Grown Up to Soon

One of the hardest things for me to wrap my head around in India is the desire of families to marry off their daughters at very young ages.  Some do it out of necessity, because they can't afford to take care everyone.  Some do it because that's just "what you do." Their parents did it and their parents did it.  And so on.  The girls go live with the husband's family and start having babies as soon as possible.  The circle of life, if you will.  (FYI, the legal age to marry is 18.)


The little girl to my right is 14 years old.  She looks more like she's 10.  She wanted me to pray for her to have a baby.  I mean SHE is just a baby.  She said she has been married several months and still hasn't conceived.  A lot of people ask me to pray for them to have babies, but she is the youngest one so far.

I can't even imagine this.  She should be in school.  She should be outside playing.  I am not judging.  This is a cultural thing that you see mostly in the lower castes.  I know life is hard for them.  I've seen where they live and how large their families are. They struggle to exist on meager wages; a lot on less than $1 a day.  

I'm praying for her.  I'm praying that she will have a wonderful marriage and that she is blessed with many children.  That's all she has.  Will you pray for her, too?

The Soul of India

I should have several more blog posts coming soon. Lots of new subject matter. We just got back from 6 days out in the villages of India.  I'm not going to lie.  I didn't think I could do 6 days, but I did and enjoyed every minute of it.  Well, maybe not EVERY minute, but you get the idea.  


First, I should define what exactly a village is.  Hyderabad is a city.  Estimates vary (like everything else in India), but it has around 8 million people. In contrast, villages are smaller than cities.  The size of these villages vary considerably, but some "villages" have a million people in them. 

Ghandi once said, "The soul of India lives in its villages."  Most of India's 1.2 billion population live in villages.  Each village has its leaders.  Just like anywhere, these leaders can be good or bad.  But, "bad" in India is usually really bad. Think mafia. Fortunately, we have only encountered good ones.  If the leader of a village likes you, then you pretty much have free reign. Out of respect, we try to meet at least one of the leaders when we go to a new village. They appreciate it and are always very gracious. In fact, we have been given unbelievable access to a lot of these villages. 

We had several men from the US come over and go out with us.  It was an awesome time!  I experienced several "firsts" on this trip that I want to tell you about. More to come….