This summer God blessed me with the opportunity to go to North India to join him in his work.This past year at college I had rediscovered my faith and recommitted myself to Christ. Growing up, I had been on missions before, and having heard about STSM from other KCM members in Santa Barbara, it struck my interest. There was no feeling or moment that told me to go on missions, but I decided to apply and completely surrender myself and serve him wherever he would lead me. I knew that if I offered my body as an instrument to do his will, I would be able to experience his work. 

There were so many blessings that I experienced from this trip. One of the blessings were the testimonies that I heard over the course of the mission trip. Through testimonies I heard from the locals, missionaries, and pastors I was able to hear about how real, powerful, and living my God is, in the ways he drastically changed and saved people's lives. Hearing these testimonies alone increased my faith, and to an extent I am more excited to share the testimonies I heard here at home more than my own. I also did not expect to get poured into as much as I did. Going into this trip I had the mindset that I was going to sacrifice my body to the Lord, and just serve in every way possible, putting everyone and the ministry before myself. However I was served twicefold by my team, the staff, students, pastors, and missionaries we met, and I felt so thankful and blessed by these people who constantly prayed and cared for me. Along with this mindset I also came with a huge amount of pride. I believed that I was humble enough, physically capable, and mentally capable to really be the “ultimate” servant and I was excited to utilize these characteristics lol. However, time and time again throughout the trip, whether it be due to little sleep or annoying circumstances, God reminded me that I am none of these and there is only so much my flesh can do. I was reminded that I am not able to accomplish everything relying on my own flesh, and there is nothing that can't be accomplished when relying on God. Through this blessing I learned that all of my mind and strength is given to me by God, and he can also take it from me as well, and so I must always rely on him in every circumstance.

Another blessing was learning how powerful and important prayer is. Every morning we would wake up at 5 am to attend morning prayer at 5:30. The first time walking into the chapel was uncomfortable, because I found Susana Samonim physically crying out to God, slapping her thigh rhythmically and filling the small chapel with the sound of her hand hitting her thigh. All the other staff members would cry out as well, and some would slap their thighs and add to the pounding sound pulsating through the chapel. Although unfamiliar with it, I saw a desperation and intentionality in prayer that would set my day before me with confidence and joy every morning. This energy was constant throughout the day, our team and the staff would surround every activity and moment in prayer. Before every car ride and train ride we prayed and were prayed over. I learned that even before we had got to India, every church and staff person we served with had been praying hard for our team. There was a point towards the end of the trip, where I was just so happy and grateful with how many blessings and how amazing the experience had been. At this moment I realized that the entire trip had gone how it had gone because it had been so built, soaked, and protected in prayer from before we had even set foot in India. Every success, every struggle which had been overcome had been set before us the way they had because of the prayers before and during the trip, the prayers of the people in India and around the world, and God’s faithfulness to those prayers. Through this, and also the testimonies dedicated to God answering prayerful lives has shown me that God is always listening and answering my prayers. What I may think impossible should be given to God because he can do the impossible, and I will have full confidence that he can do those things. 

Coming back from India my biggest takeaway is how God revealed to me how blessed I am. Hearing people’s testimonies broke my heart, because I was able to see how these people who so desperately need, thirst for, and rely on God would often face persecution from not only their own people but their own families. One child was only 13 and believed in Jesus because through desperate prayer her mother was saved from a fatal sickness, yet that same mother persecutes and discourages her from going to church. Other kids just as young and even younger are persecuted by their own families yet still come out to hear about Jesus. Adults lose contact with their families and become disowned because they follow Jesus. And all of this is less because they find differences or find it socially weird, but more because abandoning the Hindu religion is abandoning their families in a sense, abandoning the faith that previous generations put so much will and life into. To me family means so much, and if I was put in their positions I really am not sure if I could do the same. People in the city of Varanasi spend their entire lives without hearing the gospel and follow Satan to the bottom of the Ganges river because that is all they know. It made me mad at one point about how unjust it made God seem to me. Who am I to be able to grow up in California, have a Christian family, worship my God freely? One of my teammates told me something that gave me a little more peace, that he thinks that God placed me in my family because he knew I wouldn’t be strong enough and he placed these kids in their families because he knew they would be strong enough, because he is a kind, loving, and merciful God who wants everyone to have a relationship with him. Now having understood this I know that I can't take any of this life for granted. I have been blessed and been given so much by God that the least I can give to him is everything. Every success, every failure, every moment in my life must be used to glorify him and worship him because in other parts of the world people are sacrificing so much more to have a relationship with him. All glory to God.