A Glass Of Water

I spent several hours in the sun yesterday. It was ladies visiting and we went by walk. By the end of the day I had 3 chai s and 1 coffee. Caffeine overdose to say the least; that in addition to the sun over-exposure put me down with a fever in the afternoon.

However, I pulled myself together to go to Choir practice just because I love it so much and I’m a firm believer in working through a fever. Don’t just lay in bed, you’ll feel worse, get up and do something constructive. 9 out of 10 times that philosophy works for me. I guess yesterday was the 10th time because I came home from practice and collapsed. My limbs felt shaky, I had a headache, diarrhea and an upset stomach and the fever – still.

I was fairly certain it was due to the sun and possibly dehydration. I laid in bed and prayed that God would send someone upstairs so I could ask them to bring me a glass of water. I finally got the strength to call out to my nephew to bring me water and then I just collapsed back down.

Then E. came. My 5 year old daughter. When she saw I was sick she said, “I’m going to tell all this to God.” Then she said, “Mommy, don’t make food. Give Phoebe money and I’ll give you medicine.” She massaged my forehead. She rubbed my upset tummy for a long time. Earlier that afternoon she and C. washed my feet with water, soap, then water again and finally dried them with a towel. All of this without prompting. I thought to myself, how in the world did I get such a nurturer for a daughter? She definitely didn’t get it from my side of the family. She’s a jewel.

While E. was rubbing my tummy, 2 girls from church showed up. Their brother had been over playing with my nephew and he went home and told them I was sick. They came right away. Awon massaged me from head to toe for over an hour while Aza made me special drinks to replenish my dehydration and took care of my girls. Finally, Awon made food for me and forced me to eat something*, and it helped! I thank God for them.

And I thank Him that even though I just prayed for a glass of water – He gave me so much more. He’s just so wonderful.

So, this morning I was fine. A little left over tummy pain, but otherwise back to normal.

Oh, O. is away at a conference. He just called, he met K.P Yohanan and got his picture taken with him. That’s cool.

* Awon also cleaned my whole room, put away clothes, made my bed (I had decided to change the sheets that day) By the time Awon came I was laying on a mattress with no sheets. I figured I'd just sleep that way. I went to the bathroom and she put new sheets on my bed and got me all tucked in. God bless her.

Birthday Day Pictures

E. got a bike for her b-day so O. got one for C. too. This picture's not too clear, but it's darn cute. Tinkerbell was from grammy.

E. and her bike.
We also got a Barbie Head from grammy.
C. with all Barbie's clips on, etc. How could I not post this picture?

Big & Little. Have you noticed C.'s hair? It's wild. Combing the lice remover comb through it last week was not fun. For her or me. Poor baby. Hopefully, she's lice-free now.

Pictures - Only 2 Weeks Late

Here are just some fun pictures for the fam and friends. E.'s b-day party/our anniversary party. (6 years, O., 6)

The birthday girl.
Cutting the cake.
C. feeding E. for her birthday.

Engaged

Here are some promised pictures from last week. You know, when we went away for 5 days, 4 days driving, 1 day there. We went for Anoop's (He's the guy in the 2nd picture scratching his ear) dad's 50th b-day and the engagement of our co-worker, Steve. There's a whole ceremony involved. Gift giving. Rings are actually exchanged at this time. The whole Mary & Joseph thing with the not being married yet, but still he thinks to "divorce her," etc. etc. just becomes so much more clear when you live in Indian culture.

So here they are, the happy couple. They'll be married in May. Hot season, I'm already dreading it. (The heat - not the wedding.)

This is a nice shot. O. and I were actually standing up for Steve's side of the family so I couldn't get many pictures, but I did slip away to get these two.
Her family is standing behing her. Mom, dad, brother & sister-in-law.

Oh Dear

I was at our Women's Prayer meeting tonight and Vinita was filling me in on some prayer requests. Some were private and we had a whole conversation about a woman in our church who has a TV but didn't want anyone to know about it until it hit me that Vinita had said that the woman has TB not a TV.

