I didn’t intend to participate in STSM this year. As a former STSMer last year, I had planned to focus on progressing my career goals of joining the Navy by applying for a summer training program. However, some unforeseen medical complications arose and I was disqualified from the military a week before STSM applications were due. Suddenly, without any plans for the summer, I began searching for ways to use my summer productively. It was then that I felt the conviction to go on STSM once again, knowing that missions is an eternally worthwhile cause, always worthy of my time and effort. After signing up, I elected to go back to North India for a second time. Although the idea of going to a new country seemed attractive, as I prayed, I felt the Lord instructing me to further build upon the relationships I had built with the missionaries and locals that I met last year. With this, the Lord continued to share with me His heart for the people of India. Going into this trip, I was expecting God to reveal new things than the year prior. However, I was reminded of many of the same themes as the year prior: the importance of prayer, living with a spiritual worldview, and fighting the good fight.

Praying was constant throughout our trip. Whether it’s our daily 5am prayer with the missionaries, praying before performing our Gospel-centered skits, or prayer walking, we were always praying. Additionally, it was an immense blessing to spend time with so many local prayer warriors. In one tea garden village called “Phuguri” that we traveled to, tea garden workers would come to the church everyday and pray for two hours despite having done hard labor in the tea gardens all day. Something else that I admired was that our host missionaries would always immediately and spontaneously pray when an issue was brought up. Why push it off and pray about it later when we could pray about it now? Throughout these past two years, I’ve been able to see what it means to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17).  Most importantly, my view on prayer has drastically changed over the past two years from something legalistic to something that is extremely practical. In fact, the most practical tool we can use in any situation.
Tying into prayer, another theme was living with a spiritual worldview, not a worldly one. Pastor Roman, one of the local pastors who traveled with us, taught me that the enemy is always working against us spiritually in four main ways: causing physical harm through disease and accidents, giving people worldly visions and goals, instilling greed in Christian leaders, and taking away Godly anointing (like Samson). So because of this, Pastor Roman instructed us to bind the enemy in prayer every time before we do ministry. Although it initially seemed far-fetched, I realized this is always how I ought to think because this is the TRUE reality that we believe in as Christians (Ephesians 6:12). We can’t just look at worldly circumstances at face value, but we need to understand the spiritual happenings. The enemy wants us to ignore this reality and distract us away from eternal matters.

One important area of ministry for our team that I overlooked was missionary encouragement. I always thought missionaries were spiritual superheroes and they were somehow always charged for mission work. However, that’s not true. Our missionaries shared about the struggles of coming back to India from their comfortable home in Korea and doing the same mundane tasks day after day. But even in the midst of these struggles, our missionaries expressed how they intentionally choose to fight the good fight everyday, knowing that their efforts are going towards eternal matters. Even though my two total months isn’t comparable to their over 20 years in India, I too felt that the work I was doing was mundane for my second time around. The excitement of coming to a completely unfamiliar place that I felt last year wasn’t there this time around. Our ministry and travel itinerary was almost exactly the same. All the skits we were performing were exactly the same. Even most of the kids were the same. But what I learned through our missionaries is that even when the emotion isn’t there, we need to trust that God is still working despite our feelings and continue to fight the good fight. 

With these three main lessons in mind, I pray that I would continue to grow in boldness and urgency for the Gospel to those around me at UCSB. I’m extremely challenged by the Christians in India who aren’t as fortunate with comfort or material things as I am, yet they are so unwavering in their faith and striving to share the Gospel with their home villages and families. I too want to have that same desperate longing to see my friends around me accept Jesus into their lives. Since last year, God has placed a burden on my heart for revival in UCSB and has shown me how He is working here amidst the party culture. With that being the case, I pray with all my heart that I would not waste the remainder of my years in college on worldly endeavors, but that I would take the opportunity to join and experience what God is doing. And I urge you–wherever you are–to do the same.