"Because I have been given much I too must give." This hymn that we sing in church keeps coming to my mind. We have been so blessed with this opportunity and the means to see this amazing part of the world and we have enjoyed and taken part in all that has been offered us. But when we pulled into Chennai after coming from such a luxury train experience and months of incredible traveling I arrived on the eve of Easter realizing that I really needed to be humbled. I needed to be more grateful and most importantly we, both Sam and I needed to go serve. After we checked into our hotel that evening I realized that General Conference for our Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints was just starting their morning session. This is a time where our prophet and his apostles and the men and women leaders of our church speak to us as a whole. I was able to get good internet and Sam and I sat in bed and watched it streaming live from Salt Lake City on www.lds.org. The beautiful music sung by the choir immediately softened my heart and the first speaker was President Eyring. His message was so appropriate and exactly what I had been thinking and was a humble reminder: that as we serve others and the least of them - those that are in need of so much- we are serving God. The way that we show our love of the Lord is to love and serve others. My heart was so full.
I was humbled by President Eyring's humility, and the gentle reminder to go serve. It was perfect as we are starting our service a Rising Star Outreach (RSO) the next day. RSO serves leprosy affected people www.risingstaroutreach.org. Sam and I that night felt a peace. I realized that as we heard his message and understood these truths and how service does bring happiness and blessings, I was grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Through the Atonement, where Christ suffered and died for us and then overcame the suffering and death and was resurrected. that because of this selfless act we are able to regroup/repent- which often is refocus- become humble and find peace as we move forward with a new day. I am ready to regroup and make this last week of our trip focused on others, loving and serving others. I am grateful for the leaders of our church who are such wonderful examples of this and for Conference when they share their inspired words and messages which are meant for us right now.
Sunday morning, Easter morning, strangely enough we decided to go to the Hindu Temple that was near by before we went to our Easter Service.They looked as if they were cleaning up from a large festival. where they had carried around carvings of their gods on colorful carts and had beautiful colorful pastel paintings all over the floors. This temple also is so different than any we have seen to date and wanted Sam to see their colorful tower of images of their gods and stories. Since it was early people were lining up for priests to touch their forehead and laying prostrate on the ground infront of idols of Shiva and others. There were beautiful chalk paintings all over the grounds. There is a huge tower like structure too that has all kinds images of the gods in all colors- it is so different from Hindu temples in any other part of India.
From there we went directly to our church. It was such a contrast. There were many members of the Branch there- probably 150 people and it was in a lovely clean building that was multiple stories. It was mostly Indians but some of the American volunteers visiting from Rising Star. The meetings was actually a testimony meeting, which was so wonderful to here so many people bear their truth, especially on this Easter Sunday about their faith and the peace and happiness and comfort that the gospel of Jesus Christ as given them. The spirit was so strong in the building. I too shared my testimony about how I have learned so much about so many religions and how they all hold truths and everyone is doing their best to become better and yet how grateful I am to have have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and how simple it is in comparison to all these beliefs and the answers it gives us is such a comfort and allows us to understand why we are here, where we are going and how to have happiness in this life and how to be with our families forever. So many of these others faiths believe in reincarnation and smashing the skull at cremation so they will have no memories. We believe that we will hold all these memories with us, be with our family in the next life, we are eternal families and we have eternal growth- always learning and growing. So grateful for this knowledge.
Following church we met up with the rest of the group including my sister Sandy and her daughter Monica. We piled into an nonairconditioned bus and made our way to the mall to get lunch and some food at the market before we take the two hour drive to RSO. The mall was remarkably nice, we could have been in CA for all I know. I was shocked! It did have some different shops almost like a Walmart in the basement where we bought water bottles and groceries for the week- we are responsible for our own breakfast and lunch.
