Coming into this year, I felt I had become hardened to certain recurring sins in my life. I had started to lose sight of the incomprehensible value of God’s grace and the wonderful freedom that comes from the cross. As such, my year-long prayer request was for me to see the weight of my sin and disobedience in light of God’s perfect holiness.

In His infinite wisdom, God answered this prayer most unexpectedly through a relationship crisis. He showed me that I had been living for other idols besides Him, revealed to me the extent of my brokenness yet again, and in showing me the seriousness of my offense to Him, He allowed me to see that He was my everything. He alone was my hope, and even while I was a sinner, His grace and love for me were perfect. That night, His Spirit gave me a renewed faith, and I committed to living my summer for the glory of His name. At 11:59 PM of the late deadline, my STSM application was submitted.

After a long 24 hours of travel to India—many of which I thought we would surely perish on the bus (the whole country is a giant mario kart track)—we arrived at our home base of St. Paul School. Here we met the missionaries, who had built up the school from the Jalpaiguri jungle and have been serving faithfully for decades.

Saturday was our first day of ministry. We accompanied the staff to a remote village in the jungle, where many locals lived in bamboo huts accessible only by foot or tuktuk. As we neared the clearing, my feelings of excitement were increasingly dampened by feelings of unfamiliarity and even discomfort. However, we pressed on, praising God with VBS dances and presenting the gospel through skits. As we were wrapping up, the discomfort returned as a local man, a devout Hindu, began a heated argument with our staff, demanding we leave and never come back because he believed we were teaching the children evil things.

I understood his perspective and even empathized with him; his ancestors had been worshipping these gods for countless generations, and here we were telling them there is but one God. It was in these moments that I had to go back to what the Bible says about God and trust in His character—His goodness, His holiness, His justice, and His grace. I had to remind myself of the simple truths of the gospel: how we are all condemned, even dead, in our sin, but how Jesus came to fulfill God’s righteous requirement and wrath in order to give us life. Our ministry was not based solely on our personal beliefs or our ability to perform, but it was founded on the infallible truth of Scripture and the power of the cross.

As the shouting died down and we were about to leave, the man’s wife came and started screaming at the staff. Her face was contorted with pure rage, and it was my first taste of the harsh persecution that many of our brothers and sisters in India endure. At that moment, my "KCM bubble" of idealism and naivety popped, and I was thrust into the realities of being a Christian in a spiritually dark country. Even then, on the way back, one of our group members asked one of the staff members if he would consider ministering to another village in the face of such opposition. He looked us square in the face and said no, "We will continue to go until they kill us."

I soon found that the conviction behind his words was a reflection of the life posture of the missionaries in North India. Their lives were not their own; they truly lived in obedience to their good shepherd. Christianity there felt different because the stakes were higher. Here, if you are not a Christian, you are likely atheist or agnostic. There, if you are not Christian, you are Hindu. Here, we don't often face blatant persecution. There, your village can shun you, harass you, and even kill you for your faith. I felt the realities of spiritual warfare much more strongly in North India, which is perhaps why the missionaries lived with such dependence on God. Seeing this, my own faith grew, as did my desire to deny myself and live wholly dependent on Him.

Our team learned how to start each day with prayer at 5:30 AM, crying out to God for His grace, for the hearts of the villagers to be turned to flesh, and for God to be our only strength. We learned from the orphans and missionaries in Jaigaon that God truly provides everything we need in His perfect providence. Missionary James showed us how there is such abundant joy in living for Jesus, and Susanna SMN shared a graceful wisdom and peace that comes from deep trust in the Lord. 

Most of all, I learned to love my Bible; God opened my eyes to see just how precious his word is, and how much of a blessing it is to be able to do his work. In serving him, I was exposed to the many ways God is working in both established ministries and in the darkest cities. He gave me a greater heart for the people of India and for overseas missions through this trip, and I am truly grateful that I went on STSM this year.