More to Life

Since my managers in Orlando gave me the first week off to shop and get acclimated to Chennai, I was able to accompany Mary last week to a couple of the ministries she is involved in. While India certainly has a middle class which enjoys many of the conveniences we do in the US, it also has extreme poverty that you would have difficulty finding an equivalent of back home.

The first afternoon, we went to a home for destitute elderly widows. After a time of prayer with the staff, Mary took the blood pressure of each woman. Since I was there and anxious for something to do, I wrote each one down in the folder each woman carried. What precious women. They spoke no English, and we spoke almost no Tamil—Mary knows at least a greeting—so we could communicate very little. Sometimes Mary would tell the woman, in English, that her blood pressure was very good or improving. Certainly the women couldn’t understand the words, but they could probably read the tone; they did seem to enjoy hearing it.

Many of the women, once we were done and they were waiting for the doctor who volunteers to take a look at each and write some addition notes in the folder, took a seat on the floor. Can you see your elderly mother or grandmother crossing her legs and plopping down on the rug? But chairs were few, and these women didn’t think a thing of it. At night, the fifteen who live at the home sleep on mats in a room about the size of a living room.

Afterward we went across the street to the home of a bedfast woman that Mary gives a bath to each week. The size of the room she lives in and rarely leaves (they bring three meals a day to her from the ministry across the street) is maybe half the size of a small bedroom. Each week Mary has to patiently talk her into going through with the bath, and this week neither she nor the staff members who tried were successful.

The next afternoon I accompanied Mary and many others from different parts of the world--Ireland and Holland, as well as India, of course—on a visit to a Chennai slum. You would barely believe me if I told you the poverty these families live in. Mary and a few others, including a registered nurse, listen to and help those with medical problems. I didn’t know that I would be able to do anything but observe. But we had not yet reached the larger cleared area where they would minister when some younger elementary-aged children started asking my name. I think they were happy to show off some of their English skills, as well as eager for attention from these strange outsiders. Though they put much effort into it, they never were able to get me to remember, or even pronounce correctly, the Tamil words for “What’s your name?” or “I’m glad to meet you.” (One girl finally decided that yelling it into my ear would surely make a difference, but she was disappointed.)

What I lacked in mental capacity, I determined to make up with physical effort. Many of the younger kids were happy to be picked up, and semi-tossing them into the air made for a fun game. Predictably, I was out of breath and energy long before they tired of it. Finally I found a place to sit. You know that game where the dad puts a young child on his knees facing him, and bounces him up and down, suddenly dropping him through his parted knees, and catching him before he hits the ground? I know you do, because a quick survey has convinced me that all dads in every culture play that game with their kids. Must be because it works. These kids thought it was great fun as we played it, and I was at least able to sit!

I do hope to be able to go back to this ministry. I’ll have to see how I can arrange my work schedule to still get a full week in but be able to leave early one afternoon. Life is more than working on computers.