Touring

Yeah, Kat and I will be tourists for the next few days. We're meeting O. tomorrow afternoon and will spend the beginning of the week (without kids) doing tourist stuff. Fun.

Kat says she thinks I need the vacation more than her. She may be right.

Where's O.?

O. is visiting pastors in a Southern state this week and should be coming back up here tomorrow or the next day. We're planning on visiting cities in Rajasthan next week. Our real vacation.

I'm Not Sure Of The Emotion

For those of you who follow the persecution of Christians in Rajasthan, here's one for you.

Refresher: A ministry in Rajasthan where O. grew up has been under severe persecution, the ministry includes a huge orpahange, schools, Bible college, etc...

Only a couple hyundred kids remain in the orphanage because they have no where else to go. The husband of the family who oversees the children was in jail for several months because of the problems going on and was released a couple months ago. All the kids call him "Uncle."

Yesterday, the main man heading up the persecution came with a bunch of people to the orphanage to get "Uncle" and throw him back in jail. The remaining children at the orphanage surrounded "Uncle" and didn't let the "bad guys" near him. THEN, the kids picked up rocks and stoned the bad guys' car and chased them off the property.

Good for them!

Marry Me

I had marriage proposed to me while walking down the street yesterday, something that has never happened before.

I was nearing my house and I noticed a man in a car stop and then slowly follow me. He was talking on his cell phone so I was hoping he was lost and was calling to ask directions and that his trailing me was just coincidental. But then he pulled over, got out of the car and walked over to me. Here’s our conversation translated from Hindi:

Guy: Are you Muslim?

Me: No, I’m Christian. (He was obviously Muslim by his dress and appearance. My lack of Muslimness must not have bothered him since he pressed on anyway.)

Guy: You’re from Fair country, I mean, England?

Me: I’m American.

Guy: I’ve searched all over India for a woman like you to marry.

Me: I’m married, my husband is from Rajasthan (meaning: he’s Indian and he’ll kick your butt if he finds you.) and I have lots of children. (Only 2 but they sure seem like a lot.)

Guy: Are there any more like you?

Me: No. (I wasn’t about to tell him I have a single white female in my house.)

Guy: Where do you live?

Me: Over there. (Vaguely gesturing with my hand.)

Guy walks back to his car mumbling about how he’s never seen such a beautiful woman. Ha!

Note: For most Indians, Fair = Beautiful. Sort of like Thin= Beautiful in the US.

Vacation

Kat did arrive as expected on Friday night delayed only slightly by lost luggage. Ours, not hers, thankfully. We did get the lost suitcase yesterday at long last, delivered right to our door.

We've been talking and shopping and laughing and doing all those things over again. I'm on vacation. Don't expect a lot of updates for a couple weeks, but I may get the energy to write about the New Golden Circus we went to see last night. It's worth a post.

The Week That Was (And Is)

This is one of those weeks. When did it start? When will it end?

O. finally got home on Monday evening. It turns out that he was almost in a deadly car accident on Monday and by God's grace (really, that's it) they and the vehical were saved.

So, he's fine and since he's back, things are hopping in the offices, and the house is full of guests. (One lady who has been with us since Saturday doesn't speak either Hindi or English, so it was a funny weekend while her husband was away with O. But man can she cook!

"Chicken Chicken, O. Sir come, Chicken?"

I heard through the grapevine another friend of O.'s is coming today. We'll see. Anyway, MY friend, Kat, is coming from America on Friday night and I am just biding my time til then. This may be the longest week evahhhh.

You know when you're looking forward to something and in the meantime, you can't get anything else done?. It's like you go into shut down mode. make it to Friday make it to Friday make it to Friday...

Wednesday...

School Year

The new school year started from today. Lot of crying. Glad I don't teach the 3 year olds.

Matrimonials

Our Sunday newspaper has a 4 page matrimonials section "For the better half of your life." I love to read them, they make my Sunday afternoons.

