Email: Ariel Givens

Newsletter from India

Friends,

I am sitting in my room, a place that I have made comfortable with my pictures and various knickknacks from home. The hostel (dorm) in which I live is empty. All the girls have left for the holiday, Puga. Many of the students (and teachers) love this holiday because it is the time in which they give their books to be blessed by God. This translates as no reading or studying for an entire day. One of the great things about living in a country of many religions is that you get to celebrate all of the religious holidays as a nation. It is raining outside, something that has not occurred for some time now. I really love the rain in this place. It gives me comfort.

Living here in India has created within me a feeling of blessing. I feel so blessed to be with the native people of India as they share with me their love for their land. I have been welcomed into this land with open arms and open hearts and thus find it easier to open my heart to this strange yet familiar place. As I expected, many things are different here: the scenery is different, the hot climate is different, the food is different, the rules of “etiquette” are different. I feel that I am relearning many things: the language, the “proper way to act,” even the way to wear my clothes. But I also have noticed that many things are not so different. One such thing is the hospitality I have received since I first came. The way people have accepted me into their lives has been a truly humbling experience. People have graciously invited me to their homes within days of meeting me, cooked meals for me, and have even told me I am one of their family. Even in my home country I have not felt such hospitality.

One such act of hospitality happened to me which reminded me of the fourth chapter of Gospel of John, the story of the women at the well. The very first day I was in Mavelikara, my new home for a year, several of the young English teachers about my age took me into the town center so that I could familiarize myself with the place. On the way (it is a 20-minute walk from the hostel to town) I slipped, and my foot fell into a pile of mud. My new companion Swapna, who I had only met hours ago, kindly walked me to the next house around the corner. She asked the man there, dressed in nothing but a Kaili, a traditional sheet like skirt that men often wear, if I could wash my foot off. He pointed behind his house, a concrete block with a dirt path running alongside of it. I was a little apprehensive of the situation, since I didn’t know these people, but thought perhaps Swapna knew them. I felt a bit like I was intruding on their private lives. A woman, working behind the house, saw me, smiled, took my hand, and led me to a well. There she lifted up a bucket of water, poured the water over my foot, and then began to wash my feet. My first instinct was to pull away. After all, I do not deserve to have my feet washed by this woman who has welcomed me, a stranger, into her home, without a question or hesitation. But as she washed, the Bible passage came to mind and I realized she was doing something that for some is hard and for others comes easily; she was doing as Jesus commanded, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I thanked the woman in the best way I could, not knowing a lick of Malayalam at that point, by simply nodding my head and smiling. After we left, I asked Swapna if she knew those people. She replied, “I thought you would ask that,” and then “No.”

In my short life I have found, wherever you wonder on this great earth, one thing never changes. That one thing is love. As Paul states in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians “Now abideth, faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is love.”

Ariel