My lungs were burning and I coughed up something this morning, but I was able to rub my eyes open rather than soak them open.  So that is improvement!

Excited that it is Sabbath today.  I appreciate, more than ever, the fact that the Creator God has set aside this time to spend with us in a special way.  Being in a place where most people don’t even know about God made me realize what a blessing it is to be a Christian and what a responsibility we have to share these truths with everyone.

As my routine had become, I sat Indian-style (now I know where that expression comes from : )  on the cool marble slab floor of my hotel room and arranged my bib to keep the mango juice from getting all over my clothes.  I still had some almonds and prunes from the States.  And the Indian mangos were SO good. 

We went with Pr. Clark to one of “his” villages today.  It was a small, unorganized group.  We were draped with the usual garlands.  Each of us did something for the church service.  I shared an object lesson about how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly and how that is like us humans becoming God’s children.  Pr. Kelly played his guitar and we sang (but I had to lip sing most of it because I couldn’t get my voice to stay on the notes - a laryngitis type of stuff).

There were 8-9 baptism today (people that had been taught previous to us coming).  They have to use a big bucket to baptize people, and dunk them straight down instead of laying them back.  Not much pomp and ceremony.  Some people seemed afraid to go underwater - an experience they probably never have any other time in their life.  A “splash-water bath” from a bucket is about as good as it gets unless you live near a river.

As part of the celebration we were each given 8oz of fresh coconut water.  It was warmish, as thick as whole milk, and clear except for the floating bits of rubbery coconut.  There wasn’t a whole lot of flavor and I couldn’t even describe the taste now, but the texture was really hard for me to handle.  I tried not to think of it and just chug it down, chewing the chunks as they came.  I was doing pretty good and almost done when Pr. Clark said under his breath that it was like drinking spit.  Disgusting but true!

Then we went into the church to a table where they gave us banana, chapati, grapes and cold pop.  Everyone was leery to eat the grapes as we were warned not to eat uncooked foods unless they had a tough peeling.  I took the plate of grapes over to the baptismal candidates who were lined up against the wall, eating on the floor.  One young man was really polite and took only a few grapes, recognizing the number of people there were to eat them.  One greedy girl snatched a whole bunch of them...

Went home for a couple of hours before the meetings that night.  E-mailed Mom and Dad for the second time.  The internet didn’t always work.  It was funny to see Google come up as “Google India.”