Thursday, March 1, 2012

India #2: We Just Don't Talk About Him

It was awesome to get to work with so many people. Often times I found myself again out numbered by other languages. Pockets of Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Korean, the occasional Frenchman, and so on surrounded us. I worked with 3 Koreans, a Frenchman, an Aussie, an Italian (give or take some people each day). These guys were good guys to work with.



Many volunteers in total came looking for answers. They were on holiday, had just finished high school, college, taking a year off, or in transition and wanted answers. They didn’t know what was next, they didn’t know the big picture of life, and they came here to find it out.

It’s a great place to come, but my heart is heavy to the fact I’m afraid they won’t find those answers here.


There is an extremely high turnover ratio working at Mother Teresa’s. There's 6 different houses that people can volunteer at. Anywhere from 5-40 people volunteering at each one each day. People volunteer for 1 day or 1 year and everywhere in between. People are constantly coming and going and interacting with each other.



I don’t know a lot about Catholicism and I’m still working out some things. I know the Nuns heavily love and are devoted to J and extraordinarily love Him. As I read Mother Teresa's writings she’s a just a solid woman with a heart for Him and trying to work it out along the way. I fear that others coming though get caught up too much in working for J than knowing Him. I heard more talk about Mary and Mother T than I did J. This really bothered me.

I expected a community of people loving and serving Him, but seemed like a community doing their duty and being good people. Some of them straight up were loving the Father, but I’m afraid many were doing it out of duty, to get points, for social justice, because they should, or different reasons. After talking to the Father one day about it and my frustration of my lack of conversation, He gave me a cool guy named FX from France to talk to the next day. We talked about the problem a little and just got to share other parts of our lives. It opened up and some of the Koreans joined in a little and later in the week a Chinese priest actually joined us but the language barrier was difficult.

FX - my good friend from France was an awesome answer to my frustrations about our lack of conversation. I really enjoyed getting to talk to him and just getting to hang out.

This was my hearts issue – without providing the Name that changes things it seems as if we’re just sustaining a failing effort. Don’t get me wrong, they do awesome work there and are busting their butt to take care of them – but J is the hope that we’re looking for and He’s the one that fixes all of the issues.



I have no doubt the Sprite can work in any circumstance (rocks, donkeys, sunsets, etc) but I would love it if there was more structure about why and what we do. There was mass each morning and “adoration” time in the afternoon. We went to “adoration” time which involved just saying the rosary. In my understanding… well, I’d rather have a conversation or someone teach about J.

I am thankful for the convo’s I got to have. I hope next time I will be a little more bold in starting those. I also hope and Ask that a wildfire of a Love for J name spreads through Mother T’s house and people get crazy about it and are filled with even more joy than before as they go out and serve. It’s hard work, no doubt, and I want J Joy to flood the place and His name to change things!

(I know these two are kind of depressing but the third one is AWESOME! There’s a reason I saved it for last)

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