India Needs Our Help
I’m heartbroken about this, friends. 💔But there’s a way we can help, together.
As many of you know, I traveled to India by myself in 2005 to work with a ministry called Peace Gospel International that I’ve supported for over 20 years. Boarding that plane was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, but I was in such good hands once I arrived in India, staying with Pastor Samuel*, his wife Pria*, and their two young sons. I wrote about the experience in my upcoming book and also in this post on my old blog. The experiences I had there and the people I met will be woven into my story for the rest of my life, and Lord willing, I’ll return one day!
Now, India really needs our extra help. I’ll cut to the chase here:
1) India needs food and supplies.
2) India needs latrines.
At the end of April, I got an email from Kirby Trapolino, a dear friend and the director of Peace Gospel that a shocking second wave of C*vid has torn through India at a record-breaking pace of over one million new cases being registered every three days. At the time of that email, they had lost five pastors who have served alongside Peace Gospel - brave souls whose job is to find and report human trafficking cases and refer rescued trafficking survivors to Peace Gospel to be taken care of in their homes and programs. 💔
One month later, at the end of May, I got another email from Kirby that the number had increased to 15 brave and faithful pastors in their network who have now died from C*vid. That week, India recorded the largest daily death toll for any country during the pandemic.
To make matters worse, the government has forced Peace Gospel to close their boarding school for the girls in the below photo in the name of "protecting" them from the virus. The girls under their care, including the girl that our family directly supports, have had to be sent back to their native towns and villages where their security is uncertain. 💔Peace Gospel is obviously extremely concerned about their welfare and is doing everything they can to get the girls back into their safe care as soon as possible.
Image: Peace Gospel
Our personal opinions about the 🦠 don’t really matter here. There is a real need, and we can help meet that need. I know it’s hard for many of us in the U.S. to understand, but India is an extremely densely populated country - there are 1.3 billion people in an area 1/3 the size of the United States. Then you add in poor sanitation and malnutrition in many villages, cities, and slums…
How We Can Help
We can help provide medical supplies, food, and cooking oil in the already-impoverished communities that are even more impacted by this new wave of the 🦠. Last spring during the initial wave, Peace Gospel was able to deliver 40 tons of provisions to people cut off from their typical day labor jobs to help them avoid starvation. This fund has also helped provide support to the pastors’ surviving family members.
2) Provide latrines.
For the girls from the boarding home who have been placed in at-risk living arrangements, Peace Gospel wants to provide their host families with latrine toilets. Unfortunately, the relatives' homes the girls were sent back to lack even the most basic toilets, and they are forced to go into the nearby fields to use the restroom. Many literally do not have true "homes" to go back to, and will be placed with relatives whom we are not always certain have their best interests at heart— or, at best, are ill-equipped to provide for their basic needs.
When I told my daughters about what was happening in India and the girl we support specifically, they both came to me the next morning and said they had something to tell me.
“We’ve emptied our piggie banks,” they said. “We want to give all our money to India.”
I share this with no pride whatsoever, because I was as surprised as anyone.
Norah, my 7-year-old, had apparently squirreled away $183.
We can do this, together. We can help. Will you join me?
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
