I was blessed this week to have a few moments of conversation with Stewart and Monique Shaw. As mentioned on our web site, our senior PCA missions trip this year targeted their ministry in Calcutta—a ministry that reaches and rescues children and women caught in cycles of rejection and hopelessness.
I was interested in finding out how the ministry of reaching young kids at the railroad station got started. Stewart stated quite simply that, being in India with the sense that God had led him there, he “happened to hear” about the kids living on the tracks near the station. On hearing that a community of children with no family connections lived at the tracks he decided to check it out. So, he took it upon himself to go down to the station see for himself. He went ---- and was shocked to find a whole sub-culture of glue-sniffing children and teenagers trying to make a life for themselves on the railway tracks. Stewart began to visit them at great risk to his own safety. He began to befriend them and soon had struck a rapport with them as he began to build their trust.
Stewart had gone to India in the official capacity of representing a shoe company. His heart of compassion, shaped in no small way by growing up in the Peoples environment, translated discovery into mission. Long story short ---- today some 22 children are thriving in a loving, caring environment in a home for kids that they (the Shaws) have established in Calcutta.
Stewart’s self-effacing comment: “I’m a whacky person.” His vision continues to expand for these kids --- as we marvel at how God uses whackiness!
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