Recently I had the opportunity to visit a Christ-based organization doing work in South Asia as a part of the Fellowship House. I asked my intern to answer the following question in reflection to her trip: What 3 words/phrases best describe our recent trip to South Asia? My answer to this question was as such…
1. RESILIENT – The primary focus of BYFC (the organization we went to visit) is that of working with children. The country is largely a Muslim/Hindi country (98%) with very few believers. As a result of their work focusing on children, we saw a lot of them! Sadly, 1 out of every 15 children in this country is on the streets. Either the parents have passed away, they have been abandoned, or mom and dad simply are not able to provide for them. Imagine, one child of your community out of every 15 without a home, proper food, clothing or parental care! This means that out of 100 children, 7 are left to fend for themselves on the streets. However, it gets worse. It isn’t like these kids on the street are teenagers even. Granted, some are, but many are as young as 3 years old! I can’t tell you how many 3-4 year old children we saw wondering the streets late at night, walking in the busy streets, begging for money or trying to sell some odd item. Imagine, when other children are at school, these homeless kids are on the street, digging through trash, doing whatever cheap labor they can find. I witnessed young boys (by young I mean 8 years old) doing construction work, bending iron, crushing bricks, or other hard, back-breaking jobs… jobs that few adults in the US would venture to do. Just reflecting on this reminds me how sickening all of this is.
One thing that BYFC has done, among many things, is providing children who typically are not in school opportunities to be in school. Additionally, they recently opened their 4th orphanage where they take these children in as their own. The children are given a warm home, food, and a believing family lives with them to serve as parents and mentors. These were some of the most precious children ever… they truly melt your heart. How I wish that we could adopt them, but for various political reasons the country’s government won’t allow foreigners to adopt their children (primarily fearing that those would adopt them would pollute their minds).
The word RESILIENT… the reason I chose this word is that whether they are cared for or not, in a home or on the streets, well-clothed or without clothes, children have a God-given ability to find great joy in life. Though they have been neglected and abandoned by the world, these children have enough resiliency to find happiness, friendship, a kind smile and laughter. Wow, what a gift from the Lord. But as they get older, they become less resilient, as we all do, and slowly their hard world begins to chip away at their personhood, destroying any sense of self, leaving a rather cold, empty and hopeless shell of a person. How my heart grieves over this bondage and decay of His creation! But I thank HIM for His work despite the chaos and brokenness, and for raising up people like Peter (our friend) to commit their entire lives to meeting the needs of these youth and introducing them to the life-changing person of Jesus Christ.
2. CHRIST-BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT – I am thoroughly impressed with the work of Peter and YFC. As Peter and I had many discussions, the theology of the “holistic gospel” (or as I would say, “preach and heal”) drives every aspect of what they do. They involve themselves largely in forming relationships from which they meet needs, empower individuals, provide homes for homeless children, schools for uneducated children, job training and life skill training for not just youth but families too, savings programs, health programs, drug treatment education and rehab centers, HIV/Aids training and awareness (they even teach these things in Muslim madrasses… schools for young Muslim boys), all of which allows them to fully live out and proclaim the gospel as well as foster transformation through discipleship. Literally, all of these things and many more are the works of YFC. In my mind, they are really doing “Christ-based community development”. While in South Asia I learned that Peter has a PhD in Economics (masters from US and doctorate from UK)! Here is a native of this country who himself grew up in the country (spending much of his life in poverty), who through the transformation of the gospel of Jesus Christ has committed his entire life (and that of his family) to the effort of seeking first His kingdom among his own people. Praise be to God for doing a good work through the person of Peter! Praise God for Peter’s and BYFC’s example in not just talking Jesus, but doing Jesus too!
3. ANT HILL – Perhaps an odd thing to say, but there were SO many people in this country that no matter where you went, there were people. So many people that it reminded me of a busy and bustling ant hill! The capital of this country has 15 million people and is the densest city in the world! Though it is a smaller city than many others throughout Asia, in is jam-packed and overflowing to say the least. Every day approximately 2,000 people move from the countryside to the city, thus, it continues to grow at rapid speed.
While in the country we also visited the northern part of the country, in the villages as they would say. Driving 6 hours North (which was an adventure of its own), there was not one time where there was a break from the people. No matter where you were, there were people working the rice fields, flooding the road, working the streets and flowing out from every which direction. Personal space is by no means a reality there and can come as somewhat of a surprise to a kid who grew up in Wyoming with less than half a million people in the entire state!
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