Making a Difference in the Life of Another

There is so much to write about- I'm having a hard time wondering where to start.  I could write a novel about all that we have seen and learned these last 3 weeks.  Our time in India have profoundly impacted our family.  We have seen more abject poverty than you could ever imagine.  I am so grateful for the feelings of compassion and genuine love for others that has taken hold of our hearts.  All of a sudden our lives and our needs do not matter anymore.  I feel like I have woken up and been enlightened to a kind of life that other people have been living,  but I didn't know really existed.  It is a life that is focused on caring for the needy in whatever small or large way they can.
Being on this trip we have crossed paths with some of the most selfless souls on earth.  They use what they have to make a difference in the lives of those in poverty.  Melvin J. Ballard said, "Unless we lose ourselves in the service of others there is little purpose in our own lives."  Here is one example...

Wendy, mother of 5, for the past 10 years has helped impoverished women in the Philippines make jewelry.  She then sells it all over the world for them.  She started another one in Thailand and now in India at one of the Leper Colonies.  Her foundation is called "Pearls with a Purpose." She is so inspiring to me.  She is just like you and me.  She had no special degree or connections.  She just started from a couple of emails and it has led to a foundation of hope for women.  If you need a mother's day gift, or a birthday gift, this is the best thing to spend your money on.  They are beautiful, well made, and most importantly you are supporting a great cause.  To order go to www.PearlsWithaPurpose.org
Last night I brought my computer into my "family house."  There are 200 children here and they are split up into families for their rooms and where they sleep.  The 25 girls in my family all call me mom and they are so dear to my heart.  We spend every evening together and I try to show them pictures of the different colonies I go to during the day so they can see pictures of their families.  Last night I was showing them pictures of these women and one of the girls eyes got bright and she yelled, "That's my mom!"  So Wendy, thank you for giving my "daughter's" mother a skill that is affecting generations!
          

Would you like to hear another story? One of my favorite parts of this trip is hearing the stories of the people.  I love hearing about their lives and their families.  The lady in the above picture with the pink and green Sari on is one of the fortunate ladies to make the jewelry.  Wendy started out with about 50 women who were making the necklaces and bracelets, but she could not get them all sold.  So, she had to let some of the women go.  She watched them and picked the ones who understood what to do and were good workers.  This lady in the pink and green was slower than the rest of the girls and so Wendy was going to let her go with the others.  One of the other girls there told her the reason she was slow was because she was deaf.  The deaf lady said, "When you talk you are not looking straight at me, so I don't know what I am supposed to do."  This lady had 2 children and a husband that made 100 RS a week-that is $2.  She really needed the money and after hearing this Wendy was not about to let her go.  I'm not sure of the timing of this but, soon there after when they were making jewelry an elderly lady came up to Wendy with 2 small children.  She kept saying something over and over again to her but Wendy did not know what she was saying.  Someone translated for Wendy and told her that this elderly lady had traveled 6 hours by bus to come and thank her for giving her deaf daughter a way to make money for their family.  She thanked her over and over again and told Wendy she was a miracle in their life.  Wendy buys every necklace from them and then hopes to sell them abroad.  She has helped countless women be raised out of destitution.  The deaf lady told Wendy that she is saving as much money as she can to get her family out of a grass hut and into a cement home.  I.Love.Wendy.


One more inspiring story.  At this same Leper Colony (it is one of the bigger communities) a man from Austria noticed that these lepers had NOTHING to do all day.  He was an artist.  He came back and set up an art school and taught them how to paint.  It was a very optimistic thing to try because most lepers have no fingers and no feeling in their hands.  But look what he has done...

These are the artists that my children chose artwork from to hang in their room as a reminder of what they have learned and felt here.  I love that one man came here, taught them how to paint, and has given them something to bring them joy in their life.  They make money and they have something to fill their day.  Incredible right?  Those are just 2 of the examples we have seen on our trip of people taking the starfish analogy to heart!

