Posted on by Renee Meyer

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for India

I traveled home from India by myself, needing a few extra days before the boys started school.

I have always loved traveling by myself, finding that I hear from the Lord and am able to process in a deeper way while traveling. Also, I love airports. And as any parent knows, after traveling with kids flying solo feels like a dang vacation.

My flight was at 3:30 AM on a Friday morning. I spent Thursday saying goodbye to dear friends in India, giving and receiving gifts, and having last sweet moments with our group of college students. I thought when they left our hotel room at 11 that I was seeing them for the last time. But as I arrived downstairs, I saw big grins on the faces of all the hotel staff and found our whole team waiting to sing me a song and say one last goodbye.

Matt and our friend Abhik dropped me off at the airport at 1AM. I breezed through check in and security, since hardly anyone else was there besides a sweet family who were also traveling through Qatar to Chicago (on their way to Seattle, so they had a longer trip ahead of them: small children.)

That left me with a couple of hours to kill in the Kolkata airport. Knowing I needed to stay awake, and wanting to take the time to think and process over the past 3 weeks, I opened my journal and thought through all that I’d learned and seen in the 3 cities I’d visited. The universities, slums, gardens, rock quarries, malls, the wide variety of places we visited. I wrote about the friends I made, the welcome I received, the things I’d learned. I wrote about the weather and the food and the beautiful people of Kolkata, where we spent the bulk of our time.

Then I thought back to our first days, with the Hope Venture. I thought about what it meant to me, returning to a place of privilege and comfort, after seeing such sorrow and hardship, but also hope and help. I thought about the precious Indian friends I made who do not turn their eyes away from the hurting and broken in their neighborhoods and city. And I asked myself what I could do in my own neighborhood and city for the hurting and broken.

Here is the prayer I wrote that morning. Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer · 1 Comment

A Story of India: Finding Jesus at the Home of Hope

We spent our first week in India with a team from an amazing organization called The Hope Venture. After praying for and supporting The Hope Venture’s humanitarian work for years, it was amazing to be able to see several projects up close and personal.

We got to meet kids who are able to go to school because of the supplies they receive through the Back Pack Program: It is AMAZING to see what a difference this program makes, especially knowing it is entirely funded by $10 dollar donations!

We visited a vocational training center, where precious women come daily for courses teaching them to sew. This allows them to sew for their children (fabric is much more affordable than finished clothing), as well as eventually sewing for others and helping to provide for and support their families.

Rock Quarry outside of Bangalore, India. People live and work here for next to nothing.

A highlight of our time was visiting a feeding center at a rock quarry. This was one of the bleakest places I have ever been, I can not imagine having a quarry be my workplace and home.

When the Hope Venture partners who run the feeding center arrived, we saw children, faces lit with joy, streaming in from every direction. We participated in the program for the evening (character-based stories and singing), helped to feed the children, and every one of us left a large chunk of our hearts.

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But the memory I’ll carry with me from my time in India until I die was at the Home of Hope. Here’s how The Hope Venture describes this beautiful, heart wrenching place:

Imagine walking or driving through the streets of your neighborhood and seeing hundreds of destitute people abandoned on the streets left to die. Raja, a rickshaw driver, decided that he could no longer sit by and watch these people suffer. He had to do something to help them. He began bringing them into his home. He started to mend their wounds, clean their forsaken bodies, and give them their dignity and hope back.

But he needed a place for those he was rescuing and so he began the Home of Hope in Bangaluru, India. The Hope Venture is proud to partner with this trusted man in any way we can. We want to help those that are suffering reclaim dignity and honor. (www.thehopeventure.org/project/home-of-hope)

Of all the things we expected to do and see in India, the Home of Hope made me the most nervous. I am not afraid of much, I can talk to anyone, and I have seen darkness and poverty, but y’all? There is a reason I am not a doctor or nurse. Just being a mom comes with more physical wounds and body fluids than I can handle sometimes. And I have a front row seat to lots of mental health issues, but I have no experience at all with the kind of mental illness that lands people vulnerable and alone on the streets. I’d been asking God to really let me see people, to not turn away, to break my heart for what breaks His. But I was SCARED. Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer · 2 Comments

6 Things I Learned from India

Last month I had the privilege and blessing to spend 3 weeks in India with Matt and 8 college students. We visited 3 cities, met hundreds of beautiful people, ate some of the best (and spiciest) food I have ever tasted, and experienced more life in 3 weeks than I could have dreamed. I loved the portions of India I got to see and experience (there is SO MUCH MORE.)

I love India’s beautiful people, especially their smiles, eyes full of joy.

I love the unity in diversity: everything is recognizably Indian, yet each person you meet has vastly different beliefs, thoughts, and stories.

I love that everything in India is turned up a notch: You like people? 1000s of people! You like bright colors? Everyone you meet is swathed in colorful array! You like spicy food? Here it is so hot you will breath fire!

I loved the hospitality we experienced: Welcomed and warmly greeted everywhere we went. We had tea in the home of the director of a company we toured, and when we were finished we tried to take our cups into the kitchen. This CEO literally RAN at us to gather up all the cups he could carry, insisting we sit down and make ourselves comfortable.

I loved meeting people of many different faiths. And I loved seeing my own faith beautifully lived out so far from where I have experienced it, in such a different context but the SAME Jesus.

Often when people travel, they say they were changed, and India for sure changed each of us. But what does that really mean? HOW did India change me? Read more