Mark’s Reflection: I’ Coming Back Here With a Group From Mount Olive.

Ten years ago I strolled around the grounds of Bob Granner’s cottage outside of the hill town of Kodaikanal in south India.  Kodaikanal is the hill station where my mother was born and where with other missionary kids she attended boarding school. I came upon a campfire ring and had a vision of sorts: a small group of Mount Olivites having a devotion around a fire while there to visit our Bethania centers. God provides! In several days, a small group of us leave for India.

India had its hold on me even before I set foot there. My grandparents, great-grandparents, and even a great-great-grandfather served there as missionaries. Whether it was because of Mom’s incredible stories, the smell of sandalwood and incense (no one else in rural Minnesota burned incense!), the succulent flavors of Indian food which we begged for on special occasions, or something bigger and more spiritual, India got under my skin. When I stepped out of the Mumbai airport on that first trip 10 years ago, it felt familiar, as though I’d been there in a previous life.  It was just as I’d imagined it.

I traveled there with a group from Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry. Then I visited Bethania Kids centers in “Kodai” and the girls' home in Nagercoil, taking greetings from the Sunday School kids at Mount Olive. I ended my trip by touring the mission compounds of my ancestors. 

When I came to Mount Olive, at a very dark time in my life, I was nurtured by the liturgy, the music, and  welcoming, gentle people. The icing on the cake was meeting the Hennigs, who with other former missionary kids had recently started a new charity for the children of India. Many years before that, I questioned the spiritual path which had taken me into called church work in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. I also questioned why I should be proud of my missionary ancestry, something that seemed so associated with conservatism and colonialism; namely, “converting the heathen.” I took solace in the fact that my grandfather was a bit of a maverick.  In one of the few deeper conversations I had with him, he said that when he arrived in India, the other missionaries told him he had to wear a topee, or white pith helmet (think Albert Schweitzer). Knowing that it was a symbol of prestige and authority, he replied that he did not need a pith helmet, for as Psalm 121 says, “The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night.”  Despite crippling mental illness (which I inherited – Thank you very much, Gramps), he furthered adult literacy, used A/V materials to teach Bible stories, served in an association for the blind, and learned to speak Tamil so well that the Indians who remember him tell me he could speak “colloquial” Tamil. When I was there in 2009, they proudly showed me a road he had built.

In Bethania Kids, I have found a way to be proud of my Christian missionary heritage and to carry forward loving service to India. It amazes me that because of a generous board of directors, 100% of donations go directly to the ministries. I’m so blessed and so grateful to Mount Olive for enabling me to make this return trip, and to be a part of “nurturing and equipping the children of India to change their world through Jesus’ love.”  

I am not going back to minister to the children of India. I am going back to be inspired by them - again. It’s a circular journey for me and a journey home: home to the heart of God which glows in the faces of “our” Bethania Kids.