But amidst this joy, was something that literally stopped me in my tracks and I couldn't do anything but just stare.  I was in disbelief and my heart dropped.  I had an inner battle of what to do.  Do I pick her up and try to find her a place to rest?  Do I leave her there because she looks so fragile and I might hurt her?  Will she be upset if we try to move her? I wondered how on earth people could be walking all around her like it was no big deal--like it was normal for her to be lying there in the dirt moaning.  The thing is, it probably is normal.

Look at the ground in the above picture.

There are no words.  To see this elderly lady lying on the floor on an uneven surface with rocks and dirt under her was absolutely heart wrenching.  How does this happen to someone?  There is such surplus in the world.  We need to figure out better distribution of goods.  The doctor came over and helped her and cleaned up her wounds while we took care of the other patients.
I have so much more to write, but I'm feeling pretty sick to my stomach from the Malaria medication.  I better make a run for it!

Can one day really change a person?

     I write this post with complete reverence and humility.  It has taken me awhile to be able to write the feelings of my heart because I fear that what I felt last week will not be able to be portrayed in the right way. I want so badly for this experience to be as tangible and life changing for you as it was for our family.  It was a day in time that will forever be set apart from the rest.  It was a day where we were stripped of pride.  It was a day of complete, Christlike love for our fellow men.  It was a day that renewed our desire to bless others until the day we die.  It was a day of true heartache.  It was a day where anything materialistic dissolved into oblivion.  It was a day to remember.  It was a day at the Moot Leprosy Colony.
     When we loaded up in the bus for a 90 minute drive to the leper colony I had a little prayer in my heart that my children would be respectful and to able to feel calm.  We stepped out of the car after passing so many humble living circumstances with tender hearts...

So, with these scenes in our minds we walked off of the bus.  We unloaded the van and set up our medical stations.  Blood pressure, cutting off bandages, washing with antiseptic, cutting off dead tissue, wrapping wounds in bandages.

It is with no disrespect that I show these pictures, in fact it is with complete respect and reverence that I share these with you.  I am quite sure that even though it is a picture, you can feel what this colony felt like.  There was a sacredness and reverence there that I have only felt inside temple walls.  The Lord is close to these souls.  He spent His time with them while He was on earth, and I know it is no different now.  My children were...I don't even know the right word for it.  They were sweet, humbled, loving, sympathetic, and came away absolutely wondering why they have been so blessed in their life. Sweet little Charlotte kept saying, "How are you feeling?"  There was no turning away, there was no look of horror, there were no innocently hurtful words, there was no shying away.  They felt it.  They felt the light that was there.  I did not have to say a word.
      There was a man there named Jayraj.  Jayraj is our new family HERO.  He is a man with leprosy, shunned from society, living in a hut who exudes joy from every particle of his being.  He had my kids dancing, laughing, and experiencing a little bit of heaven.

Amazing.
Then there was this sweet lady-I was instantly drawn to her.

She walked with her two hands that had no fingers left and used her one remaining leg to move
 around.

She wanted no pity.  In her own way she was perfectly capable to get to where she needed to be.  Even with the pain, it was all just matter of fact to her.  Every time I sat with her, or one of my kids sat with her, she would rub our face with her hands.  You could feel the love behind her tender touch.  She would then kiss her hands and raise them up toward heaven thanking God.
I imagine you are wondering what it feels like to be the recipient of gratitude like that.  It melts your heart and makes you feel about 2 inches high all at the same time.  It makes you want to be better, to strive every day to be as pure and meek as she is.

