Sweetie's Adventures in India

Its been an exciting summer as usual - full of camp, family and lots of time chasing God's heart.  Every summer, we are blessed with awesome students who love God and are willing and desire to serve others at our camps in order to share Him with the campers and to get closer to their calling.  These students are called the Servant Team.  I'll share more about summer camps and our awesome Servant Team later on, but this is not my blog today.  

Today, I'm sharing a journal entry from our female summer chaplain - we'll identify her as Sweetie for the blog purposes.  She spent the summer praying for our Servant Team, working with the work crew and basically working her fanny off doing whatever needed to be done for His Kingdom.  Only a couple of days after our last camp and post retreat, Sweetie took off for India - to serve in whatever capacity she can  for 3 months.  She has put college on hold while answering a call placed on her heart.  

Intern Caitlan, me, Chaplain Sweetie

As she keeps me posted, which she says won't be daily, I've decided that her adventure needs to be documented (not only for her memories but to share with others) and so I'm basically "loaning" her my blog space (hope you like it Sweetie - I knew you weren't expecting it).  I hope you will follow her adventures, but more importantly, I hope that you will pray for her daily and nightly as it sounds as if she is already under attack by the enemy  (^{2 "}Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds,^(F) 3 because you know that the testing of your faith^(G) produces perseverance.^(H)4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature^(I) and complete, not lacking anything". James 1:2-4)

Here is her first letter to me: 

Monday 30/7/12

                  I’ve been in India for almost a week. I’m still very homesick, but I really do like it here. I’m learning to love it more and more every day. I’ve learned a little Hindi and a few mannerism Indians have which take place of some of ours. 


Thursday night while I was asleep two demons visited me. One sat on my bed and talked to me, the other sat in the corner very submissive. It was the first time I was ever part of physical spiritual warfare. I wasn’t completely awake, but the way we spoke to each other, I don’t think that was their first time to visit me. I was never scared while talking to them, but last night was the first night I didn’t sleep completely under the covers. The next night we prayed in our room before we went to sleep and they didn’t visit. I cuddled with my bible all night. However, they did come back Saturday night. I never saw them; just heard them and could feel their presence. Friday night, another family of Americans, came over for fajitas.  They’re really nice and we had a lot of fun and played some games with them.

 Saturday, I had my first authentic Indian meal. It was awesome!! We had some chicken stuff and lassi, naan, fried rice and some type of noodles. It was delicious. Sunday morning we went to church and I got to meet the girl I’m going to be working  with. She was really nice and very cute. I’m going to work with her Wednesday. I’m really excited. That night we played Settlers of Catan as a family. It was a lot more fun than I’d expected it to be. That night, Logan skyped me at 2 in the morning and right in the middle of our conversation all the power in my city went out. This hasn’t happened in 10 years. The amount of people without power added up to all of the US and Canada combined. That’s crazy!!! 

This morning we went to a village of 1 million people. The leader was very nice and welcoming. At one point he looked at me and said “I’m sure you won’t believe this” then proceeded to tell us a story about a woman that was possessed and kept becoming ill because of it and he brought the demon out of her. My host family just looked at me and kinda chuckled. One of the local boys kept us very entertained. He loved showing us his “window” aka his missing tooth. I will be helping him rebuild his language school. I’ll help teach and set up curriculum. I’m not a very good teacher, so we’ll see how this goes; haha, it should be interesting. We had lunch at another Indian restaurant. It wasn’t very good, but I managed to choke it down. Once we got back from lunch we finally had power again, which was around 1:30 or 2. We went and saw Ice Age at 3:30. It was pretty good. The theaters were very nice. They’re super clean and the chairs were very puffy and comfy. They even reclined.

 It’s almost time for bed, I’m hoping I can keep my head above the covers tonight. I know God will protect me.

Sleep Tight sweet girl and remember this:  “You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” Psalm 119:114 NIV

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