I am learning through my mission and through friends to embrace reality. One friend in particular is an inspiration to me on how to bear sufferings with hope.

Janu is twenty years old and suffers from polio. Janu can’t walk, but she and her family have never lost the hope that she would gain her mobility. Despite their poverty, they have done everything in their power to help realize this dream—physical therapy, surgeries, and most importantly, prayer. For the past few months, Janu has been staying in the hospital to have another surgery to put a new rod in her hip.

Janu and her parents are people who have so much suffering – Janu is immobile, she is in a lot of pain, and she spends her full days and nights just lying on the bed in a dirty hospital room filled with dozens of other patients. Janu’s parents are giving every spare rupee and minute they have to Janu, and she is still not walking. Yet, when we go to visit them, there is no bitterness or complaining. They offer us coffee and biscuits and want to know what we have eaten for lunch and breakfast that day. Janu always tells us that because of Jesus, she is better. Jesus takes away her pain. Jesus is her hero. She also loves mother Mary and her own mom deeply. Our last visit with her, in her broken English, she told us, gesturing to her casted legs, “I am bolding! So you also bold!” It is with this boldness, with immense courage and hope, that Janu embraces her reality. She fully trusts that God will take care of her, no matter what happens.