The other
day I walked into a storage area and noticed a strange smell. Not horrible, just strange. At home last evening my wife made a comment about a strange smell. Not
horrible, just strange, and not even strong enough that I could smell it.
We shower
every day, we use deodorants and antiperspirants, and as if that weren’t enough
we pour on perfumes and colognes. Most houses have at least one can of
air-freshener, or one of those things that gets plugged into the wall and sends
out a puff of freshness every few minutes. Our cars have air fresheners, we put
baking soda in the refrigerator to absorb odors; even garbage bags are especially
treated to mask odors. And don’t even get me started on pet odors.
We’ve
dummied down our sense of smell to the point that even natural odors are too
strong, and therefore offensive. And then
there are places like Punya Basti which is described like this: Imagine living in a town where the air is full of
stench, everything is covered in filth, violence is rampant, and there is no
electricity or running water. Then
the question is asked Now imagine choosing to live in this town in order
to share the Gospel with the people there. Could you do it? Would you be able
to stick it out?
We recently saw some slums in that same part of the world, and the stench was pretty disgusting. But we could
escape it by traveling just a short distance, to an entirely different part of
town, one that was probably, in part, designed to appeal to American tourists:
no garbage, no smells, and the brief moments in slums and squalor were
orchestrated to give us the sense that we had truly experienced that country. And I ask myself would I be willing to live in
the stench and squalor? Would I stay there to be able to share the gospel? I
want to say ‘yes’, but often the mind is willing but the flesh is weak…I just
don’t know.
And so we go back to Punya Basti. The
GFA pastor there was having trouble ministering to the women, so he asked for
assistance from Sisters of Compassion. Women didn’t know how to clean cooking utensils
and so there was a lot of illness. Personal hygiene was poor, so there was a
lot of illness. Modesty was not high on anyone’s priority list, and in an area
where alcohol abuse was rampant among the men, women were often put in
compromising situations.
Prisha, one of the Sisters of
Compassion agreed to come to Punya Basti, an area that she had heard about, because she
was willing to serve. The area had such a poor reputation that the pastor
offered to have her lodge in a neighboring town so she would be safer and have more
comfortable accommodations. Prisha
refused, knowing that if she were to have any ‘street cred’, she would need to
be available, to be present, in the town. There were many challenges, but
Prisha, and eventually 7 other Sisters became part of the village, but the
transformation wasn’t that they became more like the villagers, but rather that
the villagers became more like Christ. There
are over 1,000 residents of this squalid village, “Filth and Fertile Ground”,
and today the majority are Christians. The women are learning healthier habits,
children are going to school, and the villagers see the missionaries as members
of their families.
There is still lots of work to be
done in Punya Basti, and places like it. Filth exists, but in the midst of that
filth is plenty of fertile ground. Could you numb your senses? Would you even
be willing to try? It makes a difference.
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