Journey to South Asia, Journal Entry 5

One of our CMF staff members took a trip to South Asia recently with a group exploring the country and our ministries there and considering possibilities. This is a closed country where, because of political, social, and religious reasons, traditional missionary activity is not allowed, but where God is working in incredible ways. In this final entry in his journal, he continues to use nicknames for the people he interacts with.

Every half mile is different. Though you almost feel it couldn’t be.

For about 30 minutes on this lush hillside trail, you get used to things looking a certain shade a green, with the ubiquitous tea plants forming the foreground and the towering pines dotting the landscape with shade. A Buddhist stupa off in the distance belies the reality that this territory is populated mostly by Hindu people. A number of local Hindu women who roam up and down the hill picking tea leaves to stuff their burlap bags.

But then you turn a corner and the landscape becomes rocky, mountainous, and sunny. A while later it becomes windy, and then you find yourself passing a Hindu temple with a few lazy dogs napping out front and a smiling 3-year-old girl waving. Her mother, behind the house, kindly waves too as your group passes by.

The conversation also takes its different turns. For a time, you are leading the pack, talking with a young local guy whose English is very understandable as he shares about his challenges and how he found the Lord. Thirty minutes later, it’s rock climbing and photography at the back of the group with another expat. An hour later, you’re praying for a new friend and encouraging one another. The hike is engaging but allows for ample connection and interesting breaks - the tour guides pause here and there to tell us which trees produce pods giving out something like cotton, which leaves are good for cooking, and which fruits can be eaten. A scaly green, red, and orange lizard holds still long enough atop a stone to take several enviable pictures.

This almost 200-mile long trail winds through tea country. We hike only Stage 1, but there are dozens of stages. Afterwards, we will stop in the tea factory and see how tea is processed and eventually sold. But being here and seeing how it grows and especially WHO is harvesting it, and how they live, is the experience of a lifetime. Yet not all is what you might expect. 200 feet from the Hindu temple with the dogs, we pass between two buildings. Two of the doors on the left, front doors of homes, have a cross hanging on it. Believers live in this village. God is at work even here, a world away from anything recognizable for us.

Hospitality’s Queen, The Skipper and The Evangelist, The Musician, the Movie Star Preacher, Mr. Personality, and the others – it’s one thing to know their (nick)names but quite another to see their faces, to ride in the bed of the truck with them, and to hear their stories. But to get a sense for the landscape that surrounds them – physical and spiritual – so that we know how to pray for them – all of that is priceless.

On the last day, we brave traffic and make it to our hotel on the Indian Ocean. Wading out into the water, we laugh, play, and plan now, as before, but now we do so with the clarity of each of those faces and their situations in mind. Now when we pray for the Movie Star Preacher or The Entrepreneur, we will personally remember what it smells, sounds, and tastes like at their church or home; the kind, personal welcome of their church members; the feeling of spiritual oppression in the city and hill country; and the immense power of our friends’ prayers to the Lord.

And we will join them in prayer as often as we can. God has linked our hearts to his work in this part of the world now. That part of the journey has changed us now and will change what we see along our journey in the future.