We arrived after a couple hours and were settled into the new dorms that were put in since we came here 7 years ago. It is named after my cousins Chris and Jessie Harrison but is known as the Elephant House, due to the large elephant out front. Sam and I have our own room and there are about 25 volunteers here, mostly families that have chosen to take their spring break and serve. Most of them are here, like Sandy and Monica, for two weeks. At the end of this week all the kids go back home for summer break and return in June. There has been a big outbreak of Swine Flu so they are also finishing a littler earlier I believe since they want to minimize having large groups of people together. Thankfully they haven't had any issues here with Swine Flu.
The campus has grown so much. They have about 200 students that live on campus, except for when they head home for Summer. They have about 50 that are from neighboring villages, which is also part of the mixing children that are from leprosy affected homes with "normal" healthy kids. Part of breaking down barriers between castes since some are from the "Untouchable" Caste and others from other castes and also breaking the stigma of those that come from Leprosy affected families. The campus now has a cricket field, volunteer housing- before we slept on the bottom floor of their dorm house, they have the kids dorms and the school and now a lunch room, before we all ate on the dirt floor out front of the dorm on banana leaves. They also have a medical clinic where they treat the students and do regular dental cleanings there and offer medical support. It is their home base for their mobile medical clinics. From here they go to several medical clinics all over this region. They have now opened up another office and base to run medical clinics out to other remote leper colonies about 4 hours from here. RSO treats people with leprosy and other ailments as a result of leprosy. The mobile clinics also provide hygiene education and supplies to leprosy colonies. They offer micro loans which are taken out by all the families of the children at the school, and then runs a boarding school for these kids where they treat them from early detection of leprosy and educate them from Kindergarten up through 10th grade. They have 1000 micro loans out at a time. The kids are so darn smart!! It is amazing and they all speak really pretty good English even starting about age 8.
Last night after a couple hour of orientation and dinner we had a chance to go visit with the kids in their dorms before bed. They were so adorable and so eager to visit and ask questions. I was immediately led into a room with 3 girls. Each room has about 10 kids that sleep in that room and they have a "mom" that looks after then while they are at school. They sleep on the cement floor since it is so much cooler and have pillows many of them and fans in the rooms. They want to know about your life, they want to tell you about their grades, about their families, show you their drawings. They wanted me to sing to them. It was so funny, since Sandy has been here a week, they know her and she has been here a couple years ago too and so they said you look like Sandy. They were so excited to hear that I was her sister. When I sang them songs, they said, Sandy knows those songs. It was really cute. The songs our mother sang to us and we have sung to our kids and now these children, they are learning. So sweet. Sam went into the boys dorm and they loved visiting with him and he was dragged into some room where they asked him all kinds of questions. What a wonderful night. Fell fast asleep.
I was humbled by President Eyring's humility, and the gentle reminder to go serve. It was perfect as we are starting our service a Rising Star Outreach (RSO) the next day. RSO serves leprosy affected people www.risingstaroutreach.org. Sam and I that night felt a peace. I realized that as we heard his message and understood these truths and how service does bring happiness and blessings, I was grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Through the Atonement, where Christ suffered and died for us and then overcame the suffering and death and was resurrected. that because of this selfless act we are able to regroup/repent- which often is refocus- become humble and find peace as we move forward with a new day. I am ready to regroup and make this last week of our trip focused on others, loving and serving others. I am grateful for the leaders of our church who are such wonderful examples of this and for Conference when they share their inspired words and messages which are meant for us right now.
Sunday morning, Easter morning, strangely enough we decided to go to the Hindu Temple that was near by before we went to our Easter Service.They looked as if they were cleaning up from a large festival. where they had carried around carvings of their gods on colorful carts and had beautiful colorful pastel paintings all over the floors. This temple also is so different than any we have seen to date and wanted Sam to see their colorful tower of images of their gods and stories. Since it was early people were lining up for priests to touch their forehead and laying prostrate on the ground infront of idols of Shiva and others. There were beautiful chalk paintings all over the grounds. There is a huge tower like structure too that has all kinds images of the gods in all colors- it is so different from Hindu temples in any other part of India.