Here is my favorite from yesterday, read all the way to the end:

"Inviting proposals from beautiful caring broad minded charming jovial well educated girl preferably homely hailing from a respectable family background for a smart handsome, 37 years old enterprising industrialist qualified boy having a multifaceted business of manufacturing electronic products and EXIM trade with good turnover. Already Married wife staying with him but cannot conceive due to medical problem seeks a remarriage/life long companionship with a healthy girl who can conceive preferably below 30 years Caste/Marital statue no bar."

*"homely" doesn't mean what you think it does, it just means she can cook.

How To View The Pictures

Alright, I can't get this done as soon as I'd like, so if you want to see pictures of E. after her fall and where she fell, email me. You can get my email from inside my profile.

Picture Trouble

When I had my computer cleaned and updated, I lost the ability to do just about everything while blogging except write. SO no pictures. I am working on fixing it but I have to download stuff that takes a while and with my delicate internet connection, this is next to impossible. If I can get pictures up I will surely do it. I have the E. fall pictures ready to go...

Peace

I wrote in Part 2 of the story that when I was running to get E. after she fell that it felt like my heart was wrapped in peace. That’s exactly what it felt like and I didn’t think more about it til later that night when I went to bed.

As I laid there this verse came to mind:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:4

I experienced this supernatural phenomenon on Sunday night. I wasn’t praying while I was running for E., everything was blank except the NEED to get to her. But the peace was there.

How many times do I and So Many others pray for my children? Sunday God gave me a return on that.

Eat , Baby, Eat

A couple more thoughts on E.’s fall:

One thing I forgot to mention is that, at 5 years old, E. is a chubby, solid little girl. We always laugh about it because, hey, this is India. She mainly eats lentils and rice. But she’s a good eater.

I was always trying to get her to eat a little less, cut down on the salty foods, you know.

But I tell you, that heavy, solid body saved her life the other night.

1. She’s just solid and I think it protected all her insides.
2. The area where she fell is so small that had she been lighter and fallen out, instead of straight down (like she did), she would have hit the cement wall. Because of her weight, when she fell out the window, she hit the cement slab first and then fell straight down from that.

You’ll see it all better in the pictures but O. still has not yet come with the computer. So, it will take a few more days.

But as for E., I say – eat baby eat.

Double Praises

More miraculous happenings.

So, you remember about 3 months ago when I had several entries about Sangart? In the hospital with kidney failure, not supposed to live, etc… etc…

Well, we had a special meeting at our house tonight since it is June and all activities are starting up again. It was good because it was a praise meeting for E.’s deliverance. Anyway, that’s off the subject.

Right at the beginning of the meeting, in walks Sangart and his uncle! He was just discharged from the hospital today and came right here. They had called our pastor who told there was a meeting here so they came. Praise the Lord, it was a double praise meeting. Continue to pray for his complete healing from the kidney problem and his salvation.

Trying To Relax

I do apologize for putting this up in two parts. We had a house full of guests all day yesterday coming to visit E. and I didn’t get on the computer til late at night. Even then, as I was writing the entry we had at least 2 families come and visit. Earlier, I had asked my sister-in-law to give me a facial (she’s in beauty school so she likes to practice.) It takes an hour and it was already after 10PM and she was tired so I had the choice of finishing the entire entry yesterday or getting the facial.

Sorry folks, the facial won out. I seriously needed to relax!

E.'s Fall Continued

…Our pastor said they would reach our house in 10 minutes. And they did.

Coming in our vehicle with our driver and pastor was another co-worker of ours and also a local man, Upender, a friend of O.’s. Anoop (the pastor) came into the room where we were all sitting and immediately prayed for E. and then we set off to find a hospital.

I was grateful that Upender was there since he knew where to go, but the first hospital (specifically for accidents and injuries) was closed and they sent us to a surgeon down the street.

He was in, since he lives in the building where he operates. We met him almost immediately and he checked her out, said she was fine now but we’ll wait and see tomorrow. So that was sort of comforting. He prescribed some pain reliever and antibiotics and set us on our way with instructions to come at 10AM the next day.

