A crazy day in Kolkata

Shelly and I had the best day yesterday. We went to Dum Dum, one of the stations where we work, and just hung out with the women and children there all afternoon. They painted our nails, braided our hair, and even cooked us lunch! It was pretty much a perfect afternoon! I absolutely love the families at Dum Dum... there are beautiful moms and babies and little children that just hang out all day while their husbands and fathers work in the city, mostly as rickshaw drivers. I think I could spend every day there just sitting and talking with them.

Last night, Shelly and I were walking home with our friend Samim... he's a little eleven year old boy that lives a few streets over from us at New Market and he's the cutest thing. We'd gone to have coffee with him and had the best time.... he's so tiny but he thinks he's our bodyguard.... he'll try and stop traffic when we're crossing the streets and tell creepy people to leave us alone... it's so funny. Well, we were walking down our street and it was pretty late... close to eleven or so.. and we passed a group of men and Samim told us they were bad men. Well, right after we passed them this man pretty much just started running towards us and yelling like he was really angry. At first we just thought he was drunk, but we realized pretty soon that something was really wrong with him. He was so, so mad at Shelly and me and yelling in another language, and then he just started singing "Because He Lives" in perfect English. After a couple of lines he starts yelling, again in perfect English, about how we are evil and need to go away and that we don't belong there. Shelly, Samim, and I ran behind a group of Muslim men on the sidewalk and they were trying to keep him away from us, and he just kept yelling and yelling, telling them that they didn't understand what was going on, and how we were evil and needed to leave. He was SO angry... he was literally trying to jump across a rickshaw and past the men to get to Shelly and me. We ran up the stairs to our hotel and could hear him downstairs for about ten minutes, just yelling and trying to come up the stairs. It was so crazy... Shelly and I are both pretty sure that this man was demon possessed. I know this is a touchy subject for probably most people who actually read this blog... we met a man in Jackson before who we know was demon possessed and when we tried to talk to people in the church about it, it was pretty clear that it was not something that they believed or wanted to discuss. Maybe it seems far fetched to a lot of you, but all I can say is you had to be there. This man was completely evil and you could literally feel it. He was a poor man... probably a rickshaw driver, and there's no way that he knows perfect English, if any English at all.

I guess the only reason that I'm writing about this is to ask, again, for a lot of prayer. Shelly and I are both pretty sure we will meet this man again, and we just stayed up for a long time last night praying for wisdom and asking God to show us what to do if we meet him again. Yes, it was scary... but we know that we serve a God who is much, much more powerful than Satan and we know that He will protect us. I have never claimed to be wise, and I've always admitted to being terrible at theology or anything that resembles it. I've read a lot in the Bible about demon possession, but honestly I have no idea what to do when we meet a man who has clearly been taken hold of by Satan. It was obvious last night that he couldn't touch us... this was a big man and in one leap he could have jumped on either of us.. but he didn't because I know he couldn't. Please just pray that we would be wise when we encounter things like this. I've never been more sure of evil than I was last night, but I've never been more sure that there is a God who is fighting for good... and I know our God will win in the end because he already has. If any of you happen to know much about this sort of thing... please feel free to share your wisdom with us. My email is HaleyLBoone@gmail.com- it would be so, so appreciated. I'll leave you with a verse that was really encouraging to us last night...

" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
-Romans 8:35-39