The orphanage we visited in India has stairs leading to the roof. From there you can watch in the morning as the surrounding community comes to life for another day.
Roger and I were up there early one time and as we looked about we saw that we had been noticed by a very young girl of one of the “tent families” nearby. She was waving to us enthusiastically and so we waved back. So, of course this encouraged her to wave even more. Pretty soon her family noticed what was going on and they all began to wave. It was a very nice way for us to start off the day.
On the way down the stairs Roger, being the very outgoing person he is, suggested we go over and meet these people. So we walked over to their camp and introduced ourselves. All of us had to make use of lots of hand gestures and body language in our greetings because of the language barrier, but it worked pretty well. We even “asked” them if we could take their pictures which they were happy to allow.
During the course of things one of the men, probably the head of this family group kept trying to say something to us which we couldn’t figure out. At one point I said, “Roger, I think he is asking us to pray for them”. Roger wasn’t sure about that so we continued with our visit, taking pictures and generally wrinkling up our noses and saying, “Huh” whenever they would say something, or occasionally nodding if we thought that was safe.
Finally this man must have realized we were somewhat slow, so he helped us out by putting his hands together in front of his face and uttering something like, “Praee?”. Of course, having assumed this was a Hindu family, we were really surprised that our prayers were actually what he had been asking for all along.
But we were glad to lay hands on, and pray for each of them individually then. And when we were done this man went into his tent and came out with a photo album for us to look through. It was full of pictures of all the family members being baptised! And Roger was especially struck when he even recognized the pastor who was baptising them as one he knew from meetings in Hyderabad (Shakur, or Sakir, or something. As usual, I can’t remember the name).
So, it seems that day God gave us a gentle reminder that we are not to judge others, though it comes so naturally and is so hard not to sometimes. In a way that God does so well, he also blessed us at the same time with the assurance that the body of Christ reached out into the community beyond the walls of the orphanage.
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