I know now that I am back, there will be many people wanting to ask me this question, and I've been thinking about how I can respond. I really don't know how to answer it succinctly. It was amazing. But that doesn't really do it. It was too many things to even get into in one conversation. It was beautiful and sad and inspiring and discouraging and fun and challenging and thrilling and funny and awful and uplifting and difficult...
Was it what you expected? In some ways yes, but mostly no. I had envisioned doing heroic things, making strides for humanity and for the Lord. Delivering babies with one hand and suturing wounds with the other; having profound conversations about God's love and mercy. Well, maybe not quite as grand as all that but something like it. And that's not exactly what happened. I ran headfirst into so many limitations: the hospital's facilities, the peoples' perspectives, the health care system in India, the language barrier... but mostly my own limitations: the limits of my medical knowledge and skills, and the limits of my faith. I began to re-examine why God had brought me there. If I wasn't saving lives and saving souls what was I called there to do?
There is, of course, the possibility that God is working in ways bigger than I can see. That I did, in fact, make some difference in people's lives that I'll never really know. And I have faith that that's true to some extent. But I'm also beginning to suspect that maybe India didn't need me so much as I needed India. That hospital was plugging along just fine before I came and they'll continue to carry on without me. But I will not be the same. There is something at work in me, so much that God wants me to learn from all this. I have been so flooded with experiences that I haven't even begun to sort through them all yet. It'll take months, at least, of personal debriefing and reflection to decipher out all the lessons God is trying to teach me. Please pray He'll give me wisdom.
I didn't end up learning that much Hindi while I was there. It's such a departure from the Germanic and Romance languages that I'm accustomed to that my ear doesn't even recognize some of those sounds. I learned a few words, for hello, thank you, please, yes, no. But the one sentence I did learn may be one of the best things that can be said, and I think kind of sums things up nicely...
Was it what you expected? In some ways yes, but mostly no. I had envisioned doing heroic things, making strides for humanity and for the Lord. Delivering babies with one hand and suturing wounds with the other; having profound conversations about God's love and mercy. Well, maybe not quite as grand as all that but something like it. And that's not exactly what happened. I ran headfirst into so many limitations: the hospital's facilities, the peoples' perspectives, the health care system in India, the language barrier... but mostly my own limitations: the limits of my medical knowledge and skills, and the limits of my faith. I began to re-examine why God had brought me there. If I wasn't saving lives and saving souls what was I called there to do?
There is, of course, the possibility that God is working in ways bigger than I can see. That I did, in fact, make some difference in people's lives that I'll never really know. And I have faith that that's true to some extent. But I'm also beginning to suspect that maybe India didn't need me so much as I needed India. That hospital was plugging along just fine before I came and they'll continue to carry on without me. But I will not be the same. There is something at work in me, so much that God wants me to learn from all this. I have been so flooded with experiences that I haven't even begun to sort through them all yet. It'll take months, at least, of personal debriefing and reflection to decipher out all the lessons God is trying to teach me. Please pray He'll give me wisdom.
I didn't end up learning that much Hindi while I was there. It's such a departure from the Germanic and Romance languages that I'm accustomed to that my ear doesn't even recognize some of those sounds. I learned a few words, for hello, thank you, please, yes, no. But the one sentence I did learn may be one of the best things that can be said, and I think kind of sums things up nicely...
"Jai masih ki"
Praise the Lord
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