My trip to India was more than just a trip. It was a journey, the fulfillment of a dream. I wanted to go to this country ever since I was a little girl! I did research projects on India, looked at pictures from India, and tried to find anyone that knew something about India to talk with. Because I was so young when I became passionate about India and the people there, I had to wait a before I could actually live out my dream of going there. It was hard; sometimes I really just wanted to quit school and leave the country, but I knew that was not an option, so I waited.
After high school graduation I kept waiting for some opportunity to come up that would be my ticket to India. I pursued different options, but nothing seemed quite right, so I ended up going to a Bible school for fourteen weeks. After that was over I was very anxious to get over to India. Several things that had happened in my life gave me an even bigger desire to go. So I frantically started looking for anyway to get over to India. Then I found it, Adventures in Missions. They were doing a three-month trip to Goa, India. The focus of the trip was to reach out to teenage girls and teach them a trade so they would not have to go into prostitution to help support their families. I was very excited about this trip. I was accompanied by five other girls and in September 2010, we got on a silver plane, flew across the ocean, and landed in India.
The smell was the first thing I remember. The stench was almost overwhelming, but I was determined I wasn’t going to complain or even mention it because I just wanted to embrace as much as possible. The reality of finally being in India was overwhelming! Sometimes I still have to remind myself that it was not a dream.
My first day out on the street was a little overwhelming. My team and I were on our own for the first couple of days due to transportation mix up, so we decided to do some shopping. The streets were filthy! I remember wanting to look up and see all there was to see, but having to constantly look at my feet to avoid stepping in animal poop, or trash or whatever else was lying on the street. My first journal entry about being out on the streets of India went like this: “I love India. The jammed taxi ride, the youth hostel, the cold shower, the squatty potty, the lack of toilet paper, and the beds that possibly had bed bugs was all made my first night in India a memorable experience…. In India there’s traffic wherever you go so you just have to be careful and not get hit by a motorbike or car or bus or truck, etc. But the motorists let you know they’re coming by using their horn quite frequently! So just imagine the noise! Wherever you walk there are people, dogs, garbage, cows, rats, bugs, etc. At first it was all quite intimidating but once you’re around it for a day it begins to become a little more familiar and a little less foreign. Wherever we went today people stared and stared. That was also something to get used to.”
I was surprised at how dirty of a place India was. But I soon realized that India also has a lot of beauty as well. Riding fourteen hours on a bus let me see all sorts of different scenery. The farmland was beautiful and the hills and the trees were breathtaking. The cities were captivating. There was always so much to see. The women in beautiful saris, all in brilliant colors, the fruit and vegetable stands that lined the streets, the cows, the dogs, and the children laughing and playing all painted such a beautiful picture! But there is so much hurt that lingers in that country.
When we finally got to Goa, India we met with eight girls, five days a week. We were there to build relationships with them and tell them about Jesus and what He has done and is doing in our lives. It was a slow start but after some time they started opening up to us and treating us a people, not as a foreign white person. On the outside these girls looked like they were having a good life. Sure they were poor and had to work hard, but they also showed us that they knew how to have fun as well. But we wanted to go deeper with them. We wanted to know how they were really feeling. We found out just how miserable these girls were when one came to sewing class one afternoon and after some interpretation we found out that she had tried to commit suicide that morning. When she shared that some of the other girls also told how they too had tried to end their lives. India has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Before I went to India that was just a statistic to me, but when I met these girls it became personal. I wanted to so badly make everything better for them. I wanted to be able to convince them that a relationship with Jesus Christ would give them joy and peace beyond what they could imagine, but I knew they had to come to know this for themselves. Because we working with girls who had very limited English, and we couldn’t even begin to speak their language, it made it more difficult to tell them about Jesus, but we worked through interpreters and learned how to communicate on our own as well.
We were able to build relationships with these beautiful girls in the three months that we were there, which made leaving so much harder! I’m not sure if it was harder on them or us when we left. Those girls left a huge impact on my life; to see the emptiness in their lives breaks my heart. They have so much to offer, but they don’t think they are worth anything. They don’t know that they are beautiful. They don’t know that they can experience joy and peace beyond understanding. They don’t know that there is a Father that loves them more than anyone ever has or ever will, unless we tell them. This is why I am so excited about Gospel Outreach for Asia! Not everyone can personally go to India and tell the people there about Jesus, but right here is an opportunity to tell people all over the Asian continent about Jesus. To let them know that there is hope!
-Rolanda Beachy
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