80 days in India: We're over half way there

Yes that man is indeed washing his buffalo

It is hard to believe that we are over the halfway point of our time here in India. In the next few weeks we will be taking a couple trips, so it seems like our time is going to be even shorter. It is unfortunate that we did not meet Pastor James until this week, because it seems like he is genuinely excited by our desire for mission work here, although it is definitely a God thing that we just happened to meet in Dr. Mousam's office. He is a local Pentacostal pastor (although his church is considered 'Church of God' he is very non-denominational) who, originally the son of a Hindu Brahman priest, was persecuted and forced to leave Nepal in the early 90's as they had a closed government towards Christianity and he was holding Bible studies at night. He came to Dhamtari, India, and began to work with ministries in nearby villages. He started to take orphans into his home (those who were Christians who's parents kicked them out, or those who had single mothers that could not support them) and began to have such a large number that he has opened an orphanage. The kids are each sponsored by either friends of Pastor James, or some of the local doctors, and so far they have about 19 kids. He also opened a "Bible school" where young adults can come for Theological training. He asked KC to come look at the property, and draw up some plans for a new church, parsonage and add-ons to the school, and I offered that KC start a web-site for him. When KC started to explain his ideas Pastor James was very excited and said that clearly God had sent us to him, and then invited us to come to his church Sunday to meet the orphans and to give a small talk to the Bible school students. We are very excited about meeting the kids, although neither of us is jumping up and down about the idea of us giving a sermon! oh AND he wants us to mention his Bible school to people back home as he would like some people to come teach for a month or 2....he was very interested in people our age or anyone...just throwing that out there....

I found a puppy!!

Sunday night we were invited by the Chatterjees to see a movie with them in Dhamtari (the movie theater shows one movie for as long as it is popular). We tried to explain that we had already seen a Hindi movie in Raipur, but we went with them anyway. As with everything else we were 25 minutes late into the movie, but it didn’t matter because it was in HINDI so we were lost anyway. :) Dr.Chatterjee sat next to us and interpreted some of it, but we caught on to the majority of the plot, and relaxed in the very comfortable theater seats-believe it or not they are nicer than some that we have at home. Monday we spent the day with Pastor James, and Tuesday I decided that I was going to start going to 'Community Health' with the students in the morning instead of Casualty and got permission from the principle. They go to a nearby village and do teaching, some first aid, etc. One of the men in the village recognized me and said that I started his IV a couple weeks ago in casualty, and said that he was feeling much better now thank you :) . The people are SO nice...they always offer me their nicest chair, or mat, and want to talk about the white girl. One lady said I was the first white person she had ever seen. I looked at a dog bite, and old woman's shoulder that needed put back in place but she wouldn't/couldn't go to the hospital(the students wouldn't let me reduce it although I wanted to ...I think I could have done it!) and a child with a rash. The younger students taught about personal hygiene, nail care, post partum care, etc. It was very interesting to use my cultural appreciation while talking to villagers. For instance: one lady was taking warm oil and smacking a tiny baby on the stomach repeatedly with it-massage she called it. I tried to hold myself back from ripping the baby away from her. The baby looked like it was going cross-eyed and going to vomit everything it had ever eaten, but hey...there were tons of toddlers running around the old lady and I'm sure she did the same thing to them when they were infants... so I guess it's okay. I also held and petted many baby animals, which the students think is hilarious. I tried to explain that we don't keep baby goats, chickens or cows in our house in the US.

I found a baby!!!

KC has now been volunteered (by his wife of course) to tutor a couple Master's students on Excel. They are taking Statistics and their teachers don't teach them how to use Excel, so I signed him right up for that. They also need help researching journal articles (which makes me cringe thinking about Nursing Research) so I have been trying desperately to help them with that. They have no access to any kind of journal articles so I have had to use my library card and get online...oh the things I took for granted in college. The only difficult thing is that they show up at our apartment un-announced, and with our language barrier it is hard to get them leave, but we are trying to be patient. Yesterday when I got to class to teach...the door to the school was locked shut, and nobody was in the office (it was a Muslim holiday) and nobody had told me that they cancelled afternoon classes....so I got to relax under a tree with a book. That was very nice. This weekend promises to be a good time as we are invited to TWO Hindu weddings, a night out with a doctor our age, and the Church service on Sunday. Other than that we are getting super excited for our trip to Goa which is on Tuesday :). Hope everybody had a fabulous Valentine's Day! (we kind of forgot it was Valentine's day but had to make do with what we have)