These Experiences by Trent Tyni

When: 2007
Location: India
Contact: trent.tyni@gmail.com

Over two months ago we arrived in India unaware of the experiences that awaited us. Delhi humidity, persistent rickshaw drivers, and a forty-four hour tnging. Even in Delhi, India’s leading city, lepers lined the streets while barefoot beggars constantly badgered us. We quickly discovered that efforts to combat this problem restednot wit rain ride tested our patience. However, the magnitude of India’s poverty proved most challeh the government but lied in the hands of local churches, grassroots ministries, and growing non-profits. Working alongside these organizations forced us to evaluate our understanding of “development” – a buzzword commonly associated with the redemption of our world.

We spent the first ten days of our trip in Bangalore, India partnering with Yuvalok, an extension of Young Life in southern India. Our time here was spent teaching, painting two bedrooms, constructing a fence, and playing with the children. Through education, Yuvalok was able to provide for children formerly in labor situations with clothing and meals. By affording necessary subsistence, these children were freed from having to fend for themselves. In addition, education equipped youth with tools necessary to succeed in their desperate world. Reading, writing, mathematics, English, and the ability to think critically offered opportunities otherwise unavailable to these children. At Yuvalok we saw education as development - liberating and empowering the poor of India.


On the outskirts of Delhi we encountered the Sewa Ashram, a service community of society’s outcasts. Though almost all of the ministries we visited targeted India’s poor, this was the only ministry whose volunteers lived, ate, and slept among them. Here transvestites, orphans, handicaps, addicts, and the half dead found restoration through community. Suresh, a former drug addict rehabilitated by the Ashram, chose to care for the terminally ill patients of T.B. Hospital in Delhi. Slowing dying, unattended by corrupt staff and in endless pain, these were the lives he fed, bathed, and clothed. Suresh lived love in its most raw form: complete self-sacrifice. We struggle to find time to “volunteer” or “serve others” one day a week - Suresh can’t find time for anything else. This extreme devotion to Jesus’ commands proved unsettling. Although this ministry made us most uncomfortable, the fruits of it were undeniable. This was not a place where the destitute came to die but where the dying found life. Our time spent visiting the TB hospital, teaching, and simply being with these people destroyed our conventional notions of ministry that tend to distort Jesus’ words for the sake of security and comfort. At the sewa ashram we experienced development through a broken community. This is where Jesus would have walked - this is His Kingdom.

We found ourselves spending the last two weeks of our trip in beautiful Northern India. Nestled in between the Himalayas and the valley, Dehradun and Mussoorie played host to pristine weather, lush vegetation, rising mountains, and sporadic thunderstorms. Here remote rural villages lacking electricity, clean water, and proper sanitation checkered the mountainous landscape. EHA, a network of Christian hospitals throughout northern India, sought to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of these communities. Through various health development strategies (water, sanitation, education, and micro-enterprise), EHA revitalized village communities. Specifically in Herbertpoor, EHA helped village women initiate self-help groups. These groups not only promoted financial growth but also provided a forum for discussion in a community considered safe and secure. By working directly with village communities, training indigenous leaders, and providing quality health care, EHA embodied holistic ministry that satisfied both physical and spiritual development. By painting hospital rooms, organizing patient records, and visiting villages we encouraged EHA patients and staff. In terms of holistic development, EHA proved to be a revolutionary model for personal and social change.

These three ministries provide just a glimpse into what the Church is doing in India. Interestingly enough, it is these revolutionary models of ministry that are effecting real social change. Although each ministry blended good news with good works, we found that it is ultimately a change in mindset that produces real development. By preaching enlightened ideals of equality and freedom, the Gospel is able to liberate Hindus from the caste system and open the door to social mobility and progress. In fact, it is this change in worldview that we ourselves experienced on this trip. Through our journey together we no longer see the world as we did three months ago. Together we have been frustrated, we have asked difficult questions, and we have struggled with reality. These experiences have and will continue to shape the way we view our world and our role within it.

Coffee by Laura Ortberg

When: April 2006
Where: Menlo Park, CA
Contact: laura.ortberg@gmail.com

I never really wanted to look him in the eye. He sat outside of my favorite coffee shop the whole summer that I was home from college, and I couldn’t avoid him. I also couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge his presence. So, like most other people who cycled in and out through the door on their way to more important places, I pretended like he was a lesser object; a dog, perhaps, or a child in his stroller. Something that didn’t demand respect, someone whose gaze could be easily averted. Every morning, I made it my mission to sidestep him and to exclude him from my routine. Confronted with a common but uncomfortable situation, I withdrew into myself.

