“I have come into confidence. I want to live beautifully and want to live with faith.”

Venilla | Staff Manager | Agni Raksha Hospital

“I would always stand the first in the school. But then we had the tenth grade. I failed the tenth grade, and I could not face my parents nor my teachers. So I committed suicide by pouring gasoline. After I got burned I was taken to Victoria Hospital. They just gave me three days’ time. They said that I may not survive. My family preferred to take me back home. When I went home, I was really very disfigured. All the neighbors used to sort of show me to the small children and say, ‘If you don’t eat food, there’s a devil here, and we’ll leave you all here.’”

“I was very upset because I could not come out of the house. That’s how my life went on for over three years. I never came out of my house. The wound was smelling, and a lot of maggots started coming on me. The way the maggots used to bite me, that was so very painful. And in all of this, I would just stay at home very quiet and never came out of the house.

“During that one year, after my burns, we went to different Hindu temples, different Hindu people said ‘You go to this person. He’ll heal you.’ So we have been trying all those kind of things. It’s only after a year that we met the pastor. And after that, we converted ourselves.

“Burns are not the end of life. They’re just the beginning. With Chitra’s support from Agni Raksha, I have come into confidence. I want to live beautifully and want to live with faith. I want other people to know about my story so that nobody does the same thing again. I want to be an example to others, and I want to speak about it.”

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Chitra | Co-Founder | Agni Raksha Hospital:

“Nobody does home-based care, and it is possible only because of Wellspring [now operating as Third Ladder]. They have given us two ambulances, which fly all over Bangalore and rural Bangalore. And we are very well-known because nobody does this work. Not many people work on burns.

“We are very grateful to Wellspring because they have been with us, and they have walked through with us. They have given life to so, so many people. They are doing such a great thing in supporting us, and without them, I don’t think we could be doing things here.

“We just want to be loud and tell the world that there is a living God, and it’s because of Him. I know that God is working through Wellspring and through us.”

Listen to Venilla share her story in her own voice on our Two Coins podcast HERE.