In Christ Alone

I'm sitting on the ledge of a building on a huge teen challenge compound in India. It's extremely hot and humid. I'm literally dripping sweat and I'm just sitting here. But just to tell you how faithful my Papa is, I just said to Him, man I wish there was more of a breeze and immediately the wind starting blowing. My Father is good.  Here is a picture of where I am sitting as I write this (I don't have internet, so I probably wrote it several days before you are actually reading it).

Today has been a good day.  This morning I lead a devotional to former prostitutes who are either young Christians or unsaved.  I shared with them a little of my testimony and told them how they see me as pure, when they are in Christ, He sees them as pure.  It was really early in the morning and sort of hard to give the message with the translator.  I'm not sure if any of them really got what I was trying to say, but I know Holy Spirit will lead them into the truth they needed to receive from my words.

After that, I went to breakfast, ate a roll and chai, then dashed back to the girls dorms to teach a class. I've taught people stuff before, particularly in my HLTH and COMS classes back at Liberty, but this was the first time I've ever been the real teacher, teaching a real class, with a really important message. Class was one hour long. This time my translator was the sweetest girl that I sat with at dinner last night. She is seriously precious. She's 21 and has been with BTC for 12 or 13 years, since she was very young. It makes me so sad to know that if she's at Ashagram that means she has worked on “the strip” selling her body...  Which would make her 7 years old when she was “working.”  Heartbreaking. Her name is Anu. I'm really excited to get close to her. 

Anyways, Anu was my amazing translator. I made her laugh a lot. I'm not used to teaching, let alone teaching through a translator. I know I told all of you that I would be teaching health classes, and I will, but this class is actually a teen challenge class that everyone at Ashagram is required to go through. They have to go through this class and get a certificate before they can even get baptized. Baptism is a big deal here. But that is besides the point.  The book I am teaching is called Successful Christian Living. Chapter One is called “Who Am I?” All the sweet girls and ladies in my class were new believers. I think the youngest in my class was 13 years old. There were a couple older ladies, but most of them were in their teens. Teens rescued out of prostitution. Teens choosing to live for Jesus. They were all so beautiful. Since Anu was my translator, I got to get really interactive with them.  I had them tell me what people call them or what they call themselves.  I got answers like “fat,” “gorilla,” one girl was called “platform” because she has a big, flat nose. It was great to get them thinking and talking.  I wrote these words down on a dry erase board.  Then I would mark one out and say, “You are not _____, you are ______.”  Telling them who they are in Christ: God's child, Christ's friend, loved, purchased, free, growing, etc.  I had them read the scripture that went with each promise of God in Hindi. It was seriously so cool.  Almost makes me want to be a women's ministry major... well not really, but I am loving teaching this class.  I'm so excited to keep teaching it over the next few weeks and really get to know these girls. 

That has been today so far.  Yesterday was not so lovely.  I'm not going to go into great detail, but I was under a major attack from the enemy.  Lately when I can't sleep, the Lord has really been speaking loudly to me in the middle of the night.  So at like 1AM I typed on my ipod, “I think this may be the first time that I have ever understood myself to be actively falling in love with Love. I've said that I love Love many times, but I think that I am truly experiencing real joy for the first time in my life, because I am loving so much and really living love, in tern, experiencing real love. I have realized that you can't fall in love with Love without loving. Haha, I loveee joy.”  Maybe that doesn't make since to you, maybe that spoke volumes to you, but for me, it's these late night revelations that are keeping me faithful when the spiritual warfare is strong. 

Please keep praying for me. Pray for my girls. A big prayer request is that on Sunday I think I'm going to be playing Revelation Song on guitar in front of the church while my group sings it...  And well I'm just trusting God to get me better at guitar before then.  I borrowed a guitar to try to learn the song.

Shoutout to my guitar playing friends... Check out my attempt at a makeshift capo.