This month our team is staying with a young pastor named Lijo and his family (his newlywed wife, mother and brother Leo) at their house which is also connected to their small, one room church in Chennai, India. We are working with Lijo's father who is also a pastor and whom we just call 'pastor.' Our weeks are very laid back in the mornings and busy in the evenings.Tuesday through Friday usually look the same. Relax in the morning and head out after lunch to do street ministry. Pretty repetitive but none-the-less, here is a glimpse of what our past week looked like…
Monday Feb. 11th – Our day off! We get one day off a week and that has been Monday for the past few months. Wake up around 7am. Eat breakfast. Wash laundry by hand. Hang to dry on the roof. Bucket shower in the squatty. Get ready and leave around 11am for the local mall. Solid hour and a half drive away. Another World Race team that is also staying in Chennai picked us up. Their contact has an awesome bus that conveniently fits us all. Enjoy the mall and AC with other team. Got subway for the first time since leaving America. Home around 6:30pm. Impromptu worship sesh on roof. Dinner. Noodles. Team time. Feedback. Bed.
Tuesday Feb. 12th – Wake up 5:45am. Jesus time on roof. Make breakfast with Carmen. French toast and scrambled eggs (our specialty.) Workout with Jilly. Bucket shower. Wait for bus to come. Bus comes to our house with some church members and pastor. Leave for a small village that is an unknown amount of time away. On the way there, stop at pastor's church to eat, have tea, and pray. Leave again, this time with even more church members crammed in bus. Randomly stop on the side of the road to eat fruit and pee. Finally arrive. Took 2 hours total. Get served tea again that the church members brought in thermos. Head to a church. Find a man who has been being attacked by evil spirits for the past 6 years. Pray for him for over 2 hours. When tire of praying, start singing. Go to house near church. Eat chapatti and curry chicken. Pray for another demon possessed man and a handful of other local village people. Go on into the heart of the village via bus. Stop and sing in the streets. Kj preaches. Crowd gathers, many children. Pray for people. Move on by foot to another location up the road. Same deal as before. Sing and preach and pray. Sun sets, still praying for people and talking to them about Jesus. Pray for a shopkeeper and get free candy. Finally done. Walk on foot to a church where they serve us tea. Pray and head back to the bus. Load up and drive home. Arrive home by 9:30pm. Exhausted. Team time. Feedback. Dinner at 10:30pm. Bed.
Wednesday Feb 13th – Slept in until 8am. Breakfast, sourdough balls and sour coconut sauce for dipping. Did not enjoy. Hot cup of instant coffee, much better. Workout with Jills on the roof. Bucket shower. Jesus time. Get lost reading 2 Samuel. Caleb our squad leader arrives. Lijo tells us his father is too exhausted from day before and doesn't want to do ministry today, so surprise off day! Watch a movie with the team. Lunch. Walk to bus station after lunch. Catch a bus to go to a beach. Hour and a half later arrive at beach. It's about 5pm now. Hang out at beach and convince our contact to let us go to McDonalds that we spotted out the window on the bus ride here. He agrees. We start walking. Take a wrong turn. Backtrack. Walk for about 45 minutes and finally find it. It's at a random mall, with AC again, yahoo! Eat McChicken, delish. Leave around 7:30pm. 9:30om still on bus. Have to switch busses at bus station and wait a long time to catch another one. Arrive at drop off spot. Have to walk another 30 minutes to get to house. Arrive home late. Team time and dinner (chapatti!) Bed 11:30pm.
Thursday Feb 14th – Valentines day! Wake up and finish writing awesome poems for the boys. Cook breakfast with the girls. Serve boys. Give them gifts, they loved. Jesus time after breakfast. Workout with Jilly. Bucket shower. Lunch. Head out around 2pm for ministry. Boys give us a strange note. It says us they will not be joining us for ministry today and not to eat too much fruit. Just the girls for ministry today! Walk to bus stop. Catch bus then another, walk to pastors church. They serve us fruit and coffee, we pray in church and head out to the streets for ministry. Made 3 stops with singing preaching and praying. Get whisked into random houses to pray for families. Meet and talk to a lot of new people. Back to church. Get served coffee and fruit. Arrive home by 8:30pm. See Kj standing at the bottom of the stairs looking mighty dapper in his hot pink tie. He tells us to get ready and spray for mosquitoes and he will escort us to the roof. Go up to roof. Find candle-lit dinner and beautiful set up. The boys cooked for us. Chips and salsa with an unlimited supply of coke. Heart shaped grilled cheeses and tomato soup with digestive cookies and nutella for dessert. Boys serenaded us with their rendition of the song 'My Girl' called, 'Our girls.' Made us cry. Bar was successfully raised for future hubby. Hang out after dinner and talked about how awesome our guys are. Team time and feedback, bed.
Friday February 15th – Wake up 7am. Jesus time. Breakfast. Relax. Workout with Jilly. Bucket shower. Lunch. Leave for ministry after lunch. Walk 20 minutes , cross railroad tracks, wait to catch bus number one. Hop off catch bus number 2. Hop off and walk 5 minutes to pastors church. Fruit coffee pray leave. Make 4 stops. Sing, preach, and pray at each one. Get served cookies in the street by a random lady, nom nom. Sun sets. Get invited into house to pray for a man who just had a stroke. Head back to pastor's church. Find a few church members there who lead us to the 'cottage prayer.' This is someone's home who has invited us for a service. Pastor prays and they all sing, We sing and Caleb preaches. Pray for healing for a handful of women and the men pray for the men. Get served chapatti and curry, eat with hands and on the floor. Get reprimanded for eating with my left hand, whoops. Head back. Walk to bus. Catch bus number one. Catch bus number two. Walk home, arrive late. Tired of sweating all night, mosquitos and cockroaches and lack of sleep so set up tent on the roof along with Kj and Caleb. Much better. Dinner. Team time, feedback, bed 11pm.
Saturday February 16th – Beach day with other WR team. They pick us up and their contact drives us about an hour away to a beach/resort place. Feels likee we're in another world. Enjoy the pool and beach, wave jumped and swam in Indian ocean. Got wifi and talked to mama bear for the first time all month. Stayed at resort til 6pm. Headed home. Watched modern family with the team. Dinner, feedback, bed 10pm. Our conversation right before bed…Kj: "I think it's going to rain." Me" 'Nah, it's not going to rain." One hour later, wake up to raging thunderstorm. Roof is flooding. Move tent into church. No power, no fans equals sweating all night.
Sunday February 17th-Wake up 6am. Finish writing sermon. Breakfast. Bucket shower. Church at 9am. Sang songs with team. I preached. Headed to fathers church at 10:30am. Arrive around 11. Sang songs with team. Jilly preached. Loved on kids at church. Got hair braided by 14 year old, profesh style. Ate lunch 1:30pm. Some wild monkeys came by. Fed them bananas. Came home 3pm. Watched 'We Bought a Zoo' with team. Jesus time on roof while watching sunset. Team time, feedback, bed.
Team Unveiled will be hitting the streets and doing more home visits the remainder of the month. We head out on the 27th for Thailand which will include our month 8 debrief, parents week, manistry and womanistry where the men of H squad will spend the entire month doing construction and the women are broken up into 6 all women teams!
