November 17th

While Friday, the 16th, was one of the longest/hardest days we have had in India, today was definitely one of the best days we have had here. Today we traveled to a small village to meet Akter and his family, especially his daughter, Pinki. You may recall the stories I have shared about her in the past. Through the generous contributions of one of our donors, she will be receiving consistent physical therapy that will help her to walk normally within the next year. We are so excited. And we were so excited to meet her. She is just an amazing young girl. She is only 8 years old. Her legs do not straighten all the way, so she struggles to walk more than a few yards at a time. When she does walk, all of the pressure rests on her ankles. It is very hard to even describe it. The most amazing thing about Pinki though is her smile. It is continuous. And it is contagious. She smiles all the time. That is rare here. Most people rarely smile. She smiles all the time. And of all the people we have spent any time with, she has the most reasons not to smile. She can hardly walk. She can’t play with the other kids. She can’t run or jump. To us, it is terribly sad. Yet she still has such joy and contentment. She was such a testimony to us. She was such an encouragement to us. It was so amazing to get to meet her. I wish I could share the light of her life with all of you more than just through this blog. You would love to get to know her.

And Akter’s whole family. They were so warm and welcoming. It was great. After meeting them all and spending some time with Pinki, we went and met the doctor, then we had lunch (which we amazingly stayed healthy after eating. Akter bought some guavas on the train on the way to his house. We saw the basket of them on the train. They were not something that we should be eating. And then at lunch, they fed us those same pieces of fruit. We prayed a lot and trusted God to keep us safe, and we ate them. God was good. He has been so good on this trip. He has kept us so healthy. We can’t thank Him enough for His goodness. We also can’t thank you enough for your prayers for us. Please keep them coming. We can see the results!), and then Akter led us the long way to the train station for our return trip. The walk was amazing. We saw the whole village. The people we saw today do not see very many white folks, that is for sure. When one would see us coming, they would run back inside the house and call the entire family to come stand in front of the house to gawk at us. It was entertaining. For them. Most would laugh at us. I’m not sure why. I guess we are funny looking. Some of the kids would cry. I guess we scared them. Looking in the mirror, I can see why. The main point of the walk was to get to the river. It was beautiful. We took a nice, leisurely stroll along the banks of a huge river. It was great. We also saw a warthog. Never really thought we’d see one of those. That was cool. This walk was just a great finish to our amazing time with Akter and his family.

The trip was such a blessing and encouragement for us. Akter kept going on about how honored and encouraged they all were to have us in their home, but really it was us that received the blessing. The humble lives of God’s workers provide such an amazing testimony to us. God truly is at work in this place. And we get to see it first hand. It is amazing.

Another amazing part of the day was the train ride home. See, in the morning, Akter rode the train an hour and twenty minutes to come pick us up and lead us to his home. What a gracious thing for him to do. He took almost three hours out of his day just getting us from Kolkata to his village. Amazing. But on the way home, we convinced him that he didn’t need to ride back with us. So he let us go on our own. It was interesting. There were so many people. The train consisted of a bunch of box cars with some seats in them. In our row of seats, which was two benches facing each other, there were 8 people sitting and 3 people standing. In the same space in the US, there is no way more than 5 or 6 people would even consider trying to fit into that space (okay, that is an exaggeration…the train ride really was just similar to riding the trolley from the Giants ballpark to the Bart Station immediately after the game ends). We really wanted to take pictures, but didn’t want to take the chance that someone might desire to have our camera. The best part of the trip home was trying to figure out where to get off. We were sitting on the wrong side of the train to see which station we were at. So we ended up mostly guessing about where to get off. We had a pretty good idea of what time we should arrive, so when the time arrived, we hopped off the train. Praise the Lord, it was the right stop. What an experience this was.

The whole day was just amazing. We really just can’t express how awesome this opportunity is for us. God has been showing us so many great things and teaching us so much about who He is and who He wants us to be. It is fun, exciting, and an amazing adventure. We are loving it!