Dear Reader,
After leaving Europe, praying friends back in the US made it possible for Bob to fulfill Hubert Mitchell’s request and go to India in early October of 1948. In addition to preaching on Hubert’s behalf in Calcutta, he traveled more than 5,000 miles across India for the next two months to preach in schools, colleges, universities, churches, missionary conventions, and Youth for Christ rallies.
India had recently been partitioned to create separate Muslim and Hindu countries now known as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and modern-day India. Forced to migrate based on religion, millions of Hindus poured into India with no place to live and no possessions other than what they wore or could carry in a small bundle. Train station platforms were filled with refugees. Bob had never seen so much suffering, and he never forgot it. Many decisions and much of his writing was informed by what he saw on this trip.
Here’s some of what he wrote after his time there:
My dear friends and prayer helpers,
How shall I tell you about India? Several minutes ago I sat down to type up a few memories. Some things I have seen flashed in my mind’s eye, and now I sit here weeping like a child. I don’t cry often, but once you’ve seen India you can’t help but cry, unless you deliberately harden yourself. I think of hundreds of little children that swarmed about me on the streets, begging money for food. Many were blind, others diseased and crippled. Few if any had homes or families. They sleep on the sidewalks, their little bellies swollen with hunger.
I think of thousands of people lying on the cold concrete floors of the railroad stations, too weak to move. There are over 20 million displaced persons in India as a result of the riot and wars. The sick and the aged just lie around the stations and streets and fields until they die. The city trucks haul out corpses by the load and burn them. It broke my heart to pass their begging hands without putting something in. And whenever I gave to one, the others would mob me. Once the station police had to rescue me from a throng of old women, crippled men, and naked children who completely engulfed me begging for bread.
The most pitiful of all are the lepers with their hands and feet, ears and noses completely rotted away. Once I threw a coin to one but he could not pick it up. After that, I was always careful to place the coins in the little cups they carry between the stubs of their arms. Once in the darkness of a congested railway station I bumped into a man head-long. His face felt greasy against mine. Looking up to apologize I discovered his nose and chin were gone. He was a leper. But for the grace of God we all would be.
We all would be separated from God without someone to show us the love of Christ. For the rest of Bob’s life and throughout his ministry, he helped the poor and urged others to do so. “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done” (Proverbs 19:17, NIV).
Sincerely,
https://robertvfinley.com/
Charlottesville, Virginia.
