Standing Still

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As you already know, I’m planning my third trip to India this summer. The country of India first stole my heart almost five years ago when I stayed there on my study abroad trip. The poverty I saw was staggering and left me wanting more for the people I saw, especially the kids.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t fallen in love with a country so far away, but I left a big piece of myself in India and I constantly feel a yearning to go back. These words are from my journal during my second trip: “India is incredibly alive. It’s shiny and grimy, happy and heart-shatteringly sad. I love it. It’s so incredibly overwhelming and I want to embrace it and keep it inside of me. I want to inhale and never exhale.”

So, while working two jobs, both at non-profits, hasn’t left me with a lot of extra money to spend traveling half way across the world, I am going to India in June. This trip is to help and teach, but also to research the culture of caring for India’s abandoned children with the long-term hope of living there and doing more. I’ll be working with kids in a few different orphanages and schools, staying with a local couple and learning as much as I can.

Will you help me get there? What I need most are your thoughts and prayers. No matter what or who you personally believe in, India has been incredibly influential to me, these are the words of my spiritual journey that began and continued in India: “I find a peace here that I fail to find anywhere else. This is where I first found God and I feel Him so strongly here. He is everywhere and I feel like I get to walk with Him and work with Him all the time. I’m not sure why I can feel so still here, but it’s like the rest of the time I am in the hurricane, whirling around, out of control and trying to stop. But here I can stop, breathe, feel. I am maybe still a little dizzy, but that’s ok, I am standing still and God is standing still with me. He is holding my hand and He has led me here.”

Second, keep reading this blog! I'll be posting now through my trip in June.

Finally, if you wish, consider contributing financially to my trip. It’s hard for me to ask for money, but I can’t do this alone. There are two ways to donate:

First, directly to my trip fund, but only through April 1^st: Trip fundraising.

Second, help pay for my plane ticket, through May 10^th: Ticket fundraising.

(You can also send or give me a check, that way we avoid the online fees: 919 27^th Ave SE Minneapolis, MN 55414).

I sincerely thank you for any help you can give, in the form of thoughts, prayers, reading or giving. Thank you for being a part of my journey so far.