I procrastinated a little bit in writing a blog from India – so the following are all random excerpts from my journal that might help sum up the month:
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In India we were told that our team would be doing village ministry. So we got on our bus, thinking of mud huts and dirt roads and 4 hours later arrived in a “village” with 3 million people. A village with the population of Iowa.
After being swarmed at the bus station we took tuk-tuks to our pastor’s house where the whole neighborhood was there to greet us. They gave us yellow balls of sugar, sweet bread I hid in my backpack and crunchy noodles that I loved.
We live in an apartment with Pastor, Kumari, and Hepsi plus all 7 of us. There’s been a lot of quality time.
We were told we couldn’t go outside otherwise people would follow us and we would cause a traffic jam and attract police.
Our first afternoon in India, we went to the supermarket to try to buy toilet paper – which apparently isn’t a thing in India. There were people from the press in the supermarket following us around and taking our picture.
After our trip to the supermarket we went down the road to buy pomegranates and bananas and caused the traffic jam we were warned about, from the crowd of people around us blocking the street.
Today our picture was on the front page of the newspaper under a headline that read “White People Are Here“.
Yesterday was our first day of ministry and it was an adventure to say the least. We left at 3:45 and about 5 minutes before that we were told we needed to prepare two 20 minute messages, a testimony, and 2 special songs. Surprise. So we piled in the taxi, I sat in the very back trunk space and the door kept flying open. We had 10 people in a van that fit 8 and we cruised along the highway. We saw up ahead that there was a military blockade, so we dropped the pastor off on the side of the road and as we passed through the brickade they flagged us down, but our driver didn’t stop he just kept on going trying to get away, but as we sped away a man from the blockade hopped on his motorbike and chased us down.
We got stuck/slowed down by 5 speed bumps and the guy hopped off his bike and started yelling. He walked up to the drivers window, yelling and started slapping our driver around. He opened the door, grabbed our driver’s phone from his pocket and made us follow him back towards the blockade where we bribed them and left.
We got to the village and in all the excitement I had to use the bathroom. So a woman took me to a small brick structure I barely fit in, I pulled the curtain shut and my eyes could still see every one in the town that had come to greet us 15 feet away – and then a hand reached in with a bucket of water to wash off the cement.
After church we ate at someones house. These portion sizes are ridiculous – picture a healthy, average sized portion of rice. O.K now add a little more because you’re hungry. Now triple it. For real – huge.
I also found a chicken claw in my curry.
I love India.
Auntie Banu’s birthday was today, we had a birthday party for them. We fed Banu cake and she stuffed cake in our face. And then we played musical chairs.
The cake tasted like licorice and had a crazy flower sparkler, candle that spun around and hummed happy birthday for 48 hours.
Praise the Lord, this morning somebody threw the humming candle off the balcony.
We throw all of our trash off our balcony onto our trash tree. It’s terrible.
The other night at ministry I played your love never fails at ministry on my guitar, there were 95 people there – I counted. Afterwards my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t hold the shot glass of chai tea without spilling it everywhere, so Patrick drank it. However, last night, there were like 70 people around and I led worship and could hold the tea we were given afterwards without shaking/spilling it – so we’re making progress.
Also, last night at ministry we prayed for a woman with leprosy, a boy with a paralyzed hand – and over the house of a fisherman’s family – I feel like I’ve stepped back in time.
I love India.
After the message/ testimony we revisited the house of a woman with leprosy and there was another woman there, holding a baby. It was a brand spankin new baby. 15 days old, wrinkly and unusually hairy. We prayed for him and then they gave us oil – the coconut oil we’ve been using for our hair – and we anointed him – aka marked a little cross on his forehead. When the 2nd person did this he staretd peeing all over his mom and the bed behind him.
Today I cut cabbage in a dust pan.
At ministry tonight many of the kids were scared of us because they’d never seen white people before. Paige and I were sitting on a cot, eating raw peanuts, that tasted like peas – which does make sense – and a group of kids came up to us pushing each other towards the front and so Paige and I decided to stand up and run after them – which was hilarious and they screamed and ran away from us.
It’s our last week of ministry…I found out that the pinky symbol Hepsi showed me to do when I had to go to the bathroom is not a me and Hepsi only thing – it’s a whole country of India thing, so every time I waved my pinky in front of the church to Hepsi – the whole church knew I had to pee.
Yesterday, 9 little school children randomly walked into our house and asked Patrick to play a song on his guitar. He started playing little talks by monsters of men and couldn’t find the pitch for the life of him. So out comes my uncontrollable laughing fits, which’ll be the death of me – anyways, I was laughing so hard and I farted. Loudly. I wasn’t even sure it was me at first, but then I did it again and I could’ve died. I pretended nothing happened and maybe patrick didn’t hear, but then I was still laughing and Patrick told the kids I had a disease where I laughed uncontrollably and couldn’t control my bowel movements. So he definitely heard.
I still love India.