 
I get tears in my eyes just remembering the feelings I had there as I write this.  I found out later how old this lady is.  I thought maybe in her 60's-70's.  How old do you think she is?
        She is 37 years old.  The leprosy progressed rapidly with her before they found her.  I think that is why I had such a pull towards her.  She is exactly my age.  Now I can see it. Now I can see passed the leprosy and see her youthful glow underneath her disease.  That is why she could move as she did.  I'm not sure when she contracted leprosy.  I'm not sure if she was ever married or had children of her own.  I'm not sure if her parents had leprosy.  But what I do know is that she was so grateful for someone to love and look after her.  I'll never know what it feels like to be an outcast, shunned from society and purposely forgotten.  I'll never know what it feels like to be pushed out of the elevator at the hospital because people don't want you near them (true story)-- and then be forced to climb 4 flights of stairs with the remaining limbs that you have to meet with a doctor that doesn't want to treat you either.  I won't ever know what it feels like to live in a community that is as big as my garage and never be able to leave.  What I do believe is that these are the children of God who have already earned their reward.  When you suffer like these people do, and you still raise your hands towards heaven in gratitude to God, you have made it.  If all of us with our cushioned lives could only be so good.  We would feel so much happier in our lives as well.  The little, and I do mean little, annoyances or difficulties in life that we have would never even be thought of.  We now refer to certain complaints or problems as "first world problems"in our family.  We are joking, but not really.
        At some point in your life if you find a way to get out of America, take advantage of it.  You just can not imagine the poverty in most of the world unless you witness it with your own eyes.  It is absolutely life changing. 
     A perfect example of this is my 15 year old son Samuel.  Samuel is a typical boy in many ways, but also well beyond his years in other ways.  He felt a strong connection to this man.

He had little velcro shoes on his hands that he used to help push him around as he sat on a piece of wood with wheels on the bottom.  It was very hard for Sam to see this.  It really bothered him that this man was suffering so much.  We all gathered together to take a picture when we were finished with the medical procedures. 

 Sam noticed this man was not there and he went to find him.   He saw him sitting alone in his room.

 Sam went in to sit with him for awhile.  He was making some sort of porridge for lunch.  

 He motioned to see if Sam wanted to eat with him.  Sam said yes.  He took a bite and said "Yummy!" really loud and the man grinned from ear to ear.  He was so happy that Sam was eating with him and liked his food.  Matt told Sam afterward that he did something that day that he did not know if he could have done himself.  It was such a tender moment when we heard Sam did this not knowing how old the food was, if there were bugs in it, (we have had rice with maggots in it), or what it even was.  He didn't even think about it, he just did it.  Those are the kind of innate reactions that I have so hoped  to instill in my children-- caring for others with no thought of themselves. 

Sam loved this man.  He was showing a natural charity that I think even surprised him.  It was a solemn, but happy day for all of us as we were taught the most important lessons in life in the middle of a leper colony in India.
We said our goodbyes and got in the van and started the 90 minute drive home.  It was a lot of time to be still and think about what we had just been a part of.  I looked over at Brandon to see tears streaming down his face.  He would wipe them away as he stared out the window, but more would just follow.  Samuel had his head down most of the trip home.  He was feeling the same things that Brandon was and tears started to flow.

I think this day had the biggest impact on Samuel.  He told us that night as we gathered together before bed that he felt so badly when they kept thanking him.  He said he thought to himself, "Thanking me for what? For helping you because you have no legs and can't walk?"  He said that when they thanked him he felt so guilty.  He thought of how he would complain to himself about things in his own life that did not matter.  Things like not having a pair the newest headphones or not getting another sandwich because they were all eaten, or having to work so much, or whatever.  He said that his whole perspective on life has changed, and that he has changed as a person. Things that he thought were a big deal before, now have no appeal.  He said that on the car ride home he promised God that if he ever made money in his life he would use it to help all these people who are suffering.  It has been so interesting because ever since this experience Matt and I have not had to tell him once to study or do his homework.  He said he feels very motivated to get good grades so he can help others.  Melt. My. Heart.
        Needless to say, we will treasure that experience always.  I hope these feelings last and that we will not forget our experience there as time goes on.  We go back to a different colony for the next two days.  One of them has over 100 people to take care of.
        The Cleggs (the family we are traveling with) went to a different colony on Monday.  One of the men there had ulcers so bad that maggots actually fell out when they took the bandages off.  Sandra said she just sat there and cried with him as she cleaned it out.  He was raising his hands toward God for strength to endure the pain.  Leprosy affects the nerves.  For some it deadens the nerves and for others it makes them hypersensitive.  This poor man was in great pain.

My heart just aches for him.  Can you see the maggots coming out of his ulcer? 

Can you imagine walking home on a foot that was infected like that?  But, there he goes, carrying his burdens with such grace.  So much to learn from people who have so little...