Following Christ to the Ends of the Earth
Forty-four InterVarsity Global Project teams took students abroad this summer (plus one to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota). The teams ranged in size from four to 37 members. During Global Projects students have the opportunity to see God at work and hear his voice speak to them in some of the most extreme environments imaginable. Here are excerpts from reports from four of the teams.
Taipei, Taiwan: For this week and next week, we have been working as teachers for an English learning day-camp for blind and visually impaired students. We are working side-by-side daily with non-Christian Taiwanese college student teaching assistants. Two nights ago we went to karaoke with our teaching assistants, and tonight we have invited them to attend an evangelistic Bible study.
Each of us are teaching a group of 3-7 blind and visually impaired . The first couple days were fairly difficult due to lack of appropriate-level printed Braille teaching materials, but our team has adjusted well.
Cairo, Egypt: This week, we had our most significant incident in Mokattam, the garbage collectors community that we are serving. A team of students on their own initiative went and visited an ostracized widow they had previously visited as part of the ministry to the handicapped. They got deeper into her life and her story and wept with her as they entered into her extreme pain of her life of loneliness yet the strongest faith in God they have ever encountered.
In response, they have spent the last two days cleaning her home that probably has not seen a good cleaning in years. She has wept because of the kindness she has received from the students, and our students are weeping because of the brokenness of our world.
Kolkata (Calcutta), India: So I finally broke. After two weeks of internalizing the suffering I saw every where I looked, my heart couldn’t hold it in any longer. It all came out at the slum school in New Market where we spend our time attempting to teach. The students had finished their dance practice and unexpectedly asked Koreena to pray for them. As she was praying the tears started rolling down my cheeks. The continual tension I’d felt in Kolkata seemed to overflow, and I was helpless to make it stop. I just wanted to feel joy and gladness in the midst of a city that had more suffering than I could handle.
Bangkok, Thailand: I remember the first leper home we entered [where there] lived an 80-year-old man and his wife who was also fairly old. He had been suffering from the effects of leprosy for over 40 years. He had also been staying in that very house for about 40 years. All his toes and fingers were gone, just his knuckles remained. His face had deteriorated so much it was hard for me to look at him. But despite suffering from leprosy, he was a faithful man of God and still is.
It simply boggled my mind to see how thankful he was to God even in the physical state of his body and the suffering of all sorts that unquestionably came with it.
Read more reports and view student videos at the Global Projects website.