Hello!
By the time you get this, marks of the Christmas season will be all around us! I can almost smell cinnamon candles, see the real evergreen tree all decorated in the living room and taste eggnog. Oh, how I love the holiday time!
I’ve mentioned this countless times—I love reading WMF staff members’ prayer letters and blogs! It is a way that I can connect with the staff, know more about the people who they live among and fall more in love with what I am a part of. So I made time the other day and was reading a blog post by Beth Waterman who lives in Kolkata, India. Beth’s spirit is so lovely. I cannot explain how she can be such a blessing while living really far away, but she is. Perhaps it is in her poetic writing or the way her face is always beaming in pictures—I’m not sure but I do adore her. She gave me permission to share an excerpt from one of her blog posts. I want to give you all a glimpse of Beth and her life among the ladies in Kolkata. I pray that her words can be hope and peace.
“Who is mother, father, sister, brother?” Jesus asked. “He who does the will of my father, they are who I call my family.” Matt 12:46-50.
Translating this devotion into words my dear Kolkata sisters can hear, take in and understand takes more than just a mastery of the Bengali language.
In a place unknown and foreign—leaving my own mom, dad and beloved little brother, I explained that I had begun to understand what Jesus was saying. That He wants us to love everyone like our own blood family and for me that meant coming to love them. To many of these women, whose own mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers have left them—turning away in shame. Received back only for the money they can offer or in greed filled moments sold them to a red-lit way of life—these words ring with a different tone. You are my mother, sister, daughter and I am yours. I realized that they have become my family.
Only appropriate that yesterday morning, I also read that my parents will be joining me for Christmas in Kolkata this year—full of Sari Bari teas and dinners in my flat. I never thought that I’d get to share this part of my life with mom and dad—never dreamed they’d set foot in the brothel alleys I spend most of my days or shake hands with some of the people I’ve grown to love most in this world. It is still unbelievable and so exciting!
I pray that this Christmas we might truly love the places we are and the people we are around. I pray that we would see God’s love for us more clearly and rest in that love more deeply.
Thank you for being a part of this—for making a way for me to be here. I really cannot say thank you enough! Please continue to consider ways you can support what I do and give to the work that WMF is about. Thanks!
Hilary