Namaste,

Last day was such a long one that I forced myself to go to bed when we got home because I was so physically and emotionally spent from everything I had seen and done since we arrived. There is so much that I am taking in constantly, and it feels like I’m on brain overload. Being able to blog right now is helping me to not only keep you updated on what’s happening here, but in a way it’s acting as a repository for me to kind of dump everything from one day to make room on my memory card for the next, if that makes any sense.

Sleep is still hard to come by. So far I haven’t been able to sleep past about 5 a.m., after not having gone to sleep until after midnight. I’m kind of an 8-hour girl, so this is hard for me. But I know I can sleep when I get home, so it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. The only way for me to even remember everything that happens during the course of a day is to pull up my pictures and just go from start to finish. So here we go.

Yesterday was another full day of visiting satellite churches. We traveled about 300 miles to visit four area churches, mostly all gypsy churches. Outreach David was telling me that the gypsies are coming to know Christ faster than any other group. This is such a picture of the church because He is coming to the lowest of the low in society, people who have nothing, and offering His free gift of salvation. These people truly have nothing to offer him but their love, and I know He accepts it with a full heart. It’s hard for me to explain the attention that we receive everywhere. It’s a little bit overwhelming at times. The people look at us and treat us as celebrities, but that’s not really even a strong enough picture. I was talking to outreach David and he said that the people are so thrilled that we would come to their church, that the pastors will be motivated for another two or three years to keep on doing the Lord’s work. He said because of our white faces and hair colors, we look like angels to the people. This is just hard to understand. But the people will crowd around us sometimes to the point where I feel claustrophobic. I now have such a better picture of why Jesus would need to get in the boat and preach sometimes, and why he so often needed to go off to a quiet place and pray to reconnect with God and recharge his batteries so often. At every church we visit, the pastor wants so badly to give us something. This first church we visited yesterday, the people began bringing in coconuts with straws. We were served coconut milk in a way that I will never forget. I looked outside and realized they were picking them off of the palm tree, and this guy was just chopping off the top right there and giving us straws. That is as fresh as it gets. They also served us watermelon, oranges and grapes. It’s so hard to take from them, because it feels so unnecessary. We came here to serve them, not the other way around. But it means so much to them to do this for us, that we just accept it with gladness.
The lady in pink is the pastor’s wife. They had a little boy who was probably about 18 months old, and he never made a sound. He looked so scared of us, because we are the first white people he had ever seen. It must be so strange for these little ones.

At the next church, the people were waiting for us. As they often do, the ladies first sang for us. At this church, Charmaine gave a testimony about her friend at home who had given her the outfit she was wearing and asked her to wear it in India. Her friend has cancer, but the Lord is healing her. She said that Jesus knows every cancer cell and pain in her friend’s body, just as he knows every pain in theirs. And that one day, every one of them that know Jesus will no longer have any pain. The central theme to all of our testimonies has been that we are all part of the same family. It means so much to the people for us to say that we serve the same God, and that we are all his children. It makes the differences between us shrink tremendously.

After Charmaine’s testimony and Johnson Jacob’s short message, (the elder whose name I couldn’t remember yesterday) the pastor’s daughter sang a song for us in English. I didn’t realize it was in English until after we left, and it made it go from just cute to something even more special. She was bridging the gap between us in her own way. Amazing.

Just one example of how incredibly beautiful these children are.

After we left this church, the most incredible thing happened. We were driving along, and suddenly all traffic came to a dead standstill. We assumed it was a wreck or something, until a jeep came barreling up on us full of men waving their arms at every car as if telling them to pull over. Behind that car was a minivan that looked just like ours. We pulled over right behind it and began following. We were just flying past all of this stopped traffic. It turned out that we were part of a military convoy. The person in front of us was some type of dignitary, traveling with a police escort. The pilot car traveling with them was behind us. So our three vans were traveling with this convoy as if we were part of it.

In the beginning, there was no traffic coming at us, which we couldn’t figure out. But eventually things slowed down and we began crawling through both lanes in a sandwich. This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but it’s the best that I have. The white car in front of us is the pilot car. The men walking around are police who had gotten out to make the way clear. And, yes, they had big guns.

It turns out that the reason for all the traffic was that it had been stopped by the police way back in both directions for this dignitary to travel through. We were able to follow them the whole way, and everyone on the side of the road just assumed we were part of it because of our similar vans and our white faces peering out. Last night at dinner Solomon told me that he was in the back car and they were waving their hands just like the front car was. I just laughed and laughed. I know it’s probably hard to picture the way I’m describing it, but there is no other explanation for what happened yesterday other than that the Lord sent this convoy. How else could we have been in exactly the right place at the right time? Solomon told me that it was illegal to do what we had done, and yet the police never even looked at us. I’m getting chills thinking about it. The Lord is here with us in a way I’ve never experienced Him before. And I never want it to stop.

Eventually the convoy veered off to the right and we went to the left. We stopped just a few minutes later to eat. As all of our local escorts piled out, they were high-fiving each other and laughing like crazy. It had been a crazy ride for them as well, and they knew that we had all just been a part of something sent by God. The laughter was just contagious. Solomon told me that he would be telling all his friends about this and remember it for the rest of his life. I know I will.

At lunch, most of us stuck with our safe American food, but Jeremy and Nelson were up for a challenge, so they ate the quail that our hosts were having. Laura tried it too and said it was amazing. I was a little too cautious, but as of last night none of them were sick from it.

