I want to apologize for not blogging in quite a long time. Since being in India we have been extremely busy with very little internet and my computer is broken, making it virtually unusable except for good days like today.
We have been here for 10 days and already we have visited four villages, been on TV twice and in the newspaper, visited two prisons, attended a wedding reception and visited more homes and prayed for more people than I can remember. We are living at an orphanage with the family who runs it. The pastor we work with has started churches all over the state, as well as running one on the property. He and his family have started dozens of homes for orphans and widows, community projects, church fellowships and other ministries. They are an incredibly hospitable and beautiful family and it is a huge honor to work with them.
I don't know quite how to describe India. It's sticky and beautiful and filthy and strange and magical and frustrating. Sometimes it smells like jasmine flowers and curry and sometimes it smells like sewers and rotten fish. Looking out over fields of cotton at the sun, a huge orange pink ball of fire setting behind distant hills, I have found the same magical India that I always imagined reading A Little Princess and The Jungle Book. And riding in a tuk tuk through the always overcrowded streets of town, dodging countless people, cows, sheep, goats, water buffalo, dogs, buses, bikes, cars and trash piles, I have found the same overwhelming India I have heard about in stories and the media and from friends.
I love India. It is enchanting and saturated with culture. Even the land itself is Indian. In most places you can pick a flower or stare at the ocean and find something that is outside the boundries of humanity. But here the flowers waft the scents of India and the waves lapping against the sand glisten and reflect over 5000 years of human toil.
India is not any different from what I thought it would be like, yet still it is somehow completely enrapturing and overwhelming. India is the most different from my own culture than any other place I have been. There really are cows everywhere, standing on the sidewalks and taking naps in the middle of the road as vehicles whiz by. No one interferes with them because they are considered holy. I feel very strange sometimes, wearing my punjabi with my arms covered in henna and yet still painfully and obviously white to hundreds of inquisitive brown eyes. Stand for too long in one place and inevitably a crowd will form.
I hope I will return to India, but I also feel very out of place here. I am not Indian nor will I ever be. My culture is so alien in this place that I don't think I could ever fit in, whereas I feel quite at home in places like Honduras and Kenya despite being a foreigner. I am so thankful India is our last month, both because it will be one of my favorites but also because it is draining everything I have left. I am continuing to learn the ever sweet beauty that comes from resting in and relying on the Father.
