A few weeks back I was telling a good friend that I keep preparing to write something profound, and instead I haven't written anything. His (wise) response was "Don't try to be profound yet, just tell people what you saw. Profound will come later. It will come when you ask yourself an old question and the answer is very different because you have seen more."
This entry is going to start the story and my hope is that future posts will help share the stories of the beautiful women that I had the blessing and pleasure of meeting and listening to their stories.
Some more background. I went to India with an amazing and beautiful woman that I met on a train in Italy. I truly believe that God had plans for us to meet and I can say that I love her dearly; she is a role model for me and I have been blessed to know her. We got together once we were both living in California and I asked her for a book recommendations or stories about her experiences with women's microeconomics groups and she invited me to come and see. 5 days later I was in and had tickets to go to India.
I accepted Cherylann's offer because I am/was in love with the idea of microeconomics. I love that it is a method of service that can help individuals break the ties of economic injustice (only the rich with collateral can get loans and the poor can never have those same opportunities) and cyclical poverty while recognizing and respecting the innate dignity of the individual. I wanted to learn best practices. I wanted to learn tools and techniques. I wanted to know the good, the bad and the ugly so that I could, in the future, use those tools to help others. I think my heart was in a good place, but I was drenched in theory and needed a taste of reality.
First - I will sketch a rough image of my process of getting to India. It is 4 days before my team is leaving for India and the leader has not responded to my e-mails or calls for two weeks. I begin to doubt. I realize that I am going to India with someone that I have meet three times (once on a train in Italy, once when I am invited to go to India and once as part of a team meeting). I have to rely on two things: faith in God and my ability to read when people. I have seen Cherylann with her family and with family friends, I have read information about her trips and the good she is apart of around the world, and I recognized her honestly, humility and the genuine care that she shows for others via her spoken and written words. But, as many times as I tell myself that - I am getting nervous. (I found out later she was on a business trip with her husband which she had told me about - I just had forgotten).
I then travel to India by myself for two days and arrive in Hyderbad. I walk outside of the airport terminal and see many Indian faces and a sign with my name on it, the ministry's name on it and two guys. Every permutation of deceit runs through my head: is there any way that they got ahold of my visa application, e-mail, etc and are not the people I should be trusting. After about an hour of windy, bumpy, strange roads, I am even more nervous. Little did I know, within 10 minutes I would be at a safe place where many nervous women have come and grown in their knowledge of microeconomics, faith and love.
