What I Miss About Home – Coleman Thomas
Just as the fishermen left their nets and families to follow Jesus, I feel like I have left things that were familiar to me all my life, to go to a new place that is very different from what I knew. I left a large church with a big congregation and an active Sunday School program to come to a 200-year-old church with about 20 active members. As a Christian, I am quite the minority in India, compared to the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Zoroastrians (wow!). I left acting and performing opportunities, too, but I am still able to sing in a choir and be in the middle school play. And of course, I left friends that I had known all my life in New York, but I have made new friends from places like India, Nepal, Bhutan, Taiwan, America, Korea, and Cambodia.
I miss my dog Suzy, too, but I know that there would not be enough time to play with her or walk her here. There are many after-school and weekend activities in this boarding school. Besides, Suzy would not like all the monkeys everywhere. When we have rice and lentils several days in a row at school, it really makes me miss Kraft macaroni and cheese, bagels, tacos, and canteloupe (all things we cannot get here in the mountains.) I definitely miss my family – my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and church family, but I communicate with them through email and snail-mail. I really appreciate the care package from my former Sunday School class.
What I Thought It Would Be Like, and
How It Really Is
– Chris Thomas
Before I came to India, I thought that living in India would be totally different from life back in the States. I thought that everyone would wear turbans and speak with a really heavy Indian accent. I thought that the streets would be filled with snake charmers and monkey trainers. I thought there would be jungles filled with elephants, tigers, and snakes, and that during monsoon season, the streets would be so flooded that we would have to swim to school!
When I arrived in India, I soon realized it was totally different. Delhi was a vast metropolis, very crowded and smoggy, with lots of beggars, cab drivers and pickpockets, all crowding around you trying to get some money as soon as you walked out of the airport. The mountain hill-station that we live in, Mussoorie, is better than Delhi, with cool mountain air, no smog, hardly any stink, and fewer people. Sadly, there is no jungle here – with only a few leopards and precious few snakes. But there is no shortage of monkeys here; in fact, Rhesus and Langur monkeys are everywhere!
I miss all my friends back home very much. However, I have made many new friends here. My friends back home were mostly American. Here my friends are from India, Korea, Japan, Nepal, Tibet, Nigeria, Eritrea, Vietnam, Germany, Finland, Laos, Bhutan, England, America, Canada and South Africa. Everyone is very nice and positive here, and it is easy to be friends with almost everyone here.
I was partially right in thinking living in India would be very different from living in the U.S. It is different, but not in the same way I thought it would be. The stereotypes were not true, but India is still a place of amazing differences.
God’s Call to Us to Work in India – Barbara Thomas
It began as a recurring thought, one that was persistent and would not go away. It developed into a gentle tugging at the heart – a longing to serve and do something with a great purpose. I told Jeff about these thought and feelings – amazingly, he reported the same to me! In time we recognized it as a call from God, but discerning that call took work and prayer. We read, we studied the bible, we counseled with friends and pastors, we prayed to understand what God would have us do.
Now three years later, we wholeheartedly believe that we have been called by God to a teaching ministry at Woodstock Christian International School in northern India. We recognize that God has prepared us for this work by giving us talents for the job, providing role models in the mission field who inspire and instruct us, providing us a place for meaningful work, and surrounding us with a supportive home church, family and friends. We are blessed with children who know God, and we have engaged in this mission united as a family.
What it means to work in mission in India – Jeffrey Thomas
The first chapter of Mark’s gospel guides our thoughts this Holy Week, as we ponder our mission. Verse 15, for example: …the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
and Verse 38: Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.
India is a land of stunning contrasts—
· ugly squalor and brilliant mountain vistas;
· grasping hucksterism and generous hospitality;
· illiteracy and amazing multilingual literary tradition;
· poor public sanitation and a world-class pharmaceutical industry;
· patently corrupt bureaucracy and a vibrant democracy;
· electric power shortages and global technology institutes;
· otherworldly spirituality and dramatic communal insularity;
· shockingly lax safety standards and top-notch medical care;
· wealth unconcernedly next to poverty.
The great contrast with the relatively comfortable safety and security in Westchester, in the U.S., in the western world, faces us nearly every day, even in our relatively quiet and cool and secure aerie in the Himalayas. How near is the kingdom of God? Is it nearer to Pleasantville? Or to Mussoorie? I confess, this place seems farther away from the Kingdom, to my Protestant/Reformed responsible practical mind. And yet, it seems obvious that Jesus was not relating the kingdom of God to potable water and clean streets, but rather to our state of mind, our relationship to God and each other, and to his message of good news.
Jesus was an unusual prophet, in that he traveled. The typically expected mode for the Great Man is to establish a base, a locus of power to which disciples would flock. But Jesus is on the move, going on to neighboring towns, proclaiming the message. We follow that model, both literally – to the far corners of the earth – and figuratively, in questioning and expanding our knowledge and attitudes about the universe, about our place in the kingdom of heaven. We are excited about this knowledge, and our attitude is expressed in our travel here, our service here, in returning to my earlier vocation as educator, and always Reformed, ever reforming.
A certain tune and words come to mind: the old hymn, recently re-worded as “Called as Partners in Christ’s Service” (number 343 in the Presbyterian hymnal) …
Make us partners in our living,
Our compassion to increase,
Messengers of faith, thus giving
Hope and confidence and peace.
The lines from the hymn describe well our sense of mission.
· As messengers of faith, we model the Christian life every day.
· As partners with the local Church of North India, we assist in leading worship and Christian Education both at the school and at the neighboring church.
· As educators, we strengthen the school’s commitment to Christian service, and by preparing young people for an ethical future with the Christian story in their hearts.
· As parents, we call on Christ’s compassion as we deal with our own children in transition as well as when we deal in loco parentis to dozens of others’ children in this boarding school.
· As people humbled by the enormity of the development needs we see every day, we seek ways to give hope and confidence and peace.
Yet the hymn-writer’s message is also ambiguous, in a hope-filled way: “giving hope and confidence and peace” to whom? We who are singing can do the giving; and we can also receive that same hope and confidence and peace, from our faith in Christ.
At challenging moments – intestinal illness, or culture clash, or language difficulty, or interminable rainfall, or overloaded underpaid work schedule – we remember our vows; we remember these verses; we remember our supporters back in our home church; we remember the message of good news.