On Being a Missionary

I am on the backside of my stay here in India, and I still have some questions about what it means to be a missionary. At this particular moment, I have decided that being a missionary is simply being Love in action; yes, that's Love with a capital L so it isn't always a simple thing to be.
Here are two stories about Love.
One of the ways I try to be Love in action is to show gentleness, gentleness to people, gentleness to children, and gentleness to animals. In this part of the world, gentleness is not openly displayed and often its counterpart is what you see, lots of slapping, ear tweaking, etc.
As I have shared with you before, The Dogs of Durgapur are an interesting lot. Some of them have found good places to hang out (school) and actually look pretty healthy giving birth to healthy pups. But at the diocesean compound, where the pickings are slim because the kitchen only operates when there are people here for conferences, etc., the dogs look like they could belong to the Dalit Caste, the lowest of the low, the untouchables.
One of these dogs took up with me early in my stay here, or rather, I took up with her because she was the thinnest, mangiest mongrel around, and I couldn't turn away from her. Then she got pregnant. No family planning in the dog world, but while she was pregnant, she looked pretty good. Then the puppies came along. There were four of them and they were cute. Aren't they all? She was a good mother, but she chose to have her puppies near the guard's hut which is far from the kitchen. The guard showed some gentleness to her by fixing her a safe place in some logs and brought her some straw. I was impressed by that. We had a lot of people here at that time so there were food scraps to be had, but she couldn't leave her puppies. I decided I needed to feed her. After all, she was a nursing mother and with that, the Soup Kitchen was created. You can't buy actual dog food here so I bought baby cereal and mixed it up every morning. Then I graduated to oatmeal adding whatever I could find to dice it up a bit, an egg, some gravy, and one week, due to a mistake at the grocery store, they got chicken hearts, yummy.
Of course this puppy feeding attracted a lot of attention from the staff. Whoever heard of such nonsense, cooking breakfast for these mangy creatures. I put them in the category of "the least of my brothers" and continued on. A couple of the maintenance men got in on the act and started hauling scraps from the kitchen to add to the usual breakfast of oatmeal plus.
It wasn't long before all the pups were infected with the mange or whatever it was, and so I located a chemist who also sold pet meds, described the condition, bought the meds and began administering them twice a day. Again, a maintenance man eagerly helped to crush the pills and I mixed them into the oatmeal. The men helping me with this effort were not staff people. These men live in slums themselves so they know what survival means. Then there was the spray, but the puppies had to be clean, so I gave them all a bath. They actually seemed to enjoy the bath. I think the cool water eased the itching for a few minutes, but the spray was a different matter. Ouch!
Now, one by one, the puppies have died and there is just one left. As soon as I enter the gate with breakfast in tow, she greets me, tail wagging, rolling around on my feet. I can hardly walk to the feeding place and sometimes I just have to put her in my basket and ride her to the feeding spot. Mom always enjoyed her share, but now she is missing and who knows what fate has befallen her.
Gentleness to all creatures. Love in action.
Another Story:
One day when I was volunteering at Mother Teresa's Ashram, I noticed a new baby in the nursery. She looked to be about 5/6 months old. She was extremely thin and her head was a bit too big for an infant, and she had a mouth full of teeth. She is more like a two year old. I was told that the mother was in the hospital there and that she wasn't doing well, not eating, not responding, nothing.
I later learned that the mother and child had been picked up off the platform at the railway station where they were lying. MTs decided to take them both because of the child. Usually, only people with TB come to this ashram.
I asked to visit the mother. There she was, stretched out on the bed, eyes closed and totally unresponsive, and oh so thin. One of the women there gave me a glass with some kind of drink in it and I took a spoon, filled it and gave it to this young mother. At first she wouldn't open her mouth so the woman slapped her on the face and yelled something at her and she opened her mouth just enough for me to slip the drink in. This kind of behavior is shocking but not unusual, and I cannot get used to it. The young woman drank all of it, spoonful by spoonful. It was tea, of course!
The next day, I made some applesauce and took it to the ashram. So now in the mornings, I'm making my breakfast, breakfast for my dog family, and breakfast for the
young woman. She ate all of the applesauce, and when the woman wanted to slap her face to get her to open her mouth, I intervened and said "No hitting." Then I spoke gently to the young mother and she opened her mouth and ate.
I thought she might be more encouraged if she got to hold her baby. I spoke with the sister who asked the sister in charge and the next day, they brought the baby for a visit. I didn't get to see this encounter.
Every morning I continued to fix her breakfast moving up to baby cereal then baby cereal with dahl and veggies. She was eating every bit of it and faster as well.
One morning she started calling for Babu, Babu (pet name for a child). I asked if I could go and get Babu from the nursery. I was given the okay sign and took off for the nursery. Babu was getting her breakfast shoveled down her throat and howling the whole time. I started talking to the baby. She stopped crying. I took the spoon and fed her whatever it was. Then I picked her up. This was my first time to hold one of the babies. Outsiders are not allowed to even touch these children for fear of germs. I held her tiny body close to me, tiny legs and arms dangling, weighing next to nothing. Then off we went to visit mommy. I placed the baby next to her mother. The mother never opened her eyes. I took the mother's hand and ran it over the baby. I took the baby's hand and ran it over the mother. The visit ended and I returned Babu to the nursery.
Each time I have gone to the ashram, the mom has improved. We now know her name, Jorna. Her eyes are open. She is sitting up and slowly, slowly she is walking. She is eating solid food so now I am taking her juice when I go to visit.
The last time I took Babu to visit, I set the baby on her mother's lap and got her to hold the baby. I,too, was holding onto her. These moments have been so tender.
When I am in the nursery, now that I can touch the babies, I make it a point to talk to all of them, make faces, play Here Comes Mommy Creepy Mouse and all that silliness that goes on around babies. These babies respond with smiles and giggles. Even Babu was laughing out loud the other day. The babies are taken care of. They are fed, they are bathed assembly line style, and kept dry. Their beds are clean and the nursery is clean, but these babies are not loved. They are not cuddled. So being Love in action means I try to teach these women in the nursery how to cuddle and be silly with the babies.
Two stories about Love in action, about being a misisonary.