Letters from India Mission of Peace:
Radical hospitality By Leah Stucke, 12th Grade, East Aurora UMC
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adical Hospitality. If there is one phrase that can describe India it is radical hospitality. Before I left, I was told, by someone who has been to India many times, that the people in India are the nicest people in the world. I was unsure what that really meant or if it was true for the morning of the first day in India. I learned what it meant on Day One. We visited Centenary Methodist Church and attended one of their youth gatherings. During worship, they called each of us up to the front by name and presented us with a rose, a symbol meaning home. We all expected receiving the rose and being recognized was the end of their hospitality and we were already overjoyed to be given anything at all. But later in the worship service, they again called us up by name to give us a plaque. To finish, they fed us a home-cooked meal.
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Going on the Mission of Peace (MOP), we all expected to be welcomed into churches but the level of appreciation and hospitality we received was out of this world. Through MOP, we hope to spread shalom, create peace, expand our interfaith knowledge, and create interfaith relationships. The people of India had the same idea.
Being welcomed with their radical hospitality shaped our experience in India. Every place we went, church we visited, and person we met greeted us with radical hospitality. From receiving gifts during church, to having authentic conversations with people, to some of the highest up and most important religious leaders of religions that are not our own, spend time to meet with us, to sign books for each one of us and to eat dinner with each one of us showed how hospitable these people really are. India took MOP in and let the people here and the people on this trip be the hands and feet of God. God is everywhere in the world if you look. No matter where you are, what your history is, what religion you follow, you are a child of God and God is present in all situations and experiences.