us hope because he brought us out of a bad place.” 

That shut me up.  After hearing that, I was pretty much in tears.  How in the world can I live a life of more than enough in the US when things like this are going on?  I’m not even talking about feeling guilty . . . I’m talking about helping to make it stop. I can’t go back and step back into my old life, pretending that this isn’t going on, or that it’s happening far away to some people I’ll never know.  I know this is happening now, and to whom much is given, much is required.  I have a ridiculous, embarrassing amount of blessing.  I now know where that ‘much is required’ is supposed to go. 

Then, I asked her who her son is.

Her son is one of my little guys. 

He is one of the small boys dancing in the Gangnam Style clip I shot.  I played Go Fish with him yesterday afternoon.  He’s not like a compassion child I write letters to or something . . . I’m going to go play with him again in a few hours.

This is where this ministry makes the jump from ‘helping those poor and needy people over there’ to ‘going to hang out with my friends’.

I pray I get to stay on the ‘hanging out with my friends’ side.  I don’t want to see them as ‘people over there.’  I want to be here.  Right where they are.  Even if all I do is play Go Fish with them.  I’m not a ‘support sender’.  I’m the person you send . . . with overweight bags.

God, please let me be useful.  Somehow.  I don’t really care how.  I have had so much good in my life  . . . just let me do some good here.

Seriously, I can’t live the same life I had in the US anymore.  I’m feeling this on a very deep level.

I don’t know what to do about that yet.  But something’s going to have to change here.

This week, we were visited by the couple that head up the education department.  They are very much British . . . pretty much everything you can think of that would be “British”, they were.  They called called our particularly mangy and dubious dog Tiger a “detestable animal”.  Every morning at breakfast, it was “Good morning, Erin.  So nice to see you this morning, I trust you slept well?” They asked for chai without sugar and jam for their rolls. I thought about asking them if the rest of Doctor Who season 7 has started airing yet, but I figured that they might not be as obsessed with that show as I am.  They were very proper and scheduled.   And, they were amazingly good at up with great ideas for the education department.

Praise God, they showed up the same week they asked me to teach written English to Hindi-speaking girls.  I was feeling pretty adrift in attempting to figure out and then simplify the rules for when you need to use helper verbs.  They told me that there were English chapter books that the girls could be reading in the library on the boys’ side.  I would have never known they were there.  They also offered a lot of suggestions for teaching that seemed like should have been second nature for me . . . if I wasn’t so hard pressed to figure this one out with my own resources.  I now feel quite a bit more equipped for this and not so stretched thin.  I have a few more methods in my arsenal. 

Our hyper chai-chugging friend has been insisting for the last several days that we must not leave the dining hall without him after dinner when it’s dark.  I never really knew why this was . . . the path is usually lighted when he’s not fiddling with the power.  I never turn him down though; I figured there was some reason for his insistence.  Today, I saw what that reason is.

We were walking back from the dining hall at around 8:45 or so.  An auntie was walking a few feet in front of me.  I had my flashlight on, and thank God I did . . . because a red scorpion the size of my hand was on the path, and had somehow walked on right between the auntie and me.

I’m usually pretty cool with bugs . . . but this was like a Jurassic Park-sized scorpion of doom.

I didn’t freak out or anything, but I just stopped dead in my tracks.  I was just staring at the single biggest and most deadly bug I have ever seen, painfully aware that there was no glass between us.  Our snake killing superhero swooped in, took off his shoe and pounded the scorpion with it.  I was wondering if his shoe was big enough.  Apparently, it wasn’t because he spent the next few nerve-wracking minutes looking for the stinger.  He eventually found it in the top of his shoe.

Yeah . . . I never walk anywhere by myself at night anymore.  After that, he doesn’t let me anyway,

The staff on the girls' side have figured out that I like jewelry and Indian clothing.  They get jewelry and clothes at a wholesale price and sell them for a fair market price, with the money going to BTC.  These women are funneling me rings, necklaces, earrings and saris.  And believe me, they’re gorgeous.  I now have this black sari that is amazing . . . with jewelry to match.

I went to ‘vocational’ (where the girls sew and make jewelry) and asked for a few of the long shirt-things, called kurtas.  They took my measurements so these would be made to fit me exactly.  I’ve been getting them back this week, and they totally rock.  Between these and my MC Hammer non-lame pants, I’m totally set.  The girls also braid my hair and stick the flower pins I have in it.   They have given me a nickname: Fulmaya, meaning Flower Love.  I’ll take that.

I finally feel like I’ve hit my stride here.  I have a role that is helpful and needed.  I hang out with the girls and have a good time.  I have work to do, but not so much that I don’t have time to do actual ministry or do my own writing.  And bonus: they actually really like me here.  They want me around.

Shocker: I’m totally digging this place.

 . . . so much so that I've been telling the staff that if they needed me to stay on and teach English on a more permanent basis for a few years, that I am in a position in life where I could do that.

Yeah, that just happened.  Are you really all that surprised?