A Prayer for HOPE Worldwide


Dear HOPE worldwide Prayer Partner,

Please join with us in praying for several important meetings taking place this week to discuss the future development and plans for HOPE worldwide programs, including the HOPE Youth Corps and Volunteer Corps. Please pray:

The Volunteer Corps is impacting lives; the following is an excerpt from a letter from a volunteer on the HOPE Volunteer Corps, which took place a few weeks ago in India.


Dear Friends,

Things around [village of Pudupattinam] get more and more amazing every day. Today Barbara and I opened the primary care center. This clinic is really bare bones and limited in resources. We took care of 27 people on Friday and 35-40 on Saturday. The clinic has no running water and the electricity constantly gives out. They really need a generator for the refrigerator but that costs $2,000+ in U.S. dollars.

The people were so thankful and happy and could not thank me enough for taking the time to care for them. I cried when one woman told our translator, "I never came to this clinic before but someone told that you people really care. I'm glad that I came." Another elderly woman wanted me to know how kind and loving I was because I touched her and held her hand. It was explained to me that the doctors never touch the patients not even when they assess them here. So for someone to sit and talk and care and touch these people is so powerful to them.

Friday night the village asked us to join them and to share our culture and traditions and teachings with them and they would entertain us with dances. Well, what a party it turned out to be. They loved our singing and Santa Claus that went throughout the village to call all the children. Then the young men got up and danced to Indian music. After the dancing, they asked our girls from Youth Corps to go up and shadow their line dancing and it had the village cheering and wild with excitement when these girls did the dance as if they were Indian. It was great...that is the moment I think we stopped being American volunteers to becoming their family. The warmth, love, and appreciation just oozed out of them. The Elders were laughing and clapping- it was a sight.

Then the elders and leader spoke to us through a translator, to share how grateful they were to HOPE worldwide and to our volunteers for traveling far and taking care of people they didn't know. They shared that we were not foreigners to them but their blood and family. We said good-bye and that we loved them and thanked them for helping us feel so welcomed and loved. We can't speak each otheršs language but it didn't make any difference. I will never forget them. But saying goodbye is so hard to do.

Sincerely,
Audrey