Our construction of the 3 small homes continues this week. The 'neighborhood' children are funny little beggars. When we bring in chocolate there is a feeding frenzy - even some of the adults get involved and demand a piece, not caring if the kids get one or not. Each day a treat cart selling ice cream or sno-cones rolls down the dirt road and the kids turn their most pitiful begging faces to Brenda.
We do have a few favorites of all the kids in the area. Our first favorite has earned the nickname 'Benjamin Button' for the most unfortunate reason. She looks like an old man; she is really the oddest looking child. Her hair is patchy and wiry, sticking out in random patches and she's bald in others. She stares at everyone with incredible intensity, unless she is offered chocolate, and then the whole world fades away and nothing exists but her, her candy and the copious amounts of drool gushing out of either sides of her mouth. She sort of appears phantom-like once in a while and we all stop and stare, waiting for her to do or say something that might explain her oddness.
We aren't sure what the name is of the other girl who has caused so much uproar among our team. The first day we were working there we saw this 4 year-old leaning nonchalantly on a house - cool as James Dean - picking her teeth with a dirty safety pin. When we panicked and led her to her mother, the woman simply snatched the safety pin from little Disaster Waiting and set about picking her own teeth with it. Yesterday the child was observing our work from a precarious position on top of the large pile of gravel and using an old rusty nail to clean our her ears. Once again, she was placed in the care of her mother who took the nail away and waited until we were out of sight to presumably start cleaning her own ears out with it.
Today, Disaster Waiting was in fine form with that same nail. Brandon watched as she squeezed out a fat white slab of toothpaste onto the nail and vigorously began brushing her teeth with it. He couldn't help himself and yelled out, "NO!! Dangerous!!" and she jumped, startled, and flung the tube of toothpaste away from her in alarm - but kept on "brushing" with the nail.
These kids bring humor to a spot that wild be pretty bleak in their absence. These people are one step up from being on the street. Most of them make their money by begging. We don't dare bring clothes to them because we have seen them be brutal and selfish when we did venture to bring stuff as small as candy. We have to eat in the bus or there will be a stampede (they do have food though - they aren't starving) but some of them still linger around and ask for stuff. The first day we saw so many injuries that we have been bringing a first aid kit with us everyday and bandaging anyone the best we can. Open wounds are absolutely common. One woman had awful sores all over her chest. Today a boy had a gash in his foot and acted like our desire to clean and dress it was as frivolous as putting a sweater on a dog (no disrespect intended to the cozy and stylish puppies of the world). One man showed us a foot condition that was so serious that no one could stomach trying to bandage it. It wouldn't have done any good anyway - it would have been like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. When one of the guys helping us out fell off of the ladder, he cut his hand and then shrugged off our concerns. When we motioned that he should get a band aid, he shook his head, grabbed a fistful of dirt, ground it into the open cut, and continued working.
This method of dealing with injury is horribly inadequate. So many of the people that we talk to and pray for tell us about their various health problems, a brother with constant stomach pains, a son with headaches that won't go away. Taking care of one's body and having good health don't seem connected in their minds. Its tragic and hard to watch.
Without the moments when we can laugh at Benjamin Button's intense drooling and shake our heads at the enormous naked woman lathering up and bathing in front of our work site - without these moments off odd humor it would be too much. To see the injuries that need real medical attention, to spend hours carrying rocks, the blisters, the sunburns, the tar-covered feet would wear us out. If we didn't have the hilarity of situations like Brandon constantly being chased by women who want an American husband or son-in-law, the hopelessness might catch up with us and make us forget about the One who cares about these people more than we ever could. Thankfully, just when it seems like it might be too much to take, and someone on the team has stepped in a pile of poop, not for the first time, Mrs. Exhibitionist Bather motions to sit down and begins to clean the filth off our feet, and we can keep going for a while longer.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Saturday, Jan 16
Our team is encountering one of the biggest challenges we have faced yet. We have set out to build 3 small houses for the parents of certain children at HOGF. Our original intent was to create 20 or so make-shift, portable shelters for the families on the street, but God had something bigger in mind. These 3 homes are being built in a very lowly rural area. Each will consist of one main room, and an adjacnt shower area. They will have electricity and we have the money to buy a few rugs and a bed for each home. It may seem like an insignificant project - what's three houses compared with 20? But these buidings are sound and permanent. For the mothers who will inhabit them, who have spent years and years sleeping on the street, it is a dream-come-true. It took us 4 days to finish the first house. There was a huge learning curve however, and we think the next two will go much, much faster.
