Day Nine: The Zombie Apocalypse

This was our last full day of ministry in Tenali. We started out the day attending a service at the largest Harvest India church. There were so many people there that some were sitting outside of the building. After the service the church wanted to feed us. This meal was a struggle. We ate off of giant palm leaves. The food was weird textures and spicy. Not at all sure what I was eating. To be honest, I swallowed most of my food whole, praying the entire meal that the Lord would make my stomach strong enough to take it. I made it through.

We piled into the vans after lunch to go to another water well dedication. Before lunch a couple of our teammates got really sick, and on the drive to and from the dedication quite a few more got sick as well.  We were originally going to attend another english speaking service in the early evening, but because about half of our team was sick at this point, including our leaders Lauri and Daniel, we decided to take that time to rest at the house instead.

When we got back all the healthy teammates gathered on the rooftop to reassign speaking and drama parts for the night outreaches in case those who were sick were not healthy enough to participate. Before we started planning we decided to pray for all who were sick. When we opened our eyes we had lost four more healthy teammates.

The sickness came on so quickly. Someone would feel fine one second, a little off the next, and within the next two minutes they'd be too sick to move. Like a zombie apocalypse. Only about 14 of us were still healthy at this point, but Daniel told us we would be doing the outreaches no matter what, so we got ready.

We split off into our two teams and went to our outreaches. Quite a few more teammates got sick on the drives to and from the outreach. Everyone who was assigned to speak on my team were all sick, but were such troopers they were determined to speak no matter how they felt.

On the drive there I was feeling pretty attacked again. One of our teammates said this sickness must be the enemy trying to keep us from preaching the gospel, which I agreed with. And as grateful as I was to not be sick, the question of why kept coming up in my head. I was being told over and over the reason I was healthy was because I was not enough of a threat to the enemy to need to be taken out. Hearing that lie repeated in my head left me with an overwhelming need to worship God, so I sat softly singing any verse from any worship song I could think of.

I heard two words from God as I got off of the bus, "Be my hands and feet tonight" and "celebrate."

There was a small group of children waiting for us so I got as excited as I could and tried to direct their attention away from the teammates throwing up in the bushes. We started the service and I kept hearing celebrate being spoken in my head. So when the song we danced to at the pastors conference was sung, and Amanda asked me if I wanted to dance, I went for it. We danced like we were from India.

My favorite thing about this picture is everyone else's faces. So much joy. 

It's contagious. Much like the zombie apocalypse, but in a good way.

Our teammates went up to speak, and they spoke with such honesty and authority. I was so proud of them. The power went out half way through our first speaker, but we found a headlamp and continued teaching anyway. At the end of the service a few women accepted Christ for the first time. It was well worth the struggle.

By the time both teams got back to the house only six of us were still healthy. So Abbie and I decided to take our bug tents up to the roof to sleep there. We talked about all of the great things we had seen God do during our time in India and fell asleep under the stars. It was the best way to end such a wonderful trip.