V... B. Yeah. Hindi is one of those languages where there's not a big distinction in the sounds. At least not to my ear. Who knows what Vinita was thinking when I was commenting on the conversation while I still thought we were talking about a TV. She's too nice to say anything. At least I eventually got it. Heaven only knows how many things I never ever do get.

The Birthday Trip

I actually want to write about our trip last week but I'd like to do it with pictures and, as you know, I have the photo uploading (downloading?) problem. I'm gonna work on it tomorrow. So, instead I'll fill you in on E.'s B-day trip to the movies. If you could care less about Harry Potter, save yourself some time and don't bother reading on.

There were 16 of us. Four adults and 12 kids. I had help. My friend Christy came and it was the first time in her life that she'd ever been to the movies.

In India they assign seats when you buy the tickets so we had a whole row to ourselves and 2 seats behind it. The movie was great. However, these Harry Potter movies always feel so rushed to me. And since Goblet of Fire was the longest book (I think) of the series and by far my favorite (I admit to having read it at least 4 times) this one seemed really rushed. I tried to think of a metaphor to describe what watching a Harry Potter movie is like compared to reading the book. The best way I can describe is to imagine taking your favorite television program, comedy, soap opera or reality show and condensing an entire season into a 1 hour highlight show and watching that instead of watching every minute of every 22 episodes of the season. That's what this movie felt like to me. It took the highlights of the book, rushed through them and, voila, you have the movie.

I'm not knocking it, I mean, what can they do? Make an epic movie/miniseries of Lonesome Dove proportions? I don't think so. And anyway - we have the books!

On to my thoughts on casting - Cedric - GREAT!, Madame Maxime - GREAT, Krum, Karkaroff... great great. Fleur -- not so great. But hey, I'm not a teenage boy. Ask them instead. Voldemort - well, he was not nearly as cold and evil as I think he should have been.

I did get choked up in the beginning because it is always overwhelming to see something you've imagined in your mind up on the big screen. I cried with Harry when ... died. (I was going to write who and I could care less if I spoil it for someone but I didn't. Why would you even bother to see this movies without having read the book first?) I did not like the scene in the bathroom with Myrtle and Harry. But I loved the marching deatheaters at the Quidditch World Cup! Very very cool! They were scary like a sleestack.

There you go. I ended up with a migraine by the end of the movie. I don't know why. I almost didn't make it to our next trip but, by God's grace, I got better before we had to take off after lunch.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hmmm. What an original Title...

OK, no Thanksgiving "Festival" over here. Business as usual today. I had loads of little errands to do so I got them done this morning, made lunch (eggs), taught my English class (we reviewed the opposites we learned yesterday and I checked their homework which was to use the 12 new words in sentences. Beautiful & Ugly were two of the new words. My favorite original sentence was "He don't like no ugly girl." That one gave me a good laugh. I'm still chuckling. We moved on to numbers after that.)

Back to this afternoon. I found my faithful visiting women, Vinita & Christy (It's Thursday - visiting day). We had just found out that our friend, Shekuntala, was at the hospital, so we went right there. Shekuntala had been sitting alone for 2 1/2 hours waiting for the doctor. We sat with her and eventually the doctor came. She may have typhoid. She's on a liquid diet and meds for 2 days.

Came home, made dinner, went to a birthday party meeting and now here I am, just waiting for Phoebe to finish the chapatis so we can eat dinner.

This was my kind of day. Full. However, E. didn't finish her homework, yeah - not real high on my list.

Now the big question... did anyone have anybody (student, etc.) over for Thanksgiving???

Back

I'm back and hoping to soon be in full writing force very soon.

We left Friday AM at 7:30 and reached our destination late SAt. afternoon. We were there for Sunday and then spent 2 days driving home. We got back at 10PM last night. What a time.

We had fun, lots of fellowship (all those hours packed in a car) and no one is the worse for wear except E. & C. who came home with their first cases of lice.

Oh well.

More on that later. Time for dinner now.

Happy 5th Birthday E!

We had a big combined party on Monday for our wedding anniversary and E.'s 5th birthday. O. kept telling people that we'd been married for 5 years. E. is 5 this year. In my testimony at the party on Monday I clarified that we've actually been married for 6 YEARS, not 5. Not 5.