The small commiunity was excited and honored when we showed up. They made us a meal and brought us chai several times. They were continually taking the work right out of our hands, so hospitable and eager to help that we got frustrated from time to time because no one would let us work on our own project. We showed up one morning and the lumber for the frame had been already set in the ground and nailed together. It would have been awesome, but there wasn't a straight line to be found from one corner of the frame to another. The walls would have zig-zagged if we had left it as it was. We had to spend half of the day digging up the poles and re-setting them. We had to remind ourselves over and over that people are more important than projects and everytime they insisted that we take yet another break and let them work, we had to focus on loving the person in front of us and determine anew that the whole process was a gift to God, not just the end result.
After a day or two the novelty of our presence faded and work progressed much faster. One of the most necessary tasks has turned out to be one of the most time-consuming and monotonous. The community has a small plot of land in the middle of several large pastures. On the corner of their plot is a large pile of dirt and rocks. Bringing the gravel from the pile to the construction site is necessary to build the floor up and to make it level. Everyone on the team has been on gravel duty for stretches of time,but Brenda and Christi have had the 'pleasure' of carrying rocks for about 4 days now. We certainly didn't expect that our work here would progress one small pile of dirt at a time.
The small commiunity was excited and honored when we showed up. They made us a meal and brought us chai several times. They were continually taking the work right out of our hands, so hospitable and eager to help that we got frustrated from time to time because no one would let us work on our own project. We showed up one morning and the lumber for the frame had been already set in the ground and nailed together. It would have been awesome, but there wasn't a straight line to be found from one corner of the frame to another. The walls would have zig-zagged if we had left it as it was. We had to spend half of the day digging up the poles and re-setting them. We had to remind ourselves over and over that people are more important than projects and everytime they insisted that we take yet another break and let them work, we had to focus on loving the person in front of us and determine anew that the whole process was a gift to God, not just the end result.
After a day or two the novelty of our presence faded and work progressed much faster. One of the most necessary tasks has turned out to be one of the most time-consuming and monotonous. The community has a small plot of land in the middle of several large pastures. On the corner of their plot is a large pile of dirt and rocks. Bringing the gravel from the pile to the construction site is necessary to build the floor up and to make it level. Everyone on the team has been on gravel duty for stretches of time,but Brenda and Christi have had the 'pleasure' of carrying rocks for about 4 days now. We certainly didn't expect that our work here would progress one small pile of dirt at a time.
Monday, Jan 11
The streets of Pune seem like they couldn't hold another thing. Dogs are everywhere, no one's pet, eating out of the trash piles that burn unattended on the street and they're left alone for the most part, untroubling to the masses and untroubled by them. Goats and, less often, pigs, wander wherever they choose, eating out of a rare dumpster. Cows are slow and lazy, seeming to know that they have free run of the country; they lie in the middle of the road (an absolute DEATH wish for any other creature, including humans) and people steer around them and no one seems bothered.
The roads are lined with vendors selling shoes, veggies, coconut milk, groceries, fruit (most of which we don't dare eat). The first floor of most of the buildings is an open-air shop of some kind. The buildings are shoved in tightly next to each other, hardly even a small alleyway separating them for blocks, but the number of deserted buildings and abandoned building projects amazes. Hollow concrete buildings frames are more plentiful than one would ever guess considering the sheer masses of humanity here - and the number of them who live on the street. Occasionally you will see a family camped out in the shell of a never-finished apartment complex, usually with no more than an open air staircase and a ceiling to call home.
The litter on the streets is shocking. Everyone throws trash on the ground wherever they happen to be when a given thing turns from useful to undesirable. Everyone litters. Everyone. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers, banana peels, newspapers, etc. The conscientious burn their trash - including the plastic - and that smell of smoldering plastic will always be associated with India in our minds. We often carry handkerchiefs to cover our noses and mouths, since the smells can be horrific and overpowering. The girls use their dupatas (scarves).
The streets here in Pune are also full of rubble. The kind you would have seen in post WWII Berlin, maybe - shattered glass, building fragments broken piles of concrete - it all combines to give a war-torn and dilapidated appearance beneath the huge trees, so carefully preserved even in the city, beneath the bustling people, behind the droves of motorcycles and hordes of animals.
It is against this dismal backdrop that you will see one of the loveliest sights - the stunning women of India. Part of their beauty is certainly their clothing - bright colors, that in America we reserve for babies' toys and children's things, are preferred to the bleak greys and blacks that seems to make up the Western wardrobe. All the women have long hair and eyeliner is even common on little babies. Covered from their necks, down past their ankles, they swish along the dirty streets in colors that are wide awake; just another of India's fascinating and baffling contrasts.
The roads are lined with vendors selling shoes, veggies, coconut milk, groceries, fruit (most of which we don't dare eat). The first floor of most of the buildings is an open-air shop of some kind. The buildings are shoved in tightly next to each other, hardly even a small alleyway separating them for blocks, but the number of deserted buildings and abandoned building projects amazes. Hollow concrete buildings frames are more plentiful than one would ever guess considering the sheer masses of humanity here - and the number of them who live on the street. Occasionally you will see a family camped out in the shell of a never-finished apartment complex, usually with no more than an open air staircase and a ceiling to call home.
The litter on the streets is shocking. Everyone throws trash on the ground wherever they happen to be when a given thing turns from useful to undesirable. Everyone litters. Everyone. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers, banana peels, newspapers, etc. The conscientious burn their trash - including the plastic - and that smell of smoldering plastic will always be associated with India in our minds. We often carry handkerchiefs to cover our noses and mouths, since the smells can be horrific and overpowering. The girls use their dupatas (scarves).
The streets here in Pune are also full of rubble. The kind you would have seen in post WWII Berlin, maybe - shattered glass, building fragments broken piles of concrete - it all combines to give a war-torn and dilapidated appearance beneath the huge trees, so carefully preserved even in the city, beneath the bustling people, behind the droves of motorcycles and hordes of animals.
It is against this dismal backdrop that you will see one of the loveliest sights - the stunning women of India. Part of their beauty is certainly their clothing - bright colors, that in America we reserve for babies' toys and children's things, are preferred to the bleak greys and blacks that seems to make up the Western wardrobe. All the women have long hair and eyeliner is even common on little babies. Covered from their necks, down past their ankles, they swish along the dirty streets in colors that are wide awake; just another of India's fascinating and baffling contrasts.
Saturday, Jan 9
Friday we had a picnic on a mountain overlooking Pune. We brought PBJ's for a snack (they scoffed when we called it lunch) and Joy grilled chicken, pineapple, and some sort of sausage burgers for our real meal. Of course there was curry rice also - as with almost every meal, including breakfast. We took some of the kids on a hike and we could not believe how agile and tough even the tiniest ones were, making it all the way down the mountain and back up on their own. The boys all played cricket for a while and the young girls watched and jumped off of small rocks.
