India for the Eyes

(mostly) non project related pictures (from jenny and gary). All the project related ones are on a hard drive somewhere.

postpartum

I miss India.

It's great to be home. It really is. But I can't help but feel a bit of postpartum anxiety being separated from India. I miss the vibrant colors of the sarees and the great Indian food at the truthseekers office. I miss our new friends and I miss my teammates. Most of all though, I miss being part of His plan 24/7. I miss being inspired by the great men and women of India who work for His Kingdom with reckless abandon.

It was always our intention to bring the mission back home. Not to leave the mission-mindedness behind in India. But it's hard to come back to your life and not settle back into the old way of doing things. You begin to rely on yourself again. In India, being so dependent on God and on your teammates made things so real. So simple. I miss that.

50 hours of footage. Thousands of photos. I know that our mission begins now.

Please continue to pray for us as we continue our mission. That we don't settle back into the comfort of our lives, but remain focused on God and His Kingdom.

fyi - we're back

that's all. more later. pray for peter's health. I think it's all hitting him now. Exactly what is hitting him? Not sure.

Happy Thanksgiving

here are some pictures that show more of us in action.



Action packed, aren't they? as you can see in the first picture, our crew was huge.

The last picture is of this guy who wanted his picture taken (this happened a lot at the events, esp with kids) but then he wanted a copy. Hard to do without a polaroid or email. So I wrote down this blog address and maybe he'll find it. Not sure if he understood what I was telling him . But if you do end up finding this, man in green, Happy Thanksgiving!

We're all sick but Jenny might have some minor food poisoning. Two 5 hour train rides yesterday didn't help esp. the one back (roach infested). So me and her are spending Thanksgiving in as the other groups dine together. Hopefully the pizza will get here soon.

Sheer Skill

One more post,

So here in Delhi, you can imagine with the amount of people here the traffic is a nightmare. However, we don't have a problem with traffic when you have a driver like Diol (spelling). This guy has an ability to squeeze an SUZ between a bicycle ricshaw and a cow with only inches of clearance. We get through traffic with a cut off of a cow here, narrowly passing between small autos, and other cars. The level of skill is astonishing.

Bravo

What the heck?

I find that the level of inhumane treatment that the Dallits get in India just sickens me. To treat an animal better than that of a human is just insane. The treatment here is like as somebody here put it, "as long as you have somebody below you, you're ok". People here live out their life according to what caste you're in, do it well so that when you die, and you get reincarnated you can come back at a higher caste so that you can dish out the crap to somebody below you. People are so fearful to come back in a new life thats even less than the caste they are in now. Sounds insane huh? Its reminds me of a hazing thing in fraternaties.

That thing about "don't believe everything it says in print or in history books"?? Well its true for India. The west has such a distorted picture of India. If you were to ask which country has more human rights violations between India and China, I guess people would ordinarily pick China. However I would say they're the same. India's treatment of the lower caste here is almost satanic.

Picture this, about 70% of the population here is of the lowest caste. The rest are either the highest castes and foreigners. Now with 1.2 billion people here in India that makes it about 800 million people living in conditions that we as westerners would consider demeaning. Thats about 15% of the worlds population.

I guess if after this experience with my trip to India and Thailand is that there is so much to do about the injustices of people here in the world. Who's gonna do it? Don't know. Hopefully messages like ours will start to put an end to it.

Sorry for the rant, I guess i'm just pissed.

no photography

there was this sign at the Taj but pretty much everyone ignored it. When we got to the entrance, there was a nice single file line which seemed odd for India. About a minute later, some people pierced the queue and beelined for the entrance, causing a mad rush to enter. So... we had to wait in a mob and squeeze through to go in.


McDonalds has the sign too. Not sure why. Maybe b/c they have different menu items. Contextualization. Marketing. Segway - a lot of what Sunil's ministry does is contextualize the gospel into Hindu culture, possibly rubbing evangelicals the wrong way. Basically, God has been revealing Himself to the Indian people in their language and he's just continuing the process. Westerners don't need to bring the gospel to these people. God is already working here. It just needs to be pointed out to them.. if that makes sense.

Lately, we've been eating more McDonalds. Peter loves the Tiki burger? McTiki? but we miss the office food.


The last picture is of us on a chai break in the office. Office food usually consists of some daal, tasty veggies, rice and something like naan.

