Cody's Thoughts

I can honestly say that this India trip was life-changing. I prepared and went on this trip expecting my heart to be broken and to feel sorry for these kids. With that being said, I was completely wrong. I was simply astounded at the sheer level of dedication and love for God that emanated out of these children.

The children's home was situated on the top of a hill and was a 15 minute hike from the nearest street. We pulled up at the trail-head at about 8 o’clock at night and through the window, we could see a mass of kids waiting for us. The energy levels in our car immediately rose and those sleeping sprang up out of their sleep. As we unloaded the luggage, the children came up to us and told us that they would help. While I was walking up the hill, two kids that couldn’t have been older than 9 came up to me and asked if they could help me carry my duffel bag. I smiled and said “sure”, not expecting them to get very far with it. As soon as they both had their hands on it, they shot off up the hill, laughing and giggling all the way.

Another aspect of the children's home that really struck me was the hospitality. From the moment we entered the home, we had a meal sitting on the table, always accompanied by a couple pots of locally-grown tea.

During the week we painted the inside and the outside of the girls’ dorm. On Monday we went down to the local paint shop to collect the paint. After waiting for what seemed hours, we carried the numerous buckets of paint up the trail to the children's home. After we delivered the paint, we had to sand the inside of the dorm and then apply paint thinner to the inside and outside. On Tuesday, we painted the inside and outside of the dorm. On Wednesday, we were not able to paint the dorm but instead washed all of the children's clothes while they were at school.

On Thursday, we had to paint over wooden walls inside of the dorm with a special type of paint that Nick Houghton and I had to retrieve from the paint shop. On Thursday Night, we had an outreach activity at the local church. We performed a skit, shared a couple of testimonies and played worship for the local community. The audience was predominantly children (which we weren’t expecting) with the parents of the children at the back. Because of the audience being mostly children, a lot of us had to alter our testimonies into shorter and simpler versions.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was on Thursday night. We had just finished our outreach program at the local church and were eating with the children out on the patio. All of us were spread out talking to different groups of children. There was an ambiance of peace that I have never experienced before. We were then told to go into the chapel where the kids had prepared a ‘surprise’ for us. The surprise turned out to be a bunch of heart-warming performances put on by the different age groups of children. The worship after the performances was astounding. The first song that was sung had the words ‘We cannot be conquered’. As the children sang their hearts out with these words, I stopped to thank God for these children. They’ve all come from broken families and have literally been to hell and back but God has provided them all with a new family and an amazing new life.

I would like to thank everyone so much who helped this trip to happen, it was a really amazing week.