In the first blog of three about my mission trip to India with Overseas Missions, I shared about the first three days of our trip and the kindness that God showed during that time. In the second blog I shared about the time we spent with the Tiger Widows and God’s divine provision to open the door for us to share His love with them. In this article, I am going to share about the last two days of the trip and an extra surprise ministry moment on the plane ride home.
After we left the Tiger Widows on the fifth day, we left the area and drove back to Calcutta. The next day, the second to last of the trip, we got up and went to the Dump Yard, an area of Kolkata right next to a large trash dump where many poor people live. One of the local pastors has started a children’s school, where they also have church on Sundays and are working to educate the children as well as teach them about God. They are working to raise money to build a school on the approximately 1/6th-acre plot they have, but we were able to do another medical clinic there, pray for the sick, and feed the 50-70 children there as well.
The children were a lot of fun, and the boys in particular loved getting to roughhouse with some of the team. We fed them lunch, with the team serving all of the children, and treated both adults and children alike at the medical clinic. One of the children there, about ten years old, had an open wound he had gotten a few weeks prior from a motorcycle accident. It looked fairly well tended overall, although I was surprised, as it’s the type of wound we usually see in the hospital here in the USA, not at a random volunteer clinic. We gave him supplies to last him a good week or so of daily dressing changes, and one of his friends listened to the instructions and watched us clean the wound as well to make sure he could help his buddy. It was super sweet to watch.
The most impressive moment of that day, to me, was when God healed a young man of leprosy. This guy was probably in his mid-twenties, and he told one of the other nurses that he had lost all sense of smell for the past six months. This nurse recognized the problem and suspected leprosy, so had the doctor assess the nerves in his arm to see if they showed signs of thickening, and they did. Sure enough, it was leprosy.
To explain, leprosy involves loss of sensation at nerve endings. As a result, one cannot feel pain, meaning that if one gets burned, cut, or otherwise injured, while normally people will recoil from the offending item, the leper cannot sense the pain and will continue the unsafe activity, damaging the skin. This leads long-term to missing fingers, toes, and even limbs, ears, nose, etc. All in all, it’s a terrible disease. Unbeknownst to any of us, this nurse had a discussion earlier that day with the doctor about the symptoms of leprosy, and if she hadn’t she might have missed the signs. God truly does lead and guide even things as simple as our conversations, and in this case, it led us to identify leprosy.
Why is this important? Because of what happened next. There was nothing the medical team could do for him medically, but Jesus is the best healer that exists, so a few of us gathered around him and prayed in Jesus’ name for leprosy to go and for him to be healed. They had given us these flower-necklaces earlier that day, each of which had a rose at the end. I had him smell mine to see if his sense of smell had been restored, and it had! This man had been unable to smell for six months due to an undiagnosed serious disease, and within minutes of diagnosis, we prayed and Jesus healed him, restoring his nerve function and allowing him to smell once more. I am always so impressed with the kindness and goodness of our God who reaches out and touches lives, heals diseases, and generally just cares far more about our lives than He has to, and He does it all because He loves us.
The last day we visited the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta where Mother Teresa’s tomb is. Two of the women on the team and I went to a very early morning Mass service, and were blessed to witness their celebration of 25 years of prayerful service of six of the sisters there. The peace of God that rested in that place, and specifically in the room where the tomb was located, was amazing, and the clarity with which I could hear the voice of God speaking to me while there was equally astounding. It was evident that they have spent many years cultivating the presence of God in prayer and acts of service at that place, and it was an honor to visit and share in their joy that morning. After the service, the sisters gathered outside on the balconies and in the courtyard and sang songs of praise to God and songs of congratulations to the six sisters. We went back there with the rest of the team later, and many of us spent some time in prayer there. All in all, it was a wonderful way to end our trip there. It was a fitting bookend, in some ways, as the work of the Sisters of Charity embodies what we were there to do in serving the Tiger Widows as well.
Afterwards, because the day we went the Sisters of Charity had their citywide missions closed, we were unable to volunteer for service-work as originally planned, so we spent some time shopping for gifts for family and friends, eating lunch, etc., then packed up to get ready to fly out that evening.
The flights and layovers were fairly uneventful until the 12-hour flight over the Pacific, where a surprise awaited me. I had the thought come to me prior to that flight that someone on the plane might have a medical emergency. Well, about four hours in, one of our team members told me I needed to go to the back of the plane because there was some medical problem. An elderly man had fallen down and hit his head, and was fumbling through his bag searching for medications. The flight attendants were there, but no one really seemed to know what to do. I assessed him, and while he had no obvious signs of a head injury, he was very confused and had medication on-hand for Parkinson’s Disease. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fact is that any signs of a bleed inside his head that would be observable to me are what are called “late signs”, meaning that if any of them appeared in-flight, the man’s death due to brain injury would basically be assured. I am thankful that none of that occurred, as even if we had turned the plane around it would still have taken four hours for us to arrive at the nearest airport.
At any rate, I spent the rest of the flight keeping an eye on him, both because I was concerned about the possibility of a head bleed, and also because he was incredibly confused and at risk for falling again. In fact, if I hadn’t been watching him he probably would have fallen a few more times—and that doesn’t include the time he tried to undress himself and the many times he lost his phone and wallet . . . in his pockets. Either way, I was glad to be able to help this man out, and the airline was very nice and gave me a first-class breakfast as a thank you for keeping an eye on him. Which, considering the day we flew back was also my birthday, it was like a fun extra birthday gift from God!
Having never been on a mission trip before, I was richly rewarded by all that we did. I got to spend time with one of my closest friends, got to meet incredible people and made new friends, spent my days loving God’s destitute children in another country, as well as getting to enjoy their unique culture and all that it entails, and was greatly encouraged in my faith in many ways. I had the pleasure of getting to serve people every step of the way, and learned new things about my own heart and how God has designed me. A final thank you to everyone who helped contribute to this trip financially and in prayer, and I encourage anyone who has not yet been on an overseas mission trip to take the plunge! God bless you all, and I look forward to the next time I am able to share stories of the wonderful adventures I get to have in God!