E. slept all night and I watched over her since I couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried to rest I could see her going out the window and hear her scream. I still have trouble being in that room.

The next morning we got an X-ray of her face and by the evening we knew she had no fractures and she was fine. This all happened Sunday night and by Monday morning she was jumping and playing and normal.

She is absolutely fine.

God is so Good!

I just wanted to add that when E. fell and I knew she had gone all the way down, I was frantic. But even before I saw her walking, it was as if my heart was wrapped in peace during those terrifying seconds.

It is a miracle. I will have pictures of the accident and E. up in a few days but O. has his laptop with him and won’t be home til maybe Thursday.

* By the way, E. is 5 years old. I should have put that in the first post.

My Wonder Child And My Wonderful God

Last night, around 11PM, E. sat down on a windowsill and leaned against the window that was locked but the lock was loose. As soon as her weight hit the window it opened and she tumbled head over heels out the 2nd story window.

I was on the bed and saw it happen. About 3’ below the window is a cement ledge and then about a 12’ drop to the ground from there. I jumped up and rushed to the window hoping against hope that she was just on the ledge, but she wasn’t. I started to scream to everyone in the house to get outside, that E. had fallen out the window.

I ran downstairs and before I could get out the front door I saw E.

My baby girl was walking. She had fallen all that way, hit a ledge and landed in about a 3 ‘ wide space onto broken bricks and an iron grid (we’re having cement put in this week). And she was WALKING.

My sister-in-law reached her first and carried her inside, by the time I saw her I could see that she was relatively unscathed.

She fell all that way onto bricks and iron rods, barely missing a wall that would have broken her in half had she hit it.

She was not unconscious.
She didn’t break a single bone in her body.
She didn’t lose a drop of blood.

It’s a miracle. I know that the prayers of so many people all over the world who daily submit us at the feet of the Lord were heard and angels carried her safely down.

I cleaned her face last night and we took her upstairs checked her out. We were all so relieved that she was ok. She has bad scrapes on her face and her right eye swelled and she has some bad bruises, especially on her legs where I think she may have hit the wall. But she’s fine.

We all prayed and praised the Lord and at that time I thought, she could have internal injuries we can’t see, so we better take her to the hospital. Well, there are no ambulances here or emergency rooms. O. had just left for another city to catch a bus to his village and our vehicle was dropping him there. They were due here at about 11PM so I called them first to see if they were going to be home soon. I reached our driver (aren’t cell phones wonderful?) He said they were 20 km away. A minute later our pastor, and good friend, Anoop (who also was in the car) called back and said, we’ll reach your house in 10 minutes. And they did.

To be continued tomorrow…

Police Police Police

After church today O., the girls, and I were out front of church on the motorcycle ready to go home and a police jeep pulls up and comes over to O. The policeman was pleasant and showed O. a paper in a language we can't read and says O. has to come to the police station.

So, O. and 3 others went. He had to sit and wait 2 hours and was totally annoyed, but it turns out it was an inquiry because he requested something to do with marriage licenses. They asked a lot of questions and we were relieved it was nothing more than that.

O. left tonight to go to his father's place and work some more on resolving the land issue. He may have to put a court case against the other people since they are not cooperating and signing the papers. He's been holding off for 2 years but it may be time. He hopes to be home soon, like maybe Tuesday morning. Please pray!

Yawn

I would have been on here sooner but we’ve been plagued with power outages. Last night our power went out around 1AM and since it did this the previous week, I didn’t think much about it and just assumed it would come back on again in 2 hours (like it had before). It turned out it wasn’t a general outage at all but that our electrical box had burned up. Good thing O. checked. So at 2 AM he went to our electrician’s house and dragged the poor man out of bed.

So, we got back to sleep around 3AM or so. It’s hard to tell exactly when, since our many mosquito bites kept us awake for quite a while itching even after the electricity was back on.

