My previous post was written on a bus while I was on my way to meet a little Indian girl, who lives in a town outside Vijayawada, a city six hours by bus from Hyderabad. Her Compassion sponsor in Sydney, a dear older woman, asked if Vijayawada was close to my home city. I said yes and agreed to meet the sponsored child. I'd never been to that city before. At the time, it seemed like a simple proposition. My friend wrote a letter to the little girl. She gave me the letter and a small bag of gifts. "My child loves stickers," she said. The bag had stickers, pens, markers, clips, rulers, solar-powered torch and a beautiful, painted Japanese hand fan.
The girl is sponsored through an international organisation, 'Compassion,' that runs a centre in a little town six kilometres north of Vijayawada - the 'Zion Development Centre for kids'. My friend in Sydney, among thousands of others, gives Compassion a small amount of money every month to sustain the development of children living in poverty. My willingness to visit the girl was part out of curiosity to see what these sponsored centres offered in terms of education, living conditions and spiritual growth.
I tried for a few days to get a local contact, but couldn't find an address or a telephone number for the centre. With just the girl's picture on the Compassion sponsor card and the name of the town, I set out on an adventure. The bus left Hyderabad at 11pm and would arrive in Vijayawada at 5am the following morning. I planned to catch the 1.30pm bus that afternoon back home. A whole morning would surely be enough to find the needle in the haystack. "God," I prayed, "Please lead me straight to this girl in this almost impossible situation." The bus got stuck in a jam on the highway for four hours. Saved me the hassle of arriving in an unfamiliar city at 5am and not having a clue what to do until there were people around at a more sane hour. I finally arrived in Vijayawada at 9am.
I first booked a return ticket to Hyderabad for later the same afternoon, confident that two hours was sufficient to find the centre and the little girl. Half an hour later, I got dropped off in the middle of a little town. I started asking around. Figured it had to be connected to a local church. The people in this town couldn't understand when I asked for "Zion Church," one man looked at the card and read, "Zee-on Centre." I started asking for Zee-on church. The policeman on the road, the shopkeeper who lived here for years couldn't help. A small clinic on a side road looked like a place this little girl would have visited. I walked in and asked the doctor if he knew about a development centre for kids. He saw the card in my hand and said, "I know this girl! Her father is a rickshaw driver and she lives in the slums on the other side of the rail road tracks." I crossed over a lake on a four-foot bridge that had motor bikes crossing each other simultaneously at silly speeds. Over a rail-road track and few more stops for directions and then I found it - a small, white building. It said, "Indian Pentecostal Church" in big, bold letters and in a small corner, "Zion Development Centre." Hallelujah!
Around the corner, a blue gate stood at the entrance to a small house with two levels. A big hall on the ground floor, I assumed, was the main centre. The gate and all the doors were locked. There was no one inside. It was 11am, two and a half hours before my bus back to Hyderabad.