A good friend of our family’s, Shane Claiborne, helped to start this micro-population called ‘The Simple Way,’ where Christ-followers live together in the worst parts of Philadelphia and care for homeless people and partner with God to develop a loving community. My mom was talking with Shane once and remarked how many of her friends objected to giving money to homeless people, since they were sure to turn around and spend it on drugs or alcohol. Shane thought a while, and responded – I will never forget this – that as far as he could remember, Jesus teaches us to give to our neighbors in need. He doesn’t require that we follow up to see how our money was used, or that we attach conditions and qualifications to our gifts. Out of our abundance, we give.

And, as in all that we do, we are called to love and to be thoughtful and wise. If we pull spare change out of our coat pocket and toss it into a cup without ever looking at the person, ever seeing his eyes or stopping to ask his name, what are we really doing? When I ignored George, when I denied his personhood and closed my eyes to the piece of God’s image that he bears, I was effectively shutting a door that had been opened to me. When I finally paid George the attention that I would pay any other person I was standing on a sidewalk with, it didn’t take long before I made a friend. I couldn’t keep ignoring him as I walked in and out, as he looked at my fellow shoppers and me and never got any indication of recognition in return.

As I got to know him, I realized that George and the millions of people the world over in his situation don’t just lack a structure to give them shelter at night –although they do need that – but they don’t have a home. A home being more than four walls and a roof; it is a group of people who care for you and tend to you and are concerned when your life gets difficult. Passing him indifferently day in and out, George had come to believe that this crowd of people could care less whether he lived another day – and that secretly, some would be relieved if he were gone. For me, though, knowing George has been a transformative experience. As I’ve talked and sat and eaten with him, I’ve come to learn that the statistics representing homelessness in the United States, which can seem so vast and impersonal, are actually the composite of hundreds of thousands of very personal and very real stories.

Turns out, George isn’t so oblivious to the people who walk by him and look away. He was in love once, and lost his wife, and like most all of us, spends a good deal of his time living in fear. Events in life could just as easily have led to my soliciting outside a coffee shop in wealthy Silicon Valley. I haven’t earned my socioeconomic status, and I don’t deserve it. Neither does George. And if I turn my back on him, if I act as though he is an object to pass by, I am losing nothing less than the very soul of God.

My Favourite Page by Shanon Hannon

Date: 2005, 2007
Location: Malawi
Name: Shannon Hannon


In the summers of 2005 and 2007, I traveled to Malawi with Children of the Nations to work with children affected by HIV and AIDS. We organized camps, sports games, tutored, put together a village library, cooked, helped with house chores, sewed clothes, led devotions at a local village outreach, and spent quality time getting to know children and caretakers at Children of the Nations.

I find myself sighing. A friend of mine told me that we sigh when there is something we want but can't have. I argued at the time, but I think it may be true. I long to walk through Chiwengo village with Msayiwale taking pictures of the landscape, teaching him how to frame a picture, talking about my family at home, talking about fighting between kids here, explaining the "stubble" of hair on my legs. I can hear in my memory the laughter and the joy of the kids as I would play and watch their futbol games; the way Lidson would exaggerate every move when playing goalie, to guarantee an audience, the way little Drew would walk right through the game like he owned the field, confident that he wouldn't get taken out by the players sprinting back and forth, the two puppies born outside the House of Love, Bruce and Chuck (Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris that is) would run wild and bite at our ankles. In one thought I am taken back to that place and wish that

I could just jump back into the moment and relive it again.

One story of a grief counseling session with a group of girls reminds me that God is definitely working through the kids in Malawi. Just knowing that these girls have been through so much abuse, rape, and trauma breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that anyone would have to experience these things, but they have grown so much through their pain and hurt. One of the girls asked, "Where was God when I was being raped?" I struggled with this question as I was listening, and then the girl answered her own question which is amazing in itself. It was not a generic answer, an answer she knew would please or sound right, but it was sincere. She said, "God was with me. He never left me. He would never leave me or forsake me. He was there with me, with tears in His eyes and fire in His heart." I was completely humbled. For an eleven year old girl to know this truth and speak it from her heart, took my breath away.

