India 2009!

Thursday we woke up and headed to a two-day conference Joy was holding on the direction of the church in India. It was a training for newly converted Christians to learn about how social work is an essential part of faith. Katie and I were both extremely excited but didn’t really know what to expect. The training was awesome! There were about 20 people there ranging from the age of 16 to 70. The whole thing was in Hindi though…but they were amazing and tried to translate as much as possible into English for us. About halfway though the day, we split up into groups. Katie was in a group with three other people who spoke English! I was in a group with three other people who spoke absolutely no English! It actually was very interesting because it was the first time that I haven’t had someone to translate for me. We were doing activities like describing God, describing poverty, etc and it was very difficult to communicate. Luckily I had picked up a few words from working with the children. By the end of the day though, I completely fell in love with my group. There was one girl Briti, who was 18 years old, a boy Rajkumar who was 17 years old, and then Aunti Ragkumari who was a bit older. They were amazing and they never got frustrated with my inability to speak Hindi. I also got to talk to the man who was running the training. He works with an organization called EFICOR and does these trainings all around India. He was a very inspirational man.

One of the coolest things about the conference was discussing poverty with people who lived their everyday lives in poverty. The people at the conference came from a poor village outside Allahabad and it was interesting hearing them talk about poverty from a first hand perspective. We had a hunger banquet—so we all got split into either a rich, poor, or middle class family. I was in the middle class family and my reaction to that was “why me?” I had done nothing to deserve being in a better position than the people in the poor family. It was the same feeling I felt on an everyday basis here. Whenever I am talking with one of the children, I ask myself, “Why did they have to go through this? And why was I so lucky?” It’s a question that will never be answered, but I was glad that the conference made me think about it a little more.

When we got back to SOUP, I finally got to sit and work on the computer with Gautam! Ever since my grand idea of teaching him computer engineering, I have been wanting to work with him and just see what level he is at and if it would even possible to teach him. I cannot explain to you how smart this boy is! He learns so quickly and LOVES to learn. He also is obsessed with the United States and we spent twenty minutes on Google looking at pictures of the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, etc. He has a very strong faith as well and one of his dreams is to be a pastor one day. So I have been trying to teach him about Mother Teresa because she is my role model as far as faith goes. He really seemed to like reading about her! It was awesome! We also have been teaching the children about email, so I had him type me an email and send it! When I opened up my inbox, the subject that he had typed was, “I am coming to America!” It was amazing! Gautam really grasped everything I was teaching him on the computer which was amazing because I felt like I could teach him some engineering things! I couldn’t wait to start working with him more.