Woke up at 5am again to the Muslim call to prayer.  Ate my roll and orange, left-over from the airplane, for breakfast and got dressed to go to a church in another village with the rest of the team.  Discovered that I had diarrhea...  My roommate, Lisa, also confirmed that I had a slight fever as well.  I would have tried to go with them anyway if it weren’t for my diarrhea issue.  They don’t have toilets or even outhouses in the villages.  You just use the open countryside!  I wasn’t “cultured” enough yet to do that in broad daylight, especially among my American friends.  So I stayed at the hotel under a heap of blankets trying to sweat it out, using charcoal powder for the diarrhea.  The shower wouldn’t get cold enough to do a hot/cold shower...  prayed for a quick recovery and patience, as it was frustrating me to have to miss out on things.

At one point that afternoon a big wind came and blew dirt around until the air was thick, like with fog.  Looking out my window I saw fewer people in the streets, but some still pushed their way against the wind trying to cover their faces.  An oxen-drawn cart with some big rolls of some kind of material was having a particularly difficult time.  The rolls wanted to blow off the cart and the drivers were having quite the time holding on to them.  The power went off for about 5 minutes.  I guess it was an Indian version of a dirt blizzard.  It lasted about an hour and left as quickly as it came.

Ate an orange and some almonds for lunch and didn’t have any “rumbles.”  I did feel like someone had punched me in the stomach, but at least I was safe to travel by meeting time that night.  The drive felt shorter and cooler tonight.  

[The college kids were supposed to arrive today, but the church officials kept them at the conference office in Hyderabad because there was a riot going on in the city and it wasn’t prudent to drive a car load of luggage and white-faced people through town.]

Children were waiting for us.  I played thumb wrestling with some of them and learned a few names.  One girl, about 12 years old, did some sort of strange wave/salute to me.  I tried to imitate it.  She was a very forward girl always pushing her way to the front.  She would make a good leader someday, if she learned to be kind.  I taught them “God is So Good” in English, and the translator taught it to me in Telugu.  The ladies put jasmine flowers in my hair.  We were meeting outside the church tonight.  A stage sort of thing was created for us to stand on (watch that last step!  the wood wasn’t securely nailed down on that one, and my first trip off the platform was nearly a crashing one).  A sheet was hung for a screen and some sort of power supply was rigged up to the light pole to run the projector and PA system.

Our stage and projector screen in Ballawallan.

While we were singing, there was a scream and brief pandemonium as a scorpion came out from some rocks and scuttled onto the plastic tarps 6 feet from where I was sitting with the women.  I tried to appear calm as I went over to stand near Pr. Kelly!  He got a better look at it than I did and said it was the largest one he’s ever seen (like the size of his fists).  I would have liked to get a better look, but as fast as it moved I couldn’t bring myself to move toward it!  The men chased it off by throwing sticks at it.  I guess you don’t kill a scorpion as it may be someone’s relative (the Hindus believe in re-incarnation). 

Pr. Kelly had the children’s story about Daniel and the lion’s den and talked about alcohol.  Several people pledged to not drink alcohol after his candid explanation.  I shared about where evil came from and why God gave free choice to His angels and humans.  The translator was pleased and said it was very clear.

At one point in the children’s story a little girl next to me tugged at my sleeve and wanted to whisper to me (they were practicing their English on us tonight - all 8 words of it : ).  As I leaned down she accidentally spit a little, trying to pronounce our words.  A drop of spit flew right into my eye before I could blink.  I wanted to run for my water bottle and rinse out my eye.  But I didn’t want to offend her or interrupt the story by standing up and walking across the crowd.  I couldn’t rub my eye because my hands were filthy from shaking all the kid’s grimy hands.  So I blinked a lot and let it water.  Yuck!

The ride home was uncomfortable as every bump jolted my sore stomach.  But Pr. Kelly kept my mind off of it by having me tell my life story to him.  Slept good that night.

Woke up to an eery, but somehow beautiful, song of the Muslim’s call to prayer.    I will try to put it on here, so you can hear it too.  I felt really far from home this morning.