I've come to the conclusion that O. isn't so concerned with the dates and years but just whether or not he has a wife. I guess that's all that really matters...

Anyway, this post is for my wonderful E. My firstborn. I can still distinctly remember bursting into tears when the doctor said, "It's a girl." because I was so happy. We're going to leave early tomorrow morning to drive 1 1/2 hours with many kids to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Opening day in India. That's my kind of birthday party.

After we get back from our 4 day trip I'll let you know how it was.

There Never Seems To Be Enough

time to do the things that you want to do ... My 4th grade teacher made us memorize that song and sing it. I think she liked it. It was old and boring even then.

But - I've been feeling that way the last few days. We've had friends here since Monday and it's been great but exhausting. They're on their way back to the US now - or at least Delhi.

Tomrrow we leave for a 4 day trip - that we were supposed to leave for on Saturday but plans got changed, so, I'll be back on Tuesday?

Happy Anniversary!

To O. & Me!

6 years, Yep. This is us on our wedding day.

Arranged Marriages

The talk of the town since yesterday is that a boy who works under one of our co-workers came and asked O. for his sister’s hand in marriage. The boy said that Martha, O.’s sister, also agreed to the “match.”

The scandal was that the boy came directly to O. That’s just not how it’s done, people!

Here’s how it’s done.

First you go to someone close to O. Tell them you are interested in marrying Martha and then get that man on your side. Then that man would go to O. at an appropriate time and broach the matter. That’s the way.

So the fact that this boy basically went straight to his boss’s boss and asked to marry the boss’s sister. Owwwwww. Just not done. Oh no no no no.

O. Not happy.

This morning Praveen, O.’s right hand man, called Martha to get her side. (I know, it’s all just so round about…) Oh, and by the way, Martha is far away at Bible College.

Anyway, she claims this boy called her and asked her to marry him and wanted to talk to O. Martha told him not to say anything, that if she was willing to marry him she’d talk to her brother. I kind of got the feeling that Martha was probably flattered by the boy’s persistency but not really head over heels for him. They barely have even met.

In the end, Martha’s choice of husband is up to her. We’re here to guide her. Her marriage will be arranged and the fact is, she has her choice of husbands. She’s got everything going for her. Beauty, humor, friendly, hard working, God fearing… I could go on. Not to mention a brother that runs a large ministry and a sister-in-law who is an American. Hey, I’m just telling it like it is, these things count in the arranged marriage package.

Christy Madam's Woes

I spent some time with my friend Christy yesterday afternoon. She told me in the morning that she wanted to talk to me.

She and her husband run our children’s home and are very dedicated to the work. However, several of the children in the home are her relatives. Her mother-in-law was here recently and criticized Christy and her husband up and down and to anyone who would listen and continues to do so. (I don’t see her taking care of any of her grandchildren…) And Christy’s crazy sister (I mean literally, certifiably crazy) showed up on Saturday and plans to stay the month. What a nightmare. Poor Christy, and it’s her birthday today. At least she got it off her chest and she felt better.

Her husband is a great guy, I love him dearly. If I’m Dorothy then he’s Scarecrow. But one of the things that makes him so likable is his easy-going, even tempered personality. It also makes him very non-confrontational. He’s not so good at dealing with this kind of stuff.

So, we prayed and I talked to O. about everything. He has his ways of dealing with these things. Unfortunately some of the Grandmother’s and Aunt’s bad habits have rubbed off on the older girls, so I told Christy I’d deal with that. I’d been meaning to talk to the girls about boys and changing bodies anyway, I’ll just add gossiping to that talk. Probably do it on Sunday…

Pictures, At Last

Talk about random. There was a rhyme and reason to how these pictures were gonna go up but they got all jumbled when I uploaded them and so this is the way they're staying.

With explainations:

Here is the worship team from last weekend. The Amazon on the left is me (obviously not from the same tribe as Wonder Woman...)
Here are the musicians (it took me forever to come up with that word) for our team. Notice the "WEL COMES" in the background. When are these people ever going to learn to consult me first before printing anything in English!
These are the people at the conference. Check out the guy in the black shirt going the wrong direction.
E. & C. at E.'s school dance contest. Did I write about this? E. won.

