Day 4 - Into the Muslim Community of Maneer

Today, our team went in two separate directions, with the majority of the people returning to the Shah Abad school while 4 of us and Uma set out to visit another Christian school recently opened within a Muslim community. I didn’t think it was possible but the ride to the area was the most harrowing driving experience to date. The sign to the left is no less a statement of the obvious than if it read simply “This is a sign”.

After driving through a security check point 3 times (we turned around and then back around), leaving the city of Delhi, and driving past a mosque, we arrived at our destination. Similar to all our other stops, we quickly became the focus of an ever growing group of curious onlookers. A 5 minute walk took us to the school, where we were greeted by lots of smiling faces. There were so many kids crammed into this school, in classrooms the size of a large closet and in the open courtyard of the building, sharing space with a Honda generator. The children were very polite and quite a few spoke broken English.

After taking a brief tour and making introductions with most of the older students, we began the chore of moving a pile of crushed bricks into areas of standing water that were impeding the children’s access to the school. Initially, the kids and parents observed as strangers helped perform the labor, shoveling rock and debris into round dishes, serving as salad bowl sized wheel barrows, minus the wheel. Slowly these same people began to help, young and old chipped in to move several yards of this material. The walkway directly in front of the school has a new sidewalk thanks to the hard work of many. Today, we were not just the hands and feet of Christ, but also the legs, arms, backs and who knows how many other body parts. As an aside, we had a brief encounter with a scorpion who emerged from the pile of bricks and evaded the swinging spade of one of the hired hands. I was slightly more accurate with one of the bricks and successfully flattened the 2” bright green scorpion, where he is currently dead.

Eventually, the heat became too unbearable and we left with additional work needing some attention. We were given a new appreciation for a Muslim community and a warmed heart for the kids in the school. If it’s in God’s will, may we return to continue the work that has just started. To God be the glory.