Do you ever feel like a need or a job is too great, that there is absolutely no way yourself, a simple human being, can even come close to doing what it is you’re called to do because you wonder, does what I’m doing really even matter in the large scheme of things? 
I’ve been in India one week now. (11 to go!) Ministry at the Asha House and the slums has begun, and we’ll be starting at the leper colony this week. With no idea really what to expect, the week was great & already we see God on the move.
We started teaching English at the orphanage, have played and sang so many songs, and are already in love with the kids. Yesterday after church, Kendra & I helped all the girls take baths. We dumped pitchers of water on them and scrubbed their heads as they laughed and jumped around with huge smiles as the chilly water poured over them. We walked out, skirts soaked, but full of joy from how fun & life giving something as simple as a bath ended up being.
Our first time at the slums was powerful. We laid hands on & prayed for three women who have recently converted from Hinduism & have become believers (praise Jesus!), and with the help of a translator, I shared a short testimony of God’s love, grace, & mercy in my life to a group of women & children. On our way out of the slums, we unexpectedly found ourselves in the home of a Hindu woman, with her many gods all over the walls, praying for her and her family. Although she could not understand us, we prayed boldly to the One True God for healing, deliverance, transformation, and the power of the Holy Spirit to pour down and fill her home. 
But what about all the other children we see and pass every day? The hundreds of other people in the slums or on the streets we can’t talk to because of our safely and so many other reasons? Or all the people we pass that live in mud houses and tents made from old tarps and garbage that also need to know about His love for them? A city and a nation that is overflowing with oppressed people.
The need is so great. Even though ministry has started strong, a number of times this week I have found my thoughts concentrating on the things and the people that we will not be spending time with or talking to. These people are all precious, too. Just as in need of love as the ones we will reach. So what am I suppose to do? Just forget about them, not think about them? I can’t do that. Here I cannot ignore the pain and suffering, because it is all around me, nothing is hidden.
I continued to pray and think, and from II Corinthians I found His simple desire for myself and the people of India right now.
For me, that I’m being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory (2 Cor. 3:18). For India, that His light would shine out of my heart wherever I went, revealing the face of Christ (II Cor. 4:6), and that over the potent smell of sewage, smog, and oppression that fills the air here, I would leave a physical aroma of Christ, one I can only pray is the fragrance of life (2 Cor. 2:14-16).
