Never be without love

The last day of 'work' in Kolkata. Tomorrow we rest, Sunday we go to a Bengali speaking church and then Monday is home. Second weeks are always the fastest..... Good news today - I had FRESH toast WITH butter for breakfast (instead of cold toast without yesterday) and our air conditioning was mended so I might sleep tonight....! The small things make a huge difference. 


We spent another day with freeset today - this time we were putting waterproof covers at the windows so that the screen printers stay dry in the crazy rain (the area around the freeset factory flooded knee deep earlier in the week - there was a picture in the newspaper of a boy swimming in the water). We heard more of the vision for the future (which was very exciting - they are praying that if it is God's will he will create a way for it to happen) ..... and learned of the UK distributor of their bags - checkout http://www.freesetbags.co.uk/ 


As our time in India comes to a close we've been thinking about how we might have changed, what has inspired us and what it might prompt us to do or change when we get back home. We've seen a lot, much of it still needs time to sink in and be processed. As we were praying tonight I was very aware of how God created each one of the group beautifully different and brought us all to India for different reasons. My brain still needs more time to work through all of this, but these verses from Colossians sum up what we have seen and experienced in action through the projects we have visited in the past couple of weeks and through our time together as a team.


'So - chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive and offence. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without love.'
                                                                                          Colossians 3:12-14

Bags and Choices

It's Friday and I've been here five days. This morning the noise felt really loud.... you would have thought I'd got used to that by now! Was woken up by some loud bangs in the night (which can't have all been one of the team who got stuck in the bathroom and had to be broken out....!). 

A later start this morning, which was nice.... felt a little bit more human. A gentler day too, but also challenging in lots of different ways. We went to visit freeset. This business was set up by a New Zealand couple and their family who were called to India to work and felt led to work in the red light district in Kolkata - providing opportunities for women who would be on the streets to work to produce fair trade bags, and now t-shirts.... It's a huge factory, with lots of things going on. When we arrived they were having their morning devotions, which we joined in with by doing the actions to the Bengali songs..... before going to work on the hundreds of sewing machines, cutting machines, screen printing machines etc etc plus those who were finishing and cutting by hand. 

I spent the day sitting on the floor cutting the threads off bags to finish them off. It gave time and space to process what has been happening this week. 

Freeset is about women being given the choice to change their lives. They are not made to give up their former life, only encouraged to. There are still women who work on the streets for all sorts of reasons while working there (which makes me very sad), but freeset enables life transformation that might not otherwise be possible. I was surprised by the choice thing.... but if people are going to be free then they need to be free to make their own choices.