One of the girls, J, cut her hand while leaping from rock to rock, and the orphanage staff bandaged it. Another child who had helped J walk up to the tent, was rinsing some of the blood off of her own hand and the staff was quick to see that she had accidentally gotten J's blood back-washed into the group's drinking water when she was cleaning herself off. They immediately warned no one to drink the water and dumped it out because they didn't know if it was safe. Being one of the newest kids in the house, J hasn't yet been tested for HIV. The incident was a grisly reminder of the lives from which most of these children came. Lives of neglect, often of all kinds of abuse, and though some of them have loving parents who gave their kids up knowing that it was their only chance at a better life, most had awful parents - if any. These kids who pray with such fervor and who love Hannah Montana jut like other kids, are the children of prostitutes and beggars. Most of their parents end up contracting HIV, possibly passing it onto their children. The longer we are here the more often we see the brutal realities of life juxtaposed with the beauty of a people and a culture.
One of the girls, J, cut her hand while leaping from rock to rock, and the orphanage staff bandaged it. Another child who had helped J walk up to the tent, was rinsing some of the blood off of her own hand and the staff was quick to see that she had accidentally gotten J's blood back-washed into the group's drinking water when she was cleaning herself off. They immediately warned no one to drink the water and dumped it out because they didn't know if it was safe. Being one of the newest kids in the house, J hasn't yet been tested for HIV. The incident was a grisly reminder of the lives from which most of these children came. Lives of neglect, often of all kinds of abuse, and though some of them have loving parents who gave their kids up knowing that it was their only chance at a better life, most had awful parents - if any. These kids who pray with such fervor and who love Hannah Montana jut like other kids, are the children of prostitutes and beggars. Most of their parents end up contracting HIV, possibly passing it onto their children. The longer we are here the more often we see the brutal realities of life juxtaposed with the beauty of a people and a culture.
Hello, India!
Our first week in India has come and gone in a moment! We have developed a flexible schedule for our mornings and evenings, with each days work varying. Our very first order of business, however, was to become more acquainted with our surroundings. Joy Dongerdive and his wife, Liliana run the Hope of Glory children's home and we have spent a lot of time with them and the kids in the orphanage already. They were kind enough to have us over to their home to tell us a little about Pune and it's people.
The most stark difference we had to immediately acclimate to was the different way that men and women relate to each other here. Women (us included) must be careful not to show any ankle, not to make eye contact with men on the street, and to always have an escort. The men on our team, on the other hand, must brace themselves for the attentions of the beautiful Indian women looking for a ticket out of India in the form of an American husband. Our first few outings were slightly troublesome - we were always making eye contact and smiling - it's a hard habit to break! By now we pretty much have the hang of things and have managed to find a happy medium between constantly staring at our own feet and grinning at everyone indiscriminately.
We made several trips to Laxmi (Lack-shmee) Rd. and M.G. Rd. for Indian garb and other necessities - those being the best best shopping roads and most accustomed to Westerners. We got coffee across from a nice hotel where Brad Pitt and Angelina stayed (our team leader is constantly informing us of all the places we visit where Brad and Angelina have been. We are beginning to think this might be a sort of Brangelina pilgrimage). To visit M.G. Rd. we even got to don our Western clothing instead of the conservative Indian dress we usually wear.
After we were moderately settled in, we spent a few evenings hanging out with the kids at the HOGF (the Hope of Glory Foundation). The kids range in age from 3 to their late teens. We had heard so much about them from team members who visited here before, and we knew their names and ages from preparing the Christmas gifts we brought for each of them - a backpack and a new set of clothes - we were excited to finally meet them. It's hard to describe how lovable and affectionate they are. To hear these kids pray is an awesome and humbling thing. They all pray aloud on command for a while before dinner, kneeling with their eyes closed tightly and their hands clasped in front of them, some hunched over on the floor. The older girls honored us by singing a Hannah Montana song on our first evening with them. Most of the kids speak great English and we can't wait to spend more time with them in the weeks to come.
The most stark difference we had to immediately acclimate to was the different way that men and women relate to each other here. Women (us included) must be careful not to show any ankle, not to make eye contact with men on the street, and to always have an escort. The men on our team, on the other hand, must brace themselves for the attentions of the beautiful Indian women looking for a ticket out of India in the form of an American husband. Our first few outings were slightly troublesome - we were always making eye contact and smiling - it's a hard habit to break! By now we pretty much have the hang of things and have managed to find a happy medium between constantly staring at our own feet and grinning at everyone indiscriminately.