Our next church was truly out in the middle of the desert. Not too long after lunch we stopped on the side of the road and picked a guy up, who turned out to be the pastor of the church we were headed to. He had walked all the way so that he could lead the way to his village. We’re talking several miles in the desert. It blew my mind. This area where we were only gets rain one month out of the year, and that is their only source of water. We were truly in the middle of nowhere. The terrain was much more suited for jeeps, but our driver was holding his own in the minivan.

When we finally arrived at this village, it was like nothing we had seen so far. The people just stared as our caravan passed by their little thatched huts. When we got out, we walked over to their “church.” This group of gypsies meets under the shade of a tree for worship.

The pastor’s hut is the one with the cross you see behind the tree. The people sit under the tree, and he preaches from his porch. I know I keep saying things blew my mind, but this was something else. The pastor brought out two benches for us to sit on. By the time we were finished, we were completely surrounded. The people were closing in on every side.

Laura shared her testimony of being lonely as a child, but learning that Jesus loved her unconditionally and that the same love he had offered her was available to them. She did such a great job. When any one of us are speaking I just pray so hard that the Holy Spirit will speak through them and say whatever the people need to hear. It has been amazing to watch that happen.

Outreach David told us not to shake any hands, and they rushed us from this place pretty quickly. The people followed us to the vans and were just crowded all around. As we left, he told us that most of the people have skin diseases, and that the two times he’s come out there he has left with a rash. He said hygeine is virtually non-existent due to the lack of water. No doctors want to come all the way out there, so they just have to deal with it. And yet many of them are turning to Christ. Have I overused the word amazing yet?

Our final church was another gypsy church, this one having been paid for with funds from BBC. Our church has paid for the land and some of the materials for five churches, I think. This one was so beautiful. The pastor used to be a gypsy. After he met Christ, he trained to be a pastor and came back to serve his own people. He was so full of joy and energy, it was mesmerizing to watch. After the people sang for us, Jeremy gave his testimony. His sense of humor translated beautifully to the people, and the children were especially intrigued with him. He spoke about John 3:16, and how when Jesus died on the cross, he was not only picturing Jeremy in Texas, but also each one of them in India. Again, the message was about how we area all heading to the same place. And it strikes me to think that one day I truly will see many of their faces again. What a day that will be.

Afterwards, Outreach David brought a little boy to show us. He was blind, and had been since birth. As David was telling us about him, the boy had the worst look of fear and sadness on his face I had ever encountered. His mother was standing behind him as David spoke. She is a widow, and she is suffering from TB. She was desparate for us to pray for her son. So we laid hands on him and began to pray. But I couldn’t get the image of his face out of my mind. I think everything that I had encountered since this journey began just hit me all at once, and I began to break down. I tried so hard to keep it together because I knew the people wouldn’t understand why I was crying. But here was a little boy who was probably almost exactly Bradley’s age, suffering in ways that are unimaginable to me. I’m crying again as I write this. It was just too much. At that point I wanted so much to be away from everyone so I could just melt into a puddle on the floor and ask God why the differences between us are so different. Why do I come from a land where I’ve never wanted for anything? Why was I born into the vast wealth of America, and these little ones were born into such poverty and their choices are so limited? What do I do with this?

As we left, Outreach David was so kind. He told me that the doctors had said that this boy was a good candidate for corneal transplant, and that they were praying to somehow make it available to him. He believed God was going to do this, so please pray right this minute that God will do this. David said he would get me the name of the boy so I can pray for him by name, and when I have it I will definitely share. What David also told me as we left was that this boy has the most amazing singing voice, and that every time he hears him sing, he cries just like me. If I had heard him sing, I honestly don’t think I would have been able to do anything at all for days.

From there we left for the three hour journey back to Hyderbad. Much of this was after dark, and that is the worst. The people here either drive with no headlights at all, or with them on full bright. It is surreal, and I truly am trusting God to get us through it. I do not feel in any danger when were are out in the middle of a desert village surrounded by gypsies, but there have been times I truly thought the end had come on the drive. Jeremy said last night that if we got hit, at least the white lights coming at us would merge beautifully with the pearly gates. It was funny, but it will be hilarious once the trip is over and I know I don’t have to do this anymore.

We arrived back in Hyderbad around 9:30, I think, and our hosts took us to a nice Indian restaurant for dinner. It was on the 8th floor or a building, so our view of the city was incredible. I asked Singing David to order for me, and he did a great job. They even showed me how to eat rice with my fingers. I’ll have to show this to the kids when I get back. I know they’ll love it.

By the time we got home, it was after 11:00. It takes me a little while to wind down, so I didn’t get to bed until sometime after midnight. I’m glad I’m up now, though, because it’s given me a chance to get all this down. These are the churches we visited yesterday: Chityal, Narkatpally, Mukundapuram (the church under the tree) and Miryalaguda. This morning we don’t have to go anywhere until about 10:00. BCH is having a baptism service and we’re going to be a part of it. We have a few self-supporting churches to visit today, but supposedly they are in the city so we won’t have to drive so long. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

Tonight, Ashley and Laura and I are hoping to get to attend choir practice. I am so excited about this I can’t stand it. I really hope we get back in time. We are going to sing for the congregation tomorrow morning as a group, but tomorrow night I’ll get to sing in their choir for the English service. I am so psyched about this! Please pray for energy today. My physical strength is running low, but I’m trusting God to just keep filling me with what I need. I pray that He will give each of you what you need today as well.

Love from India. God is good.