India in Numbers

ROMANS 10:15

2 feet to bring the good news.

8,000 miles away from home.

6 months here.

12 hours ahead of home.

148,391 people to pray for in Bharuch.

This is a Christian family living in the slums.

They are very poor, but give all that they have to the church.

Please pray that God blesses this family.

12 leis around my neck.

Everywhere I go!

I bought 2 sauri's today. :]

1 baby attached to me AT ALL TIMES.

She is the cutest of cute, but she won't leave my side!

Petra is sleeping next to me as I write this.

Number of times a day I pray that I won't get sick from the food:

Roughly 3 times a day.

(Please pray for my American tummy)

One after another stares. Most people here have never even seen a white person.

How many times I say kya (what) during a conversation: At least 7!

I am getting better at speaking and understanding though.

3 Chapsticks Jenna has eaten already.

2 days until I go to the villages.

Please pray for my journey and the people I am going to meet.

1 Indian boyfriend. <3>

A million thank you's for reading and praying and keeping me in your thoughts. Miss you.

Infinite X's and O's,

Natalie Grace Donald the first

I Want To Stay 19 Forever...

So I have been contemplating for days what to share with you.

There is just so much to share.

But I will just tell you some simple things:

1. It is hot. Very hot. But I experienced my first Indian Monsoon! Which I loved.

2. I got to see all of my Indian babies and my heart soared, it still is soaring just thinking about them.

3. I have forgotten the stares. Everywhere I go... Stares.

4. I MUST learn Gujarati language soon, or else I will go crazy trying to understand their broken English (thank heavens they speak English though). 5. I have A LOT of thinking time. Which provides for much prayer. But also will perhaps drive me crazy as well. 6. THANK YOU FOR THE PRAYERS FOR MY TRAVELS. I just watched movies all night including: The Sixth Sense, Date Night, Harry Potter, The Last Song, etc. God was with me the whole way. 7. There are sunflowers outside my window, I will take a picture soon. God sighting. 8. I miss my mom. 9. First question everyone ask: "How is Emily Didi?" Sister, they miss you! 10. Going to youth group tonight. Yes!

I will be writing some more interesting things later, I promise. This entry is lame. I just had to share with you everything.

And so it begins...

So here I am.

10 months later.

And my dream is finally becoming a reality.

How it all began:

My senior year, my wonderful Grandfather offered me any destination in the world to go to as my graduation present and I, of course, chose India. Immediately, I fell in love with the country. I loved the culture, everything about it. But most of all, I fell in love with the people. In particular, 30 Karuna Home kids. They stole my heart.

In my nineteen years of life, I have found that there are a lot of bad things in this world. Things that scar your brain forever. Things that make you want to forget.

Another thing I have found in life is that God puts select people on this planet who sometimes make the world seem not all that bad anymore.

These Indian children give me joy that is truly unspeakable. Their faith lacks nothing and completely defeats any form of faith I thought I had. Even with nothing, they still think they have everything.

They make the bad go away. And all I want is to run towards their joy and somehow take a piece of it back home with me after however many months I am there.

So here comes the hard part:

On the plane ride home, I was involved in an international crime. Not the kind of crime you’d wish to describe to people. It broke me. Every piece of joy inside of me was shattered that day. It all seems like kind of a blur to me now, which I think God did for a reason. This was one of those things, you want to forget… I chose to pretend like everything was okay for so long….until one day, there I was, sitting in my high school library, doing research on good old C.S. Lewis, and I start crying hysterically to my high school English teacher.

Summertime came, along with two very intense court cases (he was found guilty, unanimously), a change of heart in Artesia and Catalina, and a new Natalie. Freshman year of college was probably the hardest year of my 19 year old life. Sheeshola.

At IV one night, one of our IV staff leaders spoke on listening and hearing God’s voice. So in late November, I spent a whole night in our prayer room…just listening… And all I kept hearing, clear as a bell, was: India, India, India. And all I kept saying back was, “You’ve got to be crazy, Jesus.”

So Mom came up that weekend, we went to Olive Garden and I said, “Mom, what if I told you God was telling me to go to India next year?”

Expecting a solid no, she replied, “We’ll talk about it.”

Whhhhaaaaaatttt?

And everything else just kind of fell into place. God gave me the best summer job in the world so that I could afford to go. He gave me encouraging friends who prayed me through it. He gave me willing family to allow me to stay with them for the next 6 months. God has been good.

He’s also placed on my heart, the building of a new Karuna Home. Which is still a project that we are working on. We still need a lot of money to afford to buy them a new home. They deserve it though. And I will continue to keep working on it.

So what I am asking of you... Is that you please please please pray for my flight. I am terrified, for obvious reasons, and I just ask that you keep me in your prayers tonight during my travels.

So here I go. In 7 hours I will be on the plane and on my way to India. I will keep you updated on everything in my life through this blog. I'll miss my friends and family dearly.

But right at this exact moment, and the basic reason why I got zero sleep last night, was the fact that in 30 or so hours, I get to see all of my favorite little Indian faces. And I get to kiss them and hug them and love them and bring them presents. Yay!

I'll let you know when I get there!