Right inner forearm – 6 bites in a line
Right ring finger, knuckle - 1 bite
Left forearm – 3, possibly 4 bites
Right hand, middle finger, knuckle- 1 bite
Left leg – mercifully unscathed
Left foot – 3-4 bites
Right shin – 3 bites
Right foot – 1 bite

Of course this happened on a Saturday night, Sunday being the only day of the week we HAVE to get up early. AND O. was preaching and a guest staying with us was giving a testimony in church the next morning.

Yawn.

X-Men United

I went to see X-Men United on Friday. I dragged O. and family friends along with me. I don’t think any of them liked it since they talked through most of the movie.

Actually, I didn’t love it myself, and I Love X-Men.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS – if you care. (”Spoilers” means that parts of the movie plot will be revealed hereafter so don’t read on if you eventually want to see the movie and don’t want the plot spoiled.)

I was a little horrified at one of the beginning scenes when “Young” Warren was filing off his feathers to hide them from his father. I’m still a little shaky after that scene – but I get the point of it. After that they never developed his character. Why even put him in the movie? I mean, you know, other than that he looked cool and they’ll make lots of money off of adolescent girls papering their bedroom walls with his picture.

And that right there is the problem with the entire movie. Every single Interesting character in the entire film was ignored in the plot.

Let me just spell it out and tell the world how I really feel. STORM is the BORING-est X-Man everrrrrrrr and just because Halle Berry (Academy Award Winner) was playing that part it’s as if the writers of the script had to build up her role in the last 2 movies. I bet she said, "If I don't get a bigger part, I'm not returning." Politics Politics ruined the stinkin' film. Sorry Halle, it’s not about you, you just got a bum character with no personality. you should have walked away.

THEN, fascinating characters that I love, like – Rogue – are given sissy parts in the 2nd and 3rd movies. Am I the only one who wanted to see more of Rogue – and hey, isn’t she an Academy Award Winner too? Could she have been any more of a blah character in XM3?

And then, of course, the big bad MALE lead character had to save the day at the end. Look, I love Hugh Jack…, I mean, Wolverine, as much if not more than the next guy, but does he ALWAYS have to save the day? And being in love with Jean? Yeah, she’s beautiful, but ALSO – no personality people. B-O-R-I-N-G. Did she even have a line in the entire film? Did anyone else notice that she spent most of the movie standing around, looking dazed?

Some things I did like:

I did like that main people were killed off.

I loved Beast and I think he was one of the best things about the entire movie, esp. his fighting. Very cool.

I liked Iceman finally coming into his own. Go Bobby. I can't stand that Pyro guy.

The make-up and special effects were impeccable in my opinion and the movie is worth seeing just for them. (see 2nd post for more personal views)

Curing Who We Are

Still on: X-Men United

Can we “cure” who are?

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

In the movie Mutants were either voluntarily or involuntarily “Cured” of their mutations (a.k.a. super powers). I was HORRIFIED at this. Horrified. Even the bad guys getting “cured” (un-mutated – turned human) horrified me. It actually kind of depressed me. It took me til the next day to feel normal again.

END of Spoilers

I’m all about being Different. And I’m not really talking about We the Christians being Different from They the non-Christians. That’s a whole ‘nother thing.

I’m talking about being different even In Christ – Different Parts of ONE body. But still different. Any idea that we all need to be the Same screams legalism to me.

But even this is still off my topic. The point is this:

I was feeling bad on Friday night because of a comment that someone made to me that got me thinking about how much I stand out –physically- in India. My skin color, my weight, my height (I not only stand head and shoulders above most women but I’m taller than most Indian men as well).

I hate standing out and I Stand Out Every Day. I can live in India til I die and Learn 10 Indian languages better than native speakers and I will still be labeled as a “foreigner” (a rich one at that – ha!) because my skin is a different shade than everyone else’s.

How many times have people come into my house and been AMAZED that I can cook Indian food. Yeah, I’ve been married to an Indian for 6 ½ YEARS, I think I can handle it. A lady in my church just asked me on Wednesday (when she heard we had a family staying with us for a few days ) “Who will make food for them?” Uh, me?

Oh, I could go on… but I won’t.

So, I was laying in bed, feeling different and discouraged and all the sudden I