During our time at one of the houses, an old woman knocked on the door, holding a tiny baby in her arms asking if we could take the baby into our care because she could not care for her any longer. She was the baby's Grandmother and had been caring for baby Bridget for the past month since the baby's parents had passed away. They took her in right away and it was so exciting to be there for her arrival. She is thirteen months old and also very frail. To me, she looked as if she was only a month old. I noticed that she never cried and her eyes would follow people in the room but she would never turn her head. One of the house moms told me that this is because she was too weak and malnourished to turn her head and she had no energy to even cry. I was silenced.

It's hard to tell people about my time in Malawi, I feel like the words can't find their way to my mouth and I'm at a loss. Our ministry and time in Malawi can feel so small when I think of the collection of little things we did. We are just a page in the lives of these kids but they are a favorite page in my life, a page I so often return to, a page that has been worn and well-loved. I am changed and better having known these kids. Life keeps on and I'll think of them everyday and I'll be sad for a while and reminisce with a smile or a tear and pray for the chance to set my feet on Malawian soil again.

We Are One and the Same by David Zoradi

Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Date: 2004
Contact: dzoradi@hotmail.com

In 2004 I got hooked up with an organization called Youth with a Mission, a non-profit Christian missions group. After three months of training in Maui, I found out that I would be going to the Southeast Asian country of Cambodia. Our team of nine was going to be stationed in Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia (Kâmpŭchea as they pronounce it). Our focuses included working with a local Church teaching their English classes, going to youth aids orphanages, and helping the Church with their children’s program for the whole community.

After a days worth of flying, when I stepped off that final airplane, what I thought I knew of the world was no more. Its not as much culture shock as it is ruins of the former world view. I got my first surprise when I realized my luggage had not arrived. I had my guitar and what I was wearing for the first 5 days I was in Cambodia…what a start. Once the stun of living in a new country was over, our team had a choice to make. We had contacts that were a part of the underground church in Vietnam, and they wanted to know if we would be interested in coming. At the same time one of our translators at the church, Samphas Chea (his nickname is Jack) had an invitation from his family’s village to have us come in as special guests. Our team saw how much it meant to Jack for us to go with him to the place he grew up and minister to his deeply rooted Buddhist family. The interesting thing was that we were to be some of the first westerners to ever come into the village.


Our team was blessed with a place to stay in their substantial village for a week. We found out that many of the children had never seen white people before, but only heard stories from their parents who would go into major cities to sell the rice crop. When I heard that it was Jacks family, I assumed it would be a small community of immediate relatives, boy was I mistaken. When Jack said family, he meant everyone who was at all related to him. His immediate family all lived in very close distances to one another, but distant relatives were spread out for miles. It was an awakening of what real family means.


Our goal for the week was to pass out pounds upon pounds of salt bags to the families we would visit. In those villages, there is a huge salt deficiency in their diets. Large thyroid goiters were the resulting problems for many of the people there. We would trek through the rice fields until we would come upon a small oasis of palm trees where the family’s home would stand on stilts. They would welcome us in with such enthusiasm that they make American hospitality something akin to Oscar the Grouch. They would insist on us eating every banana and coconut they had on their property. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure seemed that way at the time. More often than not, the father would send his son to climb up a few trees to gather a full bundle of bananas and coconuts for us to enjoy. The experience of getting to share our stories, love for Jesus, reasons why we would come and see them, and health information is something I store deep in my heart. I can still see their facial expressions after we would pray for them. Jack was enthralled at what was happening in his home town. His face was a beam of light the whole week, so proud of where he was from, and so proud of the people he was able to bring into his village.

Jack became so much more than a number/statistic or even a face for that matter…he became a brother. For someone who grew up in circumstances that are polar opposite of me, we are one in the same.

I am still in contact with Samphas “Jack” Chea to this day. He ended up going into Youth with a Mission a year after we left and is currently serving on staff with one of their bases in Phnom Penh. He is dedicated to seeing his country infected with the love of God, and has committed to showing Cambodian youth how to actively follow Jesus. He is a man who is greatly loved by God.


Note:

Youth with a Mission information can be found at: www.ywam.org