Oh, look at that, here we are again singing last weekend. (We rarely do actions but the guy just happened to pull out the camera on this song.) Christy and Vinita are the ladies to my left. Our Bible students. I promised this picture long ago. I did not take it, I would have never lined them up like this.

E. again. Us (Phoebe, Sumitra & E.) the other week in O.'s village making breakfast. When the old guy on the left saw me pull out the camera he whipped a turban of towels off his head. Guess he wanted to look good.

Thanks Giving

I know it's one word, but I'm talking about Thankfulness and Giving today so, yeah.

If you never read or have forgotten, please read "My Little Plug." I wrote it in September so you'll need to go to "September 2005" and scroll down to Sept. 6, 2005.

That's where I talked about inviting a lonely college student over for dinner. Thanksgiving is really a good time to do this.

Now would be the time to seek out those good food and good fellowship-starved people to invite over. Don't wait too long or it will be too late.

Ok, that's all. BUT if you do do this (even if it was your own idea from way before) please write a comment and let us know how it went!

* It does not necessarily need to be a college student.

Singing

That's what I was doing and why I haven't been around. I did have a fantastic time tho.

All day Friday and half of Saturday were spent at a mission compound in our city. The program was the 25th anniversary of something but the focus was worship and there were worship teams from all over the state. It was 2 1/2 days worth of worship.

I really love our choir team and what made it better was that my two bestest friends, Christy and Vinita are also on the team and were there. Two days with no kids, no cooking, no cleaning AND then spending that time with my friends (also without children.) No wonder I had such a great time.

It was also a wonderful time of worship. There were about 100+ people there and I loved looking out when it was our turn to sing and seeing God's people from all over our state worshipping Him together.

However, Satan was so not happy about all that praise going to the Father.

The Drama:
After our Saturday section was over the choir team went home while our leader and the instrumentalists stayed. All our instruments were there and all the sound equipment was ours. Sometime in the evening one one of the other singers from a large city in our state for some reason got up and just trashed our worship team* in front of everyone and then said something about O. who had spoken the previous morning.

Our worship leader at that point packed up all our stuff and took it outside to bring home. (It was supposed to stay til Sunday.) Everyone was upset. By God's grace O. arrived at just that time and had them put everything back. The man who spoke against us apologized twice and the people running the conference were actually weeping because they were so upset.

Well, it all got smoothed over but the instruments and sound equipment did eventually get brought home on Sat. night. At least we had them for church on Sunday.

*Our worship team is contempory, with drums, keyboard, electric guitar. The other teams were all traditional music with traditional instruments.

Last Night

I'm finally feeling recovered enough from yesterday to write an entry about our meeting.

First of all, I had a wonderful time. About 50 people were there and we all packed in my living room and sat on the floor with a few people on the steps going upstairs.

We sang for a while and then O. gave a testimony. He shared a lot of wonderful things that God has been doing lately in our lives. One of them being, saving him and Praveen from a terrible motorcycle accident last Saturday. Praveen walked away from it without a scratch and O. only had a bruised foot. (If you hear him tell the story he was sure he lost it in the accident - he's totally better now.)

Someone spoke from the Word and then food. The two things I was nervous about finishing (drinking water and the special roti) didn't. But the 2 curries and 1 dahl (lentils) did get completely eaten. Three of us who served took the last few roties and used them to scrape food off the sides of the pots. It was enough. I can never eat after (during, before) one of these functions when I'm hosting. (I get that from my mother.)

Fellowshipping and feeding my friends and loved ones and sending them off with smiling faces and full bellies is satisfying enough for me. - Man, I could put that on a greeting card.

Kind Of Funny

One of the things I do here is check accounts. So, I’ve been bugging for a few weeks to get some records of different areas of ministry for the last couple months. It’s been a harrowing process to say the least.

Today, a man who works for us, Praveen, finally got some to me. They were the accounts for when we had a team here in the beginning of October. So I’m looking through long lists of, you know, accounting things and I come to one that says:

“Airport latrine O. 5 rupees.”

