“Woman, Where Have You Come from and Where are You Going?”

Abstract

Lavina was born into a Roman Catholic family. At the age of eight, she moved to a slum in Mumbai with her parents and three sisters because they were poor. Since her father was an alcoholic, her mother worked part time as a domestic worker in three different houses to raise her children. She took them to church regularly, but on a few occasions when they went to meet the priest after Mass, he would simply look past them and continue talking to those who were rich and well dressed. Lavina mournfully expressed that the priests and others rarely came to visit them in the slums because they found it was dirty and there was no room to sit comfortably—since people were huddled together in small houses. After marriage, her sister chose to become a born-again Christian because she felt welcomed by the community and also had an experience of Jesus as her personal Savior. She kept encouraging Lavina to join the same group. Lavina initially refused but later chose to follow her sister when she began to experience a lot of problems in her married life and received no help and guidance from her local priest, who told her that she should see a counselor. She began to feel supported, encouraged, and enriched in her faith after joining this new community.