We made several trips to Laxmi (Lack-shmee) Rd. and M.G. Rd. for Indian garb and other necessities - those being the best best shopping roads and most accustomed to Westerners. We got coffee across from a nice hotel where Brad Pitt and Angelina stayed (our team leader is constantly informing us of all the places we visit where Brad and Angelina have been. We are beginning to think this might be a sort of Brangelina pilgrimage). To visit M.G. Rd. we even got to don our Western clothing instead of the conservative Indian dress we usually wear.
After we were moderately settled in, we spent a few evenings hanging out with the kids at the HOGF (the Hope of Glory Foundation). The kids range in age from 3 to their late teens. We had heard so much about them from team members who visited here before, and we knew their names and ages from preparing the Christmas gifts we brought for each of them - a backpack and a new set of clothes - we were excited to finally meet them. It's hard to describe how lovable and affectionate they are. To hear these kids pray is an awesome and humbling thing. They all pray aloud on command for a while before dinner, kneeling with their eyes closed tightly and their hands clasped in front of them, some hunched over on the floor. The older girls honored us by singing a Hannah Montana song on our first evening with them. Most of the kids speak great English and we can't wait to spend more time with them in the weeks to come.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Axiom Five Month Justice and Mercy DTS
Axiom’s 5 month Justice DTS has 3 areas of emphasis:
Encountering Christ:
Our ultimate desire is for the Justice DTS to be a journey into the heart of the Lord where together we can experience the depths of His love and passion for mankind. The first three months of this school concentrates fully on developing a dynamic love relationship with the person of Jesus, through in-depth teaching on various topics, such as: Father Heart of God, Passion for Christ, Relationships, Christ in Community, Justice and Mercy, etc.
Engaging Culture:
During the first three months, we also enjoy times of worship, intercession and focus groups. Weekly, you will enjoy “being justice” at The Space (a cultural arts venue), distributing clothing to the poor, working at a soup kitchen--- joining with others within the community to find creative ways to bring the healing touch of Christ to those around us.
Emancipating the Oppressed:
India “Slumdog” Outreach, the second phase of the school, will focus on India. The numbers of orphans and children-at-risk are the greatest in history. India is experiencing a fierce attack on children right now (from sex-trafficking, abandonm
ent, AIDS, etc.) We will make a difference by going to Pune and Chennai and working with street children’s ministries, HIV homes and orphanages. We can take a child off the street before they become another trafficking statistic. Come with us!
Many Indian children suffer from poverty. More than fifty percent of the total population lives below the poverty line, and more than forty percent of this population are children.
Being born in India is a big challenge for children whose parents can't afford even the basics, like housing, food and education.
The young girls of India are in the most vulnerable position as they are all low-caste and will most likely prostitute themselves or be sold to someone by the family in order to get money. The young street children, especially girls, are in the most vulnerable postion. They are considered low-caste and will often prostitute themselves if they are not sold or kidnapped into sexual slavery first. Human trafficking is epidemic.
Can you imagine being in this world and having no one who loves you? No place to call home? No one to tell you that you are of value? It is unthinkable that we, as Christians, could ignore these children.
Requirements:
Applicants must be 20 years of age or older. (Exceptions may be made upon application approval.)
Dates and Costs:
The lecture phase runs from Sept.11 to Dec. 4th. The outreach phase is Dec. 28th- Feb. 22nd. The total cost is $6,200. (this is the total for the lecture and outreach phase including all housing, food, classes and transportation).
If you are interested in participating in the India outreach alone, we would love to have you with us! The cost is $2,800, and the date is Jan. 15-25th, 2010.
Contact us for an application, to reserve space or if you have any questions.
Contact:
Olivia Apple
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