The first 2 footwashing events went well. Was a tad chaotic last night due to the swarms of people, but today it was better. One more tomorrow. We have to take a 5 hour train ride there but anything's better than the 5 1/2 hour rollercoaster ride to the Taj. Complete with intermittent 5.0 richter scale bumps, tailgating within a foot of huge trucks at 50 mph, constant honking, slow vehicles, tractors pulling into traffic, scooters going the opposite direction in the shoulder and random sudden merging. I think there were 2 wrecks on the road home. Exciting stuff.

some of us are sick and allergic to stuff. Continue to pray for our health, for the footwashing events and for India.

untitled

What a(n incredible) day!

We started our day at 5:30am to see the Taj Mahal. Most of us seem to be still jet lagged so getting up at 5am seems to not affect us much. Besides, various types of noises on the street seem to wake us up; like firecrackers, then there's SUPER loud fire crackers that sound like there's a war from a distance, music playing at 3:30am, dogs barking, pigeons hooting, street vendors chanting, and so on but... all this makes up the beauty of India.

Two other teams also joined us to see the Taj, one of them we are staying with now.

I was under the impression the drive was only two and a half hours away-it was roughly 5 hours. It was quite a bumpy ride-I think it was a combination of bad road and the bad suspension of the bus. What was most interesting on this journey to Agra (city of Taj Mahal) was to see cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and wheel carts being pulled by either horses/camels or cows all being shared on one road. Truly amazing. The funniest thing I saw today was a cow pulling a wheel cart while the driver was sleeping.

India has absolutely no safety regulations. It's completely normal to see three to four on a motorcycle, a women sitting sideways on the back of the motorcycle holding her baby or 11 people in a typical 5 passenger vehicle.

Anyhow, orientation begins tomorrow for the Truthseekers International footwashing event. Although we are not actually participating in the footwashing, please pray that God will help us capture the right moments (whether it be through interviews and/or the actual event) to expand his kingdom.

The people of India are truly amazing. I have learned so much about this country by being here. Please also pray for the people of India-especially for those that don't know Jesus as their savior.

One more thing, we are all now addicted to "Chai" tea. We look forward to the twice daily compulsory chai.

Sunday 11/18-

Praise God, He has blessed us again with a wonderful day. This morning we had an interview session with Sunil Sardar. It went very well and it was very informative. Afterwards, he prayed for us which was a blessing. Sunil is truly a servant of God and we have great faith that He will use him in mighty ways.

Today was orientation in which all the teams gathered. There are approximately 70 of us. We were told double from last year! Hallelujah!

Tomorrow will be our first foot washing event. Please pray that not only will we be able to capture the right moments but the people of India will come to know Christ through this incredible event. We interviewed a caste leader who said last year's event caused him to come to know Jesus. He saw the westerners washing the feet of lowest people and this caused him to wonder why they would do this. Anyway, pray for more stories like that.

Well it's early Saturday morning. Were getting ready to head down to the Taj Mahal. Apparently, its a tourist trap for not only tourist from America and all over but millions of Indians go there to visit as well.

Were taking a much needed day off and taking a 3 hour bus ride down to the Taj Mahal. The week previous has been hard and rewarding. Hard because we're working constantly and having to endure the incredible noise, air, everything else pollution. It is incredible polluted here, going outside is like striking up a cigarette every minute.

Well pray for us.

a few select photos

this might be the last post for awhile.. we're changing our place of stay and don't know the internet situation at the new place..

today, we went out to visit some of the footwashing sites. If you read the last post, you would know this. A lot different than where we're staying. Lots of animals roaming, cows, pigs, dogs, et cetera. It's hard to put into words.







here are some pictures. Not from today.. but I didn't look at them too carefully..just wanted to get something visual up here. Yooch on the balcony of TruthSeekers, some food, Peter trying on some new clothes, us taking pictures and the back of my head...

we're off to the Taj tomorrow for our day off. no big deal..if you do a web search on Taj Mahal you might be able to find some photos of it. Good luck.

some answers to your questions

thank you thank you thank you for all your prayers. Our stomachs are fine so far and the food is good. The TruthSeekers office prepares lunch for everyone everyday so since the last few days, we've been doing interviews there, we get lunch. Have I mentioned that it's superb?

The day after our lights blew, someone showed up with some old movie lights. They didn't have plugs on them, but wires and he would use a screwdriver to jam the wires into the outlets. Maybe that's what we should've done.

The interviews have been going well for the most part. Good stories. God is good (But you know that). Tomorrow we'll be traveling out and about to the sites of the footwashing to try and get some pre-interviews and other footage.

We continue to be humbled by the hospitality and love of our hosts. There's a delay in pictures b/c we're shooting RAW and have to convert them. Sorry. I can tell you that the color scheme of the environment is mostly browns. Apparently, we smoke 2 packs a day by breathing the air here. Some of us might get addicted.

