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Youth Visit to Sharonstan July 2011
It was our privilege to be able to visit Sharonstan Children’s Home and the church in Agra this summer. Eleven of us from Airedale Church in Keighley and North Derbyshire New Life Church made the trip to serve and be part of what God is doing there.
We travelled for just short of twenty four hours to get there. The final six hours of our journey by bus from Delhi to Agra was a great opportunity to experience the sights and sounds of India. Driving through the gates of Sharonstan we entered what seemed to be a tranquil refuge by comparison.
The following day was Sunday and we were straight into presenting drama, testimonies and preaching at the church meeting. This was followed by a youth event during the afternoon where we taught on “trusting in God” and organised games and activities to illustrate the teaching.
During the week, our mornings would be spent on various practical tasks around the children’s home. We painted furniture; created a mural; dug two long strips of land and planted five hundred plants to create hedges. A major project also was to make a concrete table tennis table. Under the guidance of Ben, a trainee quantity surveyor in the team, we dug foundations, mixed concrete, shifted large quantities of rubble, earth, sand, stone and cement all in temperatures we had never experienced. The heat and humidity is not possible to describe! We were on a tight schedule and had to reach a particular stage each day. We finished the table the night before we left. A monsoon downpour just as we finished it meant we had to spend another three hours resurfacing it!
In the afternoons we taught English to the children and also held workshops; drama, music, singing, dance, crafts, woodwork and media. Every child was involved. It was amazing to see what the children accomplished over the course of our stay.
Also in the afternoons, we were involved with local children who are part of a “school education project” run by the church. These children, who are not at Sharonstan, receive sponsorship to enable them to attend school, which their parents could not otherwise afford. We taught them and did crafts and songs with them.
In the evenings we lead the children’s devotion meetings. We taught English songs and acted out bible stories. We also visited home groups around Agra in the evenings and shared bible teaching and testimonies.
On the final Saturday of our stay we organised a festival day for the children. We organised sports day type events with races and competitions. Explaining a three legged race and wheelbarrow races were challenges but everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. We then organised eight craft activities that the sixty children rotated around. The day finished with a celebration meeting at which the children presented the things they had been learning in their workshops. We were all really proud of each group as they presented drama, music, dance etc. We finished by having a party tea and prizes were given to everyone.
Our final Sunday saw us presenting more drama, songs, testimonies and preaching. It was the end of a very busy but fantastically rewarding stay.
We have all come away immensely grateful for the opportunity we have had to be part of the amazing work that is going on at Sharonstan and in the church in Agra. We all said that if we could go back tomorrow then we would jump at the chance. The whole team did a fantastic job; a team of eleven very different people, each with a unique contribution, working together to accomplish whatever was asked of us. We worked extremely hard and in conditions that were far from easy, but the children and adults that we have shared our lives with have touched us in a way that we will never forget.