From there we went directly to our church. It was such a contrast. There were many members of the Branch there- probably 150 people and it was in a lovely clean building that was multiple stories. It was mostly Indians but some of the American volunteers visiting from Rising Star. The meetings was actually a testimony meeting, which was so wonderful to here so many people bear their truth, especially on this Easter Sunday about their faith and the peace and happiness and comfort that the gospel of Jesus Christ as given them. The spirit was so strong in the building. I too shared my testimony about how I have learned so much about so many religions and how they all hold truths and everyone is doing their best to become better and yet how grateful I am to have have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and how simple it is in comparison to all these beliefs and the answers it gives us is such a comfort and allows us to understand why we are here, where we are going and how to have happiness in this life and how to be with our families forever. So many of these others faiths believe in reincarnation and smashing the skull at cremation so they will have no memories. We believe that we will hold all these memories with us, be with our family in the next life, we are eternal families and we have eternal growth- always learning and growing. So grateful for this knowledge.
Following church we met up with the rest of the group including my sister Sandy and her daughter Monica. We piled into an nonairconditioned bus and made our way to the mall to get lunch and some food at the market before we take the two hour drive to RSO. The mall was remarkably nice, we could have been in CA for all I know. I was shocked! It did have some different shops almost like a Walmart in the basement where we bought water bottles and groceries for the week- we are responsible for our own breakfast and lunch.
We arrived after a couple hours and were settled into the new dorms that were put in since we came here 7 years ago. It is named after my cousins Chris and Jessie Harrison but is known as the Elephant House, due to the large elephant out front. Sam and I have our own room and there are about 25 volunteers here, mostly families that have chosen to take their spring break and serve. Most of them are here, like Sandy and Monica, for two weeks. At the end of this week all the kids go back home for summer break and return in June. There has been a big outbreak of Swine Flu so they are also finishing a littler earlier I believe since they want to minimize having large groups of people together. Thankfully they haven't had any issues here with Swine Flu.
The campus has grown so much. They have about 200 students that live on campus, except for when they head home for Summer. They have about 50 that are from neighboring villages, which is also part of the mixing children that are from leprosy affected homes with "normal" healthy kids. Part of breaking down barriers between castes since some are from the "Untouchable" Caste and others from other castes and also breaking the stigma of those that come from Leprosy affected families. The campus now has a cricket field, volunteer housing- before we slept on the bottom floor of their dorm house, they have the kids dorms and the school and now a lunch room, before we all ate on the dirt floor out front of the dorm on banana leaves. They also have a medical clinic where they treat the students and do regular dental cleanings there and offer medical support. It is their home base for their mobile medical clinics. From here they go to several medical clinics all over this region. They have now opened up another office and base to run medical clinics out to other remote leper colonies about 4 hours from here. RSO treats people with leprosy and other ailments as a result of leprosy. The mobile clinics also provide hygiene education and supplies to leprosy colonies. They offer micro loans which are taken out by all the families of the children at the school, and then runs a boarding school for these kids where they treat them from early detection of leprosy and educate them from Kindergarten up through 10th grade. They have 1000 micro loans out at a time. The kids are so darn smart!! It is amazing and they all speak really pretty good English even starting about age 8.
Last night after a couple hour of orientation and dinner we had a chance to go visit with the kids in their dorms before bed. They were so adorable and so eager to visit and ask questions. I was immediately led into a room with 3 girls. Each room has about 10 kids that sleep in that room and they have a "mom" that looks after then while they are at school. They sleep on the cement floor since it is so much cooler and have pillows many of them and fans in the rooms. They want to know about your life, they want to tell you about their grades, about their families, show you their drawings. They wanted me to sing to them. It was so funny, since Sandy has been here a week, they know her and she has been here a couple years ago too and so they said you look like Sandy. They were so excited to hear that I was her sister. When I sang them songs, they said, Sandy knows those songs. It was really cute. The songs our mother sang to us and we have sung to our kids and now these children, they are learning. So sweet. Sam went into the boys dorm and they loved visiting with him and he was dragged into some room where they asked him all kinds of questions. What a wonderful night. Fell fast asleep.
I just love you so much and am so glad I know you. Have a wonderful last week of your journey!
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