6.27 - "The Gift of Pain"

Today was a really good day. I spent the whole day tutoring and subbing for a math class (it was first standard… or grade…math, so I could handle it)! My friend Carson and I are going to be subbing for the class this upcoming week. It was a little hard to do the subbing because the group of kids in the class are the ones who have an especially difficult time with their math and reading, but it was so much fun.

*The classroom that Carson and I are working in!... and some of the crazy boys :)
Nick and Spencer, this little boy (Savil) that I am tutoring kept refusing to read his assignmed books. He thought The Little Red Hen was too boring and he only wanted to read the “knight” books in the library. It made me think of you two so we took a picture :)


Satia (my friend in my “family” who has been really sad about Jessica leaving… the one who calls me Corey) and I are reading the Boxcar Children books each night with each other. It is a lot of fun- it reminds me a lot of when I was little mom, reading with you every night :) I am really starting to love these girls so much… it is so easy to do when they all want to be your best friend and love you.

Some pictures of the “Pathway of Hope” that leads from the school to the volunteer’s hostel where I am staying. Each of the squares has the name of different supporters of the program or little sayings…





Kim, our medical coordinator, shared some quotes from Dr. Paul Brand who spent a lot of his life working in some of the hospitals here in India with those affected by leprosy.
Dr. Brand said:
“I have never made much money in my lifetime of surgery, but I feel very rich because of [the patients I work with]. They bring me more joy than wealth ever could. And they bring me hope for other suffering people. In [many of my patients] I have indisputable proof that pain, even the cruelly stigmatizing pain of a disease like leprosy, need not destroy. ‘What does not destroy me makes me stronger,’ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say, and I have seen that proverb come alive in many of my former patients.
Once, [one of my patients,] Sadan, actually told me, ‘I am happy that I had the disease leprosy, Dr. Brand.’ I looked incredulous and he went on to explain, ‘Without leprosy I would have spent all my energy trying to rise in society. Because of it, I have learned to care about the little people.’ A statement from Helen Keller came to mind when I heard those words, ;I am grateful for my handicap, for through it I found my world, myself, and my God.’ Although I would certainly never wish leprosy or Helen Keller’s afflictions on anyone, I take comfort in the fact that somehow, in the mysterious resources of the human spirit, even pain can serve a higher end…[and] everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering.” - Dr. Brand’s book, The Gift of Pain
We are driving to Chennai in the morning around six and so it was neat to hear this perspective of pain. In the gospel we learn that there “needs be an opposition in all things” so it was neat to hear it in terms of a doctor who has been working with patients that are suffering from same pain as the patients that I am working with.