Shared Hope International Travel Blog

Sheila is our fiscal manager and she traveled to India for the very important job of ensuring the highest level of financial accountability that our donors expect and that the girls deserve. She has submitted her reflections on the trip with you:

Our trip was definitely an adventure! With minimal experience in international travel, I was both thrilled & nervous most of the time. The incredible poverty and sadness of the living conditions of the people in so much of the Mumbai area was appalling. My first impressions were of the heat and extreme smells everywhere we went, but my heart was lifted when we traveled to the see the teenage girls the first day. They were so pretty & smiling & happy & giggly, being typical teenage girls with their shyness & curiosity. I was amazed knowing the backgrounds most have lived through. Then we went on to Ashagram to see the Village of Hope facilities that I’d only read about. As the Shared Hope accountant, I’d seen the operations described mostly in numbers. It’s just beautiful! The lush green countryside which surrounds the village made me feel that we were in a different world from Mumbai. The grounds are carefully tended by the women and the landscaping done by the young men of the nearby Boys program can easily rate with any I’d seen elsewhere. The staff & residents were so welcoming and even tho’ we were challenged with language differences, we knew we all were part of the same family of Christ. I was humbled by their commitment to their new skills training and their genuine servant hearts. It was a joy to share in their worship services & felt such connection with them.
We toured children’s home where the orphaned or “un-parented” kids of the HIV/AIDs mothers live. We had fun playing, reading books, and doing LOTS of hugging & holding with little kids. The staff is so loving! Then back to Mumbai to attend the Saturday evening church service. Being surrounded in the cramped & very hot building by so many women in brightly colored traditional Indian dress, I was again impressed with their faith & their reliance on the Lord. Our visit to the HIV clinic & the children’s shelter gave us the chance to see the all too real world that these women & children deal with daily before they are rescued. The service that is being done there on the streets to care & feed so many by Dr Preshant, Deveraj & their staffs is so vital, yet hardly even basic by our U.S. expectations.
I am feeling so very blessed personally to live in the Pacific NW climate and enjoy the many gifts I have in my life. I’ll never think of the numbers when I read the partner reports again without thinking of the faces of the women and children that I’ve met. The girls in the SHI pictures, videos & mailings are real people to me now even tho’ I may have mispronounced their names!