I am in India
I don’t know what day it is, I just know what time. It’s a ‘travel day.’ Not necessarily meaning one day, but several.
We got to the Dulles, DC Airport at 5:30 pm July 6th. Our flight wasn’t going to take off until 11p.m. that night so we had plenty of time to make our last calls to family and friends.
We were flying Qatar Airlines and were told that we lucked out on the airlines, and indeed we did.
Qatar is a 5 star airline; so nice and comfortable with great movies, great games, great meals, all on a huge plane. I enjoyed watching Space Jam and A Man on a Ledge with my seat mates. The flight was a total of 12 hours to Doho, Qatar.
Once we landed, we were rushed to our connection flight to Kolkata, India. This flight was only 5 hours, but I wanted to sleep to try and get on the same schedule as the India time. We got fed once again.
We made it through customs, got our bags, and exited the airport only to go right back in to sit around for 11 hours to catch our next plane.
We were walking outside at 4 a.m. India time, but there was still traffic in the streets. It is very humid here, much like Georgia, but a bit worse. There are so many trees and birds right outside the airport, it looks and sounds like a tropical rain forest.
Everyone stares at us because we’re foreign. It’s apparently not rude. There was a guy a few minutes ago standing about 5 feet in front of me staring. There were two guys sitting 20 feet away watching our every move. I just stare back.
I had to use the bathroom, and we have already joined in on the Indian custom of a squatty potty.
They don’t have toilets and no toilet paper. There is just a hole in the ground and a bucket of water to wipe with.
Luckily, I have toilet paper. I have to admit, I am not against using my hands to wipe because believe it or not, I have done it before in America on the Appalachian Trail.
After our 11 hour layover, we had a 2 hour flight to Hyderabad, India.
I slept the whole time, except for when we got fed again. Then we had an hour wait then a bus ride that we were told was going to take 5 hours. Instead it took 10.
I get really car sick, so I took motion sickness medicine and it put me out! I was so glad to sleep most of the ride.
At one point I had to use the bathroom so bad my bladder hurt. But we weren’t stopping and I was afraid to ask, so I peed in my Nalgene.
Everyone was asleep around me, I made sure of that. A couple hours later, we stopped on the side of the road and went pee.
We finally made it to Andhra Pradesh, India (that’s the state we are in and I am not allowed to put the district) around 2:30am in the middle of nowhere. Then we were led by these strange guys to a building, walked up three stories and into a big room with tile flooring and one bathroom with a toilet.
That’s where we slept. We’ve had a full day of rest before we begin our ministry month.
I will be going to a village far west with my team evangelizing. We’ll leave to go to other villages that are starting churches after lunch each day and pray for people, go to schools, work in the fields, anything we can do. Each night we’ll have a night service we are in charge of so we’ll do songs, share testimonies, preach, do skits, the whole shebang.
I am excited and honored God has chosen me to reach these people who haven’t heard the gospel before.
