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Oregon Church Group Travels to India
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By Julie Cramer
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Seventeen members of Westport Church in Hillsboro, Oregon (www.westportchurch.org), traveled to India this past summer and spent their time teaching at Morning Star Covenant School in the Shahabad Dairy, home to many poor families. “Part of the community [live] in thatched huts and have no access to any electricity, water, or drainage facilities,” Umashankar (Uma) Shankardas, India director for Orphan Outreach, said.
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"These trips are heartbreaking. But God lets our hearts break and rebuilds them bigger and able to love more and do more for His glory."
– Renae Niebergall, Westport team leader
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Thirty students, with neatly combed hair and uniforms, greeted the team when they arrived. Yet 60 students normally attend the school. When pressed, the teachers admitted that the other children did not have uniforms, so they stayed at home because they did not want to disappoint the team. “The next day we arrived to see an added bunch of kids more than eager to be there,” Uma said.
Each morning the Westport team divided into teaching groups. “One group had storytelling, another snacks, another crafts, and the fourth had games,” Uma said. “Each day began with a time of worship, where the children first watched and then, after getting over the initial wariness, happily joined in the fun songs,” he said. “It was a joy for me to see that this bunch of Americans that had never been [to India] actually knew, and sang, two popular choruses in Hindi—and I must say they did a fantastic job of it.”
One of those singers was Renae Niebergall, who moved with her husband Jamie, Westport’s worship pastor, and their three children to Oregon more than two years ago. A former finance consultant, Renae has turned her full-time attention to orphan care. “Last October I traveled with Orphan Outreach on a visionary trip to India,” she said. “I could not ignore what I saw. I immediately began planning to bring a team back a year later.”
As part of the preparation, Westport focused on “team covenants, local mission projects, cultural training, worldview training, prayer walking, Hindi worship songs, and training specific to our functions in country,” Renae explained. “The injustice in India can be overwhelming. Although not visible to the average traveler, child prostitution in India is a real tragedy. Children are being orphaned by HIV/AIDS and living their life with the same disease. Once you’ve seen precious children living with these tragedies you can not turn away,” she said. “These trips are heartbreaking. But God lets our hearts break and rebuilds them bigger and able to love more and do more for His glory.”
Shannon Batson, a 24-year-old seminary student at Multnomah University in Portland, remembers “seeing horrible poverty and then, in the next block, a huge house or mall that looked expensive,” she said. “It was hard to see that contrast.”
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"Without a doubt, the actual experience and sights of what they saw and experienced had shaken them. Each [team member] was going back with a true sense of the need that exists, and also the tremendous joy of a ministry well done."
-- Umashankar Shankardas, India director
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Cultural differences also soon surfaced. “I was very surprised by the traffic and how people drive,” she admits. “It was crazy to see how a three-lane road could become seven lanes wide with every kind of transportation imaginable. One thing that made our team laugh was the waiters at our hotel restaurant. They would offer us food and even if we said ‘no’ repeatedly, they would still put it on our plates. So our quote from the trip was ‘No, thank you. No, thank you. Okay, just a little.’”
Medicine and hand pumps
"I was most impressed with the clinical precision with which the team carried out the planned activities, the changes, the supplies,” Uma said, congratulating the team. “And during the time they were ministering in the school, a group of young volunteers from the local church were doing a great job with translation.”
These partnerships between U.S. and foreign churches are at the heart of Orphan Outreach. Such partnerships motivated Westport’s team to recruit a doctor to travel with them, who ran a medical clinic with donated supplies from King Pharmaceuticals. In all, 200 people were treated. Additionally, the team paid for the installation of five hand pumps to bring water to Shahabad Dairy.
”We were so thankful to the Westport team for being our first church to travel to India to do ministry,” Amy Norton, director of programs, said. “They made a powerful impact on the children they served in the slums of Delhi. Not every team can go to such a difficult ministry site, where the poverty and needs are extreme. They were completely open to how the Lord might use them and reached out to so many children who have never heard the gospel.”
Not complete unless ...
At the end of the weeklong, ministry-intensive trip, the team members were tired. But no trip to India would have been complete without a visit to the Taj Mahal. When monsoon rains washed out the team’s plans to travel to Orphan Outreach’s new school in a Muslim community of Delhi, Uma took the group to visit a “Hindu temple complex renowned for its amazing architecture and grandeur.” And on the way to the Taj Mahal, he says, “they watched snakes, shook hands with monkeys, and rode camels and elephants.”
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“Uma was absolutely wonderful as our leader,” Shannon said, “and I think Orphan Outreach did a great job of putting the team in a safe place to stay and took care of everything so we didn’t have to worry about anything.”
–Shannon Batson, 24-year-old seminary student
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Will you help children in India? Why not join us on our next trip?
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