Yes, that means that my husband, O., had to use the bathroom at the airport while picking up the team and he paid 5 rupees (10 cents) for it. And we actually have it recorded on official papers.

Two Years

Maybe even longer. Anyway, we prayed for two years for God to send us a worship leader for our church. I can show you the prayer lists for confirmation.

Last spring He sent us someone and this summer someone else! Over the last few months the worship in music in our church has just taken off. Wow! I love to sing (not alone or in front of people, mind you but I love to sing.) So, this has been a great blessing to me.

I’ve slowly gotten involved in singing with the worship teams in our church. I was reluctant before because most of our songs are in Hindi and although I know many of them, there are still many more that I don’t know. I really don’t like standing in front of the mic and not sing for lack of knowing the words or because I can’t read Hindi fast enough to keep up with the music.

However, I started joining - slowing - singing only when the ladies ministry was doing a special song. Then joining in when they needed singers for a school program. Now, tomorrow there is a two day conference in our city with the theme of Music in Worship, hosted by… (I’m not really sure, O. knows). But O. and I are the special guests (Indian thing) and O. is speaking so I’d be there anyway. So today, I wrote down all the songs we’re singing from Hindi into the English Alphabet and I’m singing tomorrow.

This whole, longer than I thought it would be, story came to mind because we had practice from 10 – 1PM today and that’s why I was tired. Still am.

Cottage Meetings

Every Wednesday night our church has a small Bible Study called a Cottage Meeting. It is held on a rotating basis in different people's homes each week. Generally it only ends up at your house once, maybe twice, a year. It is different from a cellgroup, care group, mini church, etc. in that the entire church is involved and everyone's name/home comes up at least once a year.

They're really fun times of fellowship and as you might have guessed, this week it's at our house. It's coming at a good time, since school is on a vacation and I'm actually free tomorow. (It is the Hindu New Year - Nov. 2nd - and we've been invited around, but you don't actually haaaave to go on the 2nd. Anytime this month is fine.)

I've described meetings like this in another post so I will only write it briefly here.
Format:
Prayer
3 Songs
Testimony by house owner
Short message
Prayer
Snack-food

So these were the questions on my mind since our family's turn was announced on Sunday. What will I serve? It can be anything from chips and chai to a whole meal. What hasn't been given lately? What is relatively simple? What does everyone like? How many people will come?

I've decided on Meat Curry and Kerala Roti (really good flat bread - I've ordered 150 of them) also Baby Eggplant/Potato Curry for any vegetarians. Pepsi.

I'll make the curries tomorrow afternoon, Phoebe will help me chop the veggies. I did all the shopping today, thank goodness, since my driver is off tomorrow* I'm sure I'll have friends over to help in the afternoon or at least help serve in the evening.

I love entertaining ( I get it from my dad) and after my birthday fiasco - not going there - I decided I'm going give everyone real food. (Hence the above menu) I'm expecting 50-60 people.

You're more than welcome to come.

* Nitin says to me today. "Madam, we should get the meat today because tomorrow is a festival." I said, "Tomorrow is a Hindu festival, but we get our meat from Muslims, their festival doesn't start for a few more days." I did, however, agree to send him to the slauterhouse (that's why I don't go myself) and get the meat today. Later Nitin says, "Uh, Madam I can't come to work tomorrow because of Diwali." So I said, "That's why you wanted to get the meat today." He snickered in response.

The House At The End Of The World

O. has 2 older sisters, 1 younger brother and 1 younger sister. While O. was away but I was still in his village with the girls, we all decided to go to O.'s 2nd sister's house.

If you are ever in India and feel like visiting her here are the directions:

Go to the last mountain at the end of the world.
Drive up to it until you hit the last little town at the end of the world
Go thru there and keep driving until you pass the last bus stand at the end of the world
Make a left and go up the last hill on the last mountain at the end of the world
When you reach the very last rock at the end of the world, look for a house

Ah, you're there.

Hallo-who?

Yeah, no Halloween over here. Strangely tho, (why do I find these things weird anymore?) the English stations have advertized some Halloween specials (like Simpsons.)