In Memoriam

Though many are sharing messages of cheer for 2024, I am writing with some difficult news to start off the year. I was just informed that one of our wonderful young college students in India was killed by a motorbike on Saturday as she was going to work. As a way to grieve and mourn her loss, I wanted to share pictures of her here and to ask for prayers for her family. 

Family Photo from 2010 (Mahima is in the bottom left of this photo)

for when you've lost someone far too soon
“There are spaces of sorrow only God can touch.”
-Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking 

"God, this. This is impossible.
This grief is too much to bear.
If there was a tight order
to the world that you made,
it’s come unspooled
and no one will wind it up again.
God, I feel it coming,
that ache for the stories that will never be told.
And an anger rising
when I remember
what never should have been.
Worst of all--God, could anything be worse?--
it is so beautiful
the way this grief is a language of love.
I am lovesick with this much sorrow.
Teach me to speak this new mother tongue.
Show me how to memorize
so I can never forget
what they gave and what is gone,
and what we were owed
by a world robbed of their presence.
Hold me by the edges
for I am coming apart.
And nothing but love
will find me."
-Kate Bowler
​The Lives We Actually Have 

Mahima with her sponsor Marcia Murray from a visit in 2012 above
​and other images below from visits in 2012, 2014, and 2018

"Be merciful to us, O merciful God, for we have lost one we loved, and there is no earthly balm to unmake this sadness. Only the ceaseless, tender work of your Spirit can braid bright strands of comfort across this weave of earthly sorrows."
- Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy