Go Beyond

Kolkata, India

Our team outside of Mother's House in Kolkata.

After nearly thirty hours of travel, our plane descended through the clouds and bounced once on the tarmac at Kolkata’s international airport. Although everyone was more than a little stiff from the long journey, you could sense the excitement as our students slung their backpacks across their weary shoulders and gulped their first visual drinks of muggy Kolkata. This is the beginning of their great adventure — an adventure that will challenge them to compassionately serve the least of these. With bags piled precariously high on luggage carts, we made our way out of the airport and through the crowds to our buses. As soon as we had loaded the last piece of luggage it started to rain. An hour later we arrived at the guesthouse where we will spend the next two weeks. We enjoyed lunch together and then headed to orientation at Shishu Bhavan, Mother Teresa’s home for destitute children, where Sister Mercy Marie assigned our students to work at three of Mother Teresa’s homes.

I am excited about how God will use our students. Although this is my first trip with these particular students, I have seen hopeful signs along the journey here — little things that have encouraged me about their determination to serve. While waiting for our gate to open on our layover in Dubai, one student befriended a mother traveling with two small children. She engaged the kids in games and within minutes the air was filled with laughter. Just a small thing. I watched as another young couple was trying to pacify two small children with long tubes of M&M candies. Their little boy grabbed his tube and waved it in the air and unwittingly showered everyone in sight with candy. Five of our boys leaped to their feet and cleaned up the colorful mess. Just a small thing. As I watched our students taking the initiative to perform these small acts of kindness I reflected on something Mother Teresa once said, “We cannot all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.”

Doing small things with great love is why we are here. Over the next several days our students will have many opportunities to bless and serve the least of these in Mother Teresa’s homes, teach school lessons to children in a slum school that we support, and affirm the young girls who reside at the aftercare home that we fund and that provides a safe haven for these precious human beings rescued from human trafficking. The combination of all of the small things that we do with great love throughout the coming days will make a difference in the lives of hurting and damaged human beings. And these acts of kindness will also make a difference in the lives of our own students. Everyone benefits from small things done with great love.