In the next few days, other teams from the US will be coming in to participate in the footwashing. Pray for their safe arrival with all their bags. A few flights have been delayed. Is the weather bad over there?

lights, camera, action sans lights

for the most part, interviews went well.. had problems with the voltage and burned out most our lights .. we had a converter but something about the fluctuating current kept blowing out the CFL's. We have 2 left.

But today, more interviews, a lecture, then interviews.

India is quite dirty. You can tell what's in the air when you blow your nose. There aren't any laws about burning trash so the smell of stuff-on-fire looms in the air constantly. When we landed the other night, the pilot said it was "smogey". Yes, smogey indeed.

We had a devotional with Sunil (the founder of TruthSeekers). quick tidbit - We shouldn't love money and use people. We should love people and use money.

Oh, we got all our luggage. Time to go.

fyi - we made it

after about 24 hours of travel, we landed.. 2 of our bags didnt make the transfer but thats okay. Yooch didnt need to brush his teeth that bad.. But he has his bag now, which we're all really happy about. We're also super thankful for our hosts who have been super hospitable and super helpful. Super.

So the goal today was to stay awake and good news. Mission accomplished. We spent some time with Truthseekers, talking about God in India over chai and a superb lunch. Then we stuck 5 of us in an auto (auto rickshaw), 6 including the driver and went to India Gate.

right now, Peter and Yooch are out to buy Peter some traditional shirts.. Jenny fell asleep immediately after dinner and me? well, you can probably guess what i'm doing..

tomorrow is all interviews.

waiting...

it's that time when you're waiting for your ride to the airport, unsure of how to fill the 20 or so minutes. backs packed. am i forgetting anything? scan the apartment. scan it again..

perfect time to blog! well, maybe not. but that's what's happening. jenny's brushing her teeth. peter and yooch are .. who knows where? waiting for their ride as well, probably. Not sure what to expect, but excited for what God has in store.

and then we'll be at the airport.. waiting again. waiting for boarding. waiting for take off. waiting for landing.

and maybe you'll be waiting for us to update this blog.. hopefully soon, but not sure for sure. (maybe I should've titled this "not sure for sure").

But until then - Thanks again for all your prayers, support, love... and thanks for reading.

the weather. (people ask about this)

10-Day Forecast

NEW: Larger Radar Maps & No Ads

			High / Low (°F)	Precip. %
Thu Nov 08		Sunny	88°/62°	20 %
Fri Nov 09		Sunny	88°/63°	20 %
Sat Nov 10		Sunny	87°/62°	20 %
Sun Nov 11		Sunny	87°/60°	10 %
Mon Nov 12		Sunny	88°/60°	0 %
Tue Nov 13		Sunny	87°/59°	10 %
Wed Nov 14		Sunny	86°/58°	10 %
Thu Nov 15		Sunny	84°/57°	0 %
Fri Nov 16		Sunny	83°/55°	0 %

God is so good

Our team is leaving for India in a few days. The past month and a half in preparation for our India trip has been an incredible journey. As most of you know I experienced different forms of spiritual attack. One of them was not being able to sleep for a whole week! It was awful. The enemy was doing everything in his power to discourage me from going to this once in lifetime experience.

As I clung to God for comfort I realized that I was growing stronger and closer to Him. In addition, I ran across a few people whom I felt God's loving arms wrap around me and reassure me that everything was going to be okay.

One of the most important things I've learned during this time was that He ALWAYS provides. As most of you know my job situation has been a haunted rollercoaster, literally. I can definitely say that I've experienced more in the past two years than an average person will in their lifetime.

As some of you know I was offered a position at Edmunds. Unfortunately they were not able to follow through because of my absence on our India trip. I was so bummed.

About a week later, they decided to offer me another position that opened up. Even when sacrifices are made for God, He will bless you ten folds more.

Praise God, He is good!

Anxious Anticpation

Well we're coming up to just almost a week away from our trip.  Its basically a week till we leave, and i've realized that in the week, my income would probably match that of somebody's year income in India if not less.  Its weird, that I can sit here on a computer typing away when people half way around the world are living on what I pay to do one load of laundry per day.  

This is why I really encourage people to go on mission trips to see how God has blessed us with what we have.  As the Bible says, beyond shelter and food, everything else is a blessing.  I wish more and more people realize.  With this mission trip and the topic currently running at church, its shameful the amount of money I waste on spending.  I think i'm gonna save money more now.  Ramen and water from now on haha.  

Seriously, though.  We should be mindful of injustice, global warming, michael vicks, of the world.  We only have one Earth.  Lets do something to protect it.

In the immortal words I saw on a Tshirt.  Life is short,  pray hard.