A Visit to Vijay's Family

Sorry we have been out of touch for a few days. We are currently in Mumbai on the last leg of our journey. We will worship tomorrow in a local congregation and Timothy James will preach. Thanks for praying for him. We will have our final debriefing and head back to the U.S. on a 10:40pm flight. What an incredible journey we have had! Keep reading and you will have a summary of our past three days by Geunhee, Huberto and Timothy....

This is Geunhee Yu… In order to see the sunrise at the southern tip of India we got up at 6am on Friday morning. But the thick clouds blocked the view a bit and we were only able to see the sun pop out of the clouds about 15 minutes after the official time. Today we spent a good portion of our time visiting areas devastated by the Tsunami and the subsequent rebuilding projects along the coastal areas that were destroyed. One of the housing projects sponsored by our Global Ministries is worth mentioning here. Thirty-one housing units were built with funds in one area that we visited. The fisher-folk in this project call their neighborhood “Global Nager” which means “Global Village.” The took this name for their village because they never wanted to forget the help that they received through Global Ministries during this desperate time in their lives. Each of the housing units has on the front door a plaque which says “Funded by Global Ministries (and the GM logo!) and Sponsored by Peace Trust (our GM partner in the area). As we entered the Global Nager, all the women of the village came out to greet us with their traditional welcoming rituals, such as putting a colored dot on our forehead and hanging a shawl on our shoulders. We were greatly honored by representing our beloved church, the Disciples of Christ, to these Tsunami victims. During our visit, we also had the opportunity to visit several mass burial sites of Tsunami casualties. At a burial ground of 414 bodies (most of them could not be identified), we were struck with profound awe and sadness. From that experience, we went to another fishing village where on behalf of Global Ministries, we proudly handed over 5 fishing boats to 5 fisher-families who lost their boats and fishing equipment in the Tsunami. Of course the boats carry a Global Ministries name tag with logo as the donor. Surely our mission dollars through Global Ministries have been put to good use and work in these communities. Our next visit was to the family home of our very own Vijay, area executive for Southern Asia. The family compound has been converted into James College of Education and Luise James Teacher Training Institute in commemoration of Vijay’s Mom and Dad who were leaders in this community as well as the church. Vijay’s Dad, James, was a medical doctor. Vijay’s borther, Prem and his wife are both medical doctors. They are running an amazing hospital facility and nursing school about 20 minutes away from the family property. That was our last visit of the day. The hospital has about 150 beds. During the aftermath of the tsunami the James hospital was on the front lines of helping the victims. A Tsunami memorial plaque stands at the front of the hospital placed there by the government recognizing the significant work the hospital did in treating 16,000 Tsunami victims in the first year after the disaster. We entered the hospital facility with the traditional floral garland welcome by the staff and the nursing students. We made a special visit to the HIV/AIDS unit. We prayed for the 10 patients there and staff and shook each of their hands personally. They were all smiles! In the evening there was a special performance of the nursing students in celebration of our visit and a delicious welcome feast with Vijay’s family. What a day it was… from a heavy heart to an evening of cheer!