It was an early morning in February of 2004. I stood outside my house waiting for my father to come out of the house in Mysore, India. My neighbor was returning from his early morning walk. He asked, "Where are you going?" "I am going to Calcutta with my father." Obviously, he was curious, why I was going to Calcutta and I told him I had wished to see the institutions run by the Missionaries of Charity. "Why? Why do you have to See Mother Teresa's institutions? They convert all Hindus to Christians."

I have known this gentleman as a little girl and I had no intentions of justifying my actions to him for many reasons and I simply said "I actually don't mind them being converted to Christians. They are, at the least ending their lives with love and care and off the dirty streets of Calcutta." He continued his point of view, "They don't die as Hindus", and he was willing to have an argument so early in the morning. It was not the first time I had heard something similar after I had made plans to go to Calcutta.

 A close friend of mine, an Indian gentleman from the U.S. goes to Calcutta every year to volunteer at Mother Theresa's camp for two weeks. Each time I meet him, he has tears in his eyes as he narrates to me how the old and the sick are taken care of by the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta by total strangers not only to the suffering people but to the country. They come from all over the world and work selflessly taking care of the sick who more often than not die in their arms, the only warmth they have experienced in their entire lives on the streets of Calcutta slums.

My father and I arrived in Calcutta and checked into a guest house and then took a cab to Kali Ghat. For some reason, I was under the impression, for all the publicity she gets; Mother Theresa's Missionaries would be rolling in dough and would have fancy buildings. We finally found a building with loud microphones playing Hindu chanting from the Kali Temple, a sign beneath it "Missionaries of Charity, Nirmal Hriday, ESTD 1952 Mother Teresa's Home for the Sick and the dying."

We walked in thru the main door; there was no one to question us or to man the door. It was a not a well lit room. It was a Sunday morning, around 10 and right at the entrance, a few people were holding a Mass. I sat down on the floor with the others, facing the priest hoping they would show us around after the Mass. I heard someone cough behind me and looked back. To my astonishment there were rows of very low laying rope beds with wooden frames and each one was occupied by an old sickly man. A gentleman sitting behind me got up quietly and approached the coughing man and used his woolen scarf to wipe the man's saliva and holding him in one arm soothed him with the other. The man was a foreigner. His own socks had holes and his sweater faded and worn out. As I swallowed my breath and held back a tear, I had a monstrous question haunting me. Why would a foreigner come to India and hold a dying old man off the streets of Calcutta? The obvious answer from a close minded Hindu would be  'To convert Hindus into Chriastians." In the dark room as I kneeled down on the cold floors of Nirmal Hriday a speech by Mother Teresa echoed in my ears, ""By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus. "
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