India On My Heart and Mind

The end of April Shawn and I sponsored a little girl in India.  It is something we’d talked about doing, but never actually took the steps until we read the blog postings by the Compassion Bloggers that were in India at that time.  I prayed that God would give us the girl that he wanted for us to sponsor.  We chose Nikita.  A beautiful nine year old girl.

Since that time we have become interested in the goings on of this very large nation.  India covers 1,269,210 square miles.  The estimated population for 2009 is 1,198,003,000.  When most of us think of India we think of Bollywood or those hour long conversations with a call center for our computer’s hardware or software OEM.  We don’t generally think about the residents that make up the rest of the country.  According to The World Bank, India has the highest concentration of poor people in he world.  According to The World Bank 42% of India’s population lives on $1.25 or less a day (http://xrl.in/34sy).  That means that at a population of 1,198,003,000 approximately 50,316,126 people live on what we pay for a soda at a fast food joint.  India also has a higher malnutrition rate of than any other country in the world!!

So, I’ve tried to think of India in this way.  Forgetting the call centers and the movie musicals and focusing on that 42%.  God has really been laying on my heart to pray for India when I pray for Nikita.  This is her home for the next dozen years at least.  I want it to be a place that cares for it’s people.  That seeks the welfare of all it’s population not just those who are in a caste that they feel deserves their respect and time.  Through prayer I know that God can change a nation.

Lovely Nikita

Statistics taken from here, please visit the site for more detailed citations.