A dear friend of mine emailed me not too long ago and asked me what a typical day was like. I thought that was a very good question because I always wanted to know how a missionary wife spends her day while her husband is out preaching. It made me think that others may also want to know how I spend my days.
We used to have a lady who would come over everyday except Sundays, from 10-4pm, to cook, clean and do laundry for us. The brethren here thought I needed help since I don’t know how to cook Indian food and I’ve never washed all my families clothes by hand. She’s not with us anymore. We let her go about 2 weeks ago. It was nice having the help, but I missed doing the cooking and cleaning myself. Believe it or not, I enjoy doing those things… serving my family this way. It’s a lot of work to clean and cook because most of India does not have nice appliances like you’ll find in America, but hey, if the women here can do it I can do it too! The women here are pretty tough. The women in America shouldn’t complain. You don’t realize how EASY you’ve got it! See the blessing and be content.
That’s one main reason we let our house keeper go. Another reason is because we get so many people visiting our house. Our family would like to be alone sometimes and spend time with just the family. And lastly, people here are VERY nosey. There’s a lot of gossip! So we don’t want someone with us daily watching everything we do and misunderstand us because we are Christian. Our house keeper professes to be a Christian but it’s obvious she is not born again. We caught her once trying to do some sort of Hindu witchcraft on Jeremiah to get him to stop crying. I quickly stopped her! Sean had the opportunity to share with her, and many other women who profess to be Christian, but they still hold on to much of their Hinduism ways. He exposed the lies and told them they had to forsake ALL of Hinduism. That you cannot drink from the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons at the same time. He was very clear and forthright that you cannot mix Christianity and Hinduism, but it seems some of the women do not want to forsake what they say is “their culture” that is rooted in Hinduism. It’s sad that their pastors do not expose these lies and therefore continue to lead them into a false conversion that is leading them to hell. Most pastors here seem to fear men more than God. Like Gal 1:10 says, “if you still please men you cannot be a bondservant of Christ”. If you fear men you cannot be entrusted with the Gospel because you will compromise the word of God. Many pastors are not fit to shepherd. Many pastors are children leading children. Oh Lord, raise up true shepherds for your flock!
O.k…back to my typical day. :)
In the morning I make breakfast for the kids. After breakfast Hannah and Hadassah read their bibles. When they are finished Sean or I would ask them questions about what they read to see if they have understood it and then we go over the passages with them. Right after that the girls start on their schoolwork and have school until about 4pm, sometimes later if they don’t do a good job. Many times they have to do school until later in the day because they get distracted wanting to play with their friends. I spend a lot of time with them on their school. Between school I do laundry which usually takes the whole day to do. We bought a washing machine but the machine is nothing like the machines in the U.S. It doesn’t even clean so I still have to scrub the clothes after I take them out of the machine. The machine is still good for soaking and it has a spinner which helps to ring all the water out. All the clothes are hung outside to dry. Laundry is definitely a lot of work. Especially when you’re doing it in the heat! It has to be done daily or else you get a huge pile that takes forever to catch up on. But, it’s definitely good exercise for me. :)
I also cook lunch which is a lot of work because we don’t have all the appliances that do all the work for you like in America. The kitchen gets very hot too. There’s no a/c or fan in the kitchen so it gets really hot and I’m usually drenched with sweat by the time I’m done cooking. My first time to cook Indian food was last night. The vegetable curry turned out good. Yea! A very good friend of ours name Michael is teaching us how to cook Indian food. I’ll be able to tone down the hot spices for my kids now that I’m cooking it. Our kids just started liking Indian food. Yea!
With all of the above, and having a three month old, it takes me all day to finish my daily work. But the Lord surely does give me the grace to do it all or else I would be one stressed mother! But Praise God I don’t have stress but rather have joy and peace. I really enjoy my work… and … hard work brings good sleep! Thank God that Jeremiah sleeps all through the night too!
Oh and for dinner, many times we’re invited to people homes for dinner. Most of them are not Christians. We get to share the gospel with every house we eat at. We literally have people come over on a daily basis. Sean and I have learned to say no many times or else our family would not get any alone time. We do thank God for brining so many strangers over. If Sean didn’t go out village preaching we could just as easily minister from our house! God has definitely given us favor with men!
Some of the villages are close by the house so me and the kids will be able to attend some of the meetings. You have so much favor here when your family is from America. I think families are more effective than if you were a single person living here. Many people can’t believe we brought our family to live here. They think it’s neat seeing a family from America living among them. The adults love to see our children and many of them come over to our house just to see them. All the children want to play with our children and would bring their parents over to our house. Our children are more popular here than we are! God is certainly using them to bring us more ministry opportunities.
So yes, my days are pretty filled. I don’t even have time for myself; to do what my flesh may want to do that is. My life is surely not my own to do as I please. I like it that way. J Each night my husband and I are able to spend some good quality time together before bed, thinking and talking about all the wonders and graces of God we see so clearly in our lives!
At first our children didn’t like India because it was very dirty and they got sick a lot. However, now that all the trials of being sick have passed everyone is feeling much better. The kids have made a lot of friends and have been involved in the house meetings and enjoy meeting all the new people. They are really enjoying their adventurous life.
I want to thank you again for those of you who have been praying for us. Your prayers have been part of helping us go on with much grace and peace. May God truly receive the utmost glory from our family. That is my prayer. That we would be a bright and burning light for Jesus in India that cannot be put out. May the light of Christ also shine brightly from your lives that men would see and give glory to Jesus!
Let us highly lift up the name of Jesus, having no shame, and proclaim boldly that there is only ONE God and that salvation only comes through Jesus Christ!
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