Into a routine now.  After breakfast downstairs in the hotel’s restaurant, we all meet in Pr.  Kelly’s room for worship then a team meeting.  All afternoon I struggled to understand how to use my computer’s powerpoint program.  I had the health talk for the meetings tonight.  Everything went well.  But my eyes were burning like crazy - from all the smoke in the village and the dust from the long drive there and back?  Did two charcoal poultices but they didn’t seem to help a bit.

Me, Lisa, Toni C., Yissy, Nathan, Pr. Clark, Pr. Kelly: waiting for breakfast at our hotel.

Our third day in Kurnool began like all the rest.  The Muslim call to prayer was making a good alarm clock.  From the time I decided to follow God, I have devoted time in the morning to spend with Him.  The methodical call to prayer of the Muslims is admirable in that they DO devote time every day to worshipping Allah.  But what do they say to him and what does he say to them?  Their relationship appears to be very ordered and respectful, but devoid of the connection and practicality that I have enjoyed so much.  I prayed to God that He would never let me make our time together a mere tradition - empty of real connection and practicality.

Our team met every morning for a worship time together.  Sometimes the conference leaders joined us in the singing and sharing of what we had each individually learned about God and ourselves in our own personal worship time.

Pr. John and the Conf. president at a team meeting time.

The students arrived today and we ate lunch all together at the hotel.  Pr. Kelly let me borrow one of the Indian cell phones to call Mom and Dad.

At 5pm we headed out to visit one of the villages that would be transporting people to Ballawallan for the meetings.  A typical Indian village: “houses” were built side by side, sometimes with a space to walk between them but commonly with no space at all between.  The houses were mud brick coated with stucco and generally 12ft x 12ft.  The wealthier ones had two rooms of that size.  The floor was often cement and there was a little chimney in the corner where a fire of a few sticks would be made to cook the meals if there was rain or no space to cook outside the house.  A few metal pots, pans, plates and spoons hung on the walls.  And there was usually a shelf or two carved out of the brick walls where extra clothes or a blanket or two were kept.  Some people were very proud of their electricity which allowed for a ceiling fan - a luxury that I wish everyone in India could have - it was SO hot in those little houses with no windows and 110F outside and inside (maybe more inside).  The beds were cots made of stout sticks with loosely woven bark strippings for the “mattress.”  Some people had metal pole frames with nylon strippings.  The bed was propped up against one wall and taken outside for sleeping on hot summer nights like this.  A few people had brightly colored pictures on the walls from advertisements or political propaganda.  A Hindu would have an image or two on their shelf that they would pray to.  A Christian had a picture of Jesus or Heaven.

Inside a house (maybe 10' x 10')

Cooking outside.  The family bed in the foreground.

A nice village neighborhood.

Skinny, full grown bantum chickens scratch for even skinnier bugs.

Outside (and sometimes inside) skinny little chickens ran around with the pigs, cows, and wild dogs.  Sometimes you would see a duck, goat, donkey, and occasionally a monkey.  You don’t mess with those monkeys!  They have nasty teeth and dispositions to match.  We were warned not to feed them or approach them.

Don't feed the monkeys!

This milk cow was tethered, but usually the "holy" cows roam wherever they choose.

The village well in the middle of the day.

Villages had one or two wells where the higher caste people would get their water first and then the lower castes.  One village asked us to please provide another well for them because there were too many people there trying to use one well and by the time the lower caste people could get the water, the day was far spent and they missed precious time in the fields.

A “sewer” line (i.e. an open run off of “water,” etc.) ran down each narrow street just outside the house doors.  Some places had stones where you could walk on the edge above the mess, which I carefully did!  Everything liquid (or not so liquid) ran along here through the streets and provided a wonderful breeding ground for maggots, mosquitoes, and...

This first time in a village all I could see were filthy, raggedy children; curious, toothless faces of adults; and trash everywhere.  One young woman holding a baby warily watched us come down the street with our ever-present entourage of native children following.  When we reached her, she ran around to the back of the house to hide.

We began our visit at the church, where Pr. Kelly gave a brief talk on Daniel chapter 3 and how the God of Heaven protected the three boys who loyally, trusted Him.  Then we were paraded through town led by a few church members banging on drums and the children singing and skipping along.  This was our advertisement for the meetings I guess.  People could get a look at us and see if they wanted to come to the next village to our meetings.  We stopped at certain homes pointed out by the local Bible worker and with the translator’s help prayed for the families living there.

Pr. Kelly praying with a family in their doorway.

Night had come and our driver got lost trying to get us to Ballawallan.  Children were waiting for us there.  They were intrigued with Rachel Odenthal and Toni Crumley.  I was already “old hat.”  Or maybe I was acting too “adult” to be interesting to the kids...  but I was so exhausted from the time zone change and heat, that I hardly knew which way was up that first week.

About 200 people came to the meeting tonight.  About 50 were non-Christians.  An owl sat in the tree just over the stage where Pr. Kelly preached.  You could barely see it in the darkness above the cloth “roof” of the stage, but as it flew, the children I was sitting with all started whispering and pointing.    

Everything was late tonight because we waited for the tractor to arrive from that other village with a wagon load of people.  We didn’t get back to the hotel until 11pm.

The kids lining the tailgate of the tractor that came from another village.

A full tractor load!

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.