Our team would eat most of our meals in the hotel’s restaurant.  This morning I ate a vegetable dosa: a triangle-shaped, fried, pancake sort of thing with a thin layer of shredded vegetables (onion, carrot and cabbage) inside... oh, and the usual dose of Indian spices.  I like Indian spices and can tolerate some heat.  I am not so used to fried foods anymore, so the grease was a little much.  But it was good.

We met with the section president of Seventh-day Adventist churches.  He is new in this district and oversees about 86 Bibleworkers/pastors.  We talked finances and made plans for the next 3 weeks.  My team would consist of Pr. Kelly, I, and two of the college girls - Rachel and Toni (yes, another Toni!).  We would be preaching in a village called Ballawallan, and more people would be brought in from two other villages nearby.

My first impression of our brothers in India is that they are just like Americans - some are business-like, some are playful rather than work-oriented, some are social, and some are more indifferent.  But all of them have something in common that is not like anything we see in America.  They don’t shake their head up and down for yes, or side to side for no; they wobble their head in a sort of yes/no, side to side... oh, there is no way to describe it in words.  The closest thing I can come to is one of the motions you might see from those dogs or other animals that some people stick in their car where the head bobbles around with the motion of the car.  And EVERYONE in India does that while they are talking to you.

Our first meeting would be tonight, and I was going to preach.  So after our meeting with the leadership, I nervously went to my room to look over the slides we were given to use in our preaching.  I chose the slides with the Telugu verses I would be speaking about.  Most people here don’t have Bibles of course.  So the verses on the screen help those who read to see what our translators are saying as they read the Bible.

I ate aloo gobi for lunch (my favorite Indian dish in the States - really good, though it’s even more spicy here than in the restaurants at home).  It is a potato and cauliflower curry with an oily tomato sauce and the usual Indian spices.

The drivers were supposed to arrive at 4pm each night to take us to our various villages.  I soon learned that 4pm means 6:30pm in India.  It’s too hot to drive in the daylight.  (It was over 100F and got up to 120F at times!)

Since the college girls are not here yet, Pr. Kelly and I are the only ones to go to our village.  We rode out of town, through a village, and then through the pitch blackness for what seemed like hours.  It was so dark I couldn’t see anything outside of the headlights’ reach.  But the red dirt roads had bumps, ditches, and turns enough to add adventure.

In Ballawallan, 8 children were singing with a song leader in the little (20x30ft?) white stucco church.  They sit on the floor on either mats made of thin sticks of bamboo (or something like that) or on blue plastic tarps that look like they came from Lowes hardware.  The stucco walls were painted with brightly colored flowers, a rainbow, and some Bible verses in Telugu.  Shiny foil garlands hung from the ceiling for decoration.  We were “garlanded” too with marigolds and sweet-smelling jasmine flowers tied into a scratchy greenery - all “gilded” with strands of silver foil tinsel.

The PA system blared the song-leader’s loud and not-so-melodic voice.  After an hour and a half of singing (which was broadcasted by their PA system connected to speakers on top of the tin roof of the church) about 150 people were drawn in, most sitting outside the open door and windows of the church.

A typical inside of a church.

The women sit on one side, the men on the other, children in the front on their respective sides, and the prominent men on plastic chairs in the back.  Women cover their heads with the loose end of their saris when in public.  I also learned that no one wears their shoes in the church.  One middle-aged woman sitting near me saw my sandals as I sat cross-legged next to her; she unceremoniously pulled them off my feet and threw them out the window.  Ok, I don’t need to know Telugu to understand that!

We didn’t bother to set up the projector.  Pr. Kelly had the Bible story first and shared half of what I was supposed to preach about.  He caught himself and finished up quickly, then went on to the stop smoking, health talk.  I was praying that God would give me words to share since I had only half of my prepared sermon remaining and no projected power points to go on.  I can’t remember what I talked about, but I said something.

After each meeting people would come up to us and put our hand on their head wanting us to “bless” them.  I was told about this, so I knew that I would simply pray for them.  It was difficult that first night to know what to pray about since I didn’t know anyone or what their daily lives were like.  The translators didn’t ever bother to help me, so I guessed at what each face was pleading for and asked God to work on their behalf in the way HE KNEW would be best.

Yissy "blessing" a family during a house to house visit.

On the ride home we caught a glimpse of a rodent of some sort by the side of the road in the headlights, and a rabbit with really long ears ran down the middle of the road in front of us for a long ways before it finally turned off into the bushes.  Our translator and driver tried to help me learn one of their songs in Telugu.  As we drove through that little village we could see how cots were placed outside the houses and whole families were piled onto their one cot, sleeping.  Pigs blocked the road as we tried to drive through.  

The driver was telling us through the translator that when a person becomes a Christian in India they change their name from a Hindi name to a Christian one.  They usually lose their job, and always lose their social status, meaning that they can no longer receive priority hospital statues, or government help in any way (e.g. no scholarship for education).  The driver had not changed his name yet because he wanted his son to be able to finish his education; he was wondering if that was a deceptive thing to do and if it would be displeasing to God.

The 7 hour layover in Mumbai, India went pretty quickly as we visited and ate samosas (a deep fried pastry thing stuffed with potatoes, carrots, peas and spices).  I NEVER would have found my way from the international arrival area of the airport to the domestic departure area.  You had to walk a long ways and go through several checkpoints and ride a bus for 15 minutes... as we rode to the domestic departure airport I caught my first glimpse of the shanty style houses that many city dwellers live in - nothing more than scraps of sheet metal or plastic with some plaster here and there.  It looked like a junkyard, not a neighborhood.  The few “streetlights” (and some red lights in windows) were all that kept the darkness at bay.  Another flight (2-3hours?).

In ridiculous contrast, the airport here in Hyderabad, India looked very much like a western-styled mall.  Bright lights, plants, modern architecture, marble floors and escalators... one whole side of the building was open to the outside.  It was weird to go down an escalator and feel the breeze of “outside.”  But I guess walls are not a necessity in a place that is always warm.  

The guys on the team commented, “Smell it?  The smell of India.”  It was a curious smell indeed.  Anyone who has traveled knows that each place has its own smell.  The type of dirt probably has a lot to do with the smell of most countries.  But in this case there was that curry smell again, and... well... the smell of trash.  Everything is nicely baked in the warm sunshine.  I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

The trees, flowers, birds and other creatures of India are beautiful!  There was a black bird flying around in the airport rafters that had white patches on its shoulder and resembled a jay of some kind.  Locust trees with clusters of orange-red flowers - pretty!

We loaded up into three vehicles and drove for quite a while to the conference office.  The car I rode in was made in India.  They have made the same model for 50 years now.  The traffic was WAY scarier than Ukraine.  There are no lines in the road to divide it into lanes, no traffic lights (we actually saw a few somewhere), no rules it seemed.  But there had to be some sort of rules.  By the time we left, I had figured it out: You drive only where there is room for your vehicle.  If there is no room in the direction you want to go, you honk incessantly until some little space appears. Then you lurch forward into that space and start honking again.  And all this usually happens at around 40mph.  

Locksmaya's car: the India produced body style.

A typical one-way highway in the city.

A view of the traffic from my hotel room -  an intersection.

Most of the vehicles are auto-rickshaws - a three wheeled, diesel powered, floor and seats with a little bit of roof over it (note there are no doors or seat belts).  These vehicles are taxis, mostly.  Not many people actually own their own car.  Business men use mopeds or bicycles.  And people from the villages bring their oxen-pulled carts into town.  Incredibly, you will see people in their most common form of transportation (i.e. sandals) walking among the traffic jams of auto-rickshaws, oxen, bicycles and buses as if “close calls” were nothing to raise the adrenaline.

At the church conference office we cleaned up a little and slept for 2-4 hours.  Then we visited a school run by the Adventists there in Hyderabad.  The teachers write their own textbooks each year which get approved by the headmaster.  The children each receive a blank copybook, and they copy the lesson into it each day as the teacher puts it on the chalkboard.  That is it!  No other books, pictures, or anything in the classroom.  At this location, 90% of the students are not Christian.  But all students who choose to come to the school must take and pass the Bible classes in order to graduate.  Quite a number of the Muslim and Hindu families have converted to Christianity as they learn from their children about Jesus.

While we were there, a Muslim lady and her son came to visit the boy’s teacher.  The little boy had a serious illness and was prescribed a medicine that caused him to break out in hives which left him partially blind.  He wore sunglasses and tried to hide his face the whole time.  Such handicaps are looked at as a judgement of the gods by the Hindus or as an “uncleanness” by the Muslims.  The Christian teacher has been encouraging the family that their boy can still live a purpose-filled life and may yet heal completely.  The mother brings the boy frequently and frantically to be prayed over.

The Muslim lady taking her boy (blue shirt at right) back home from the school visit for prayer.

We exchanged our money (1 dollar = 44 rupees); ate at a restaurant - various types of curry and rice; and went back to the conference office to sleep a little more.  It was too hot to travel in the cars until the sun went down.  The drive to Kurnool was something like 5 hours long.  Having the windows down and the night air blowing on me that whole time - I actually got cold.  That was the last time I was cold while outside in India! : )

The hotel we were staying at as “home base” was really nice.  It had A/C (to some degree... in one of the guy’s rooms the lowest degree was probably around 85F), running water, toilets, and wood box beds with 4 inch mattresses on them.  Our hotel was actually better than the Taj Mahal, because the Taj doesn’t have A/C or any of those other things!  The most interesting thing to me was that the shower had no curtain or anything around it; the shower head was on the wall just three feet from the toilet and four feet from the sink in a completely tiled room.  Once you got used to the fact that the only other person in there was the “you” in the wall-sized mirror, it was OK.

Our bathroom (picture taken looking into the mirror) shower is just above the bucket.

Lisa and I shared this nice room.  Those 4 inch mattresses weren't that bad.

Some friends who hung out with us every night on the outside of the hotel as we waited for our taxis.

I was so tired after these three days of travel that I fell asleep immediately. 

Morning came as we arrived in Amsterdam.  Now another 8-9 hour flight to Mumbai, India.  I finally slept some.  A lot of Indian people were on this flight.  The air smelled like curry or something.  My ears kept being drawn to the mumbled, sing-song language.

Waiting in the Mumbai Airport: Lisa, Pr. Kelly, Steve, Pr. Clark.  Already ate samosas.

   

Five of us met at the church and rode in the van 3 1/2 hours to the airport in Chicago.  Pastor Kelly, the associate Pastor Clark, and Steve Picket have all been to India before.  Lisa Odenthal and I had been on mission trips before, but not to India.  Four college students would come two days later when they finished their final exams.

The Tenacity of Life

Mom and Dad saw this in the yard a few weeks ago. This piece of grass did not just happen to grow up where there was a hole in the leaf for it to go through. It actually made a hole in the leaf to grow through it!

The lesson Dad got from it is in quotes below, and the title is my Mom's.

And I think it is neat that my parents are the kind of people that take the time to notice the fascinating things about nature and think of what we can learn from them.

"Even though God's truth is soft and tender, it is able to penetrate the most dry, crusty heart."

St Lucia Mission

I was blessed to be able to go on a mission trip to help with the building of a much needed school on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. It is down at the end of all those little islands way south of Florida and not so far from Venezuela.

The pictures will give you an idea of the flora, fauna, and friends we met there. The video was created for a get together of the folks who went on the trip, so it is not narrated. I'll give a brief description of what we did there and you'll just have to guess as to the meaning behind the pictures:

Over 85 people from the church I am working with in Indiana (and a few from South Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan jumped on board too) went down to lay tile for the new school. About 11,000 sq. ft of tile was laid! And a little room for a music building was started. Vacation Bible schools were held in 4 elementary schools. Health/hygiene talks were given at several schools. The Pastor was asked to come to two public schools to give out free Bibles and talk to the 7th graders about how to get to know God. Our medical teams went to villages and treated 460 people. And we all lived in two "houses" and kept up a family atmosphere by having worship together every morning and night and eating meals together as the various teams came back from their work sights. We made a lot of good friends and learned many precious lessons.

Enjoy a bit of St. Lucia!

The Work Sight: 10,000 sq. ft. of tile was laid in this new , much needed, elementary school.

While some worked, others visited schools in other villages and spoke to the kids about health.

One of the patients who came to the medical clinics.

The Grand Piton

A flying fish.

Lizard fighting to see who gets the female.

Fruits of St. Lucia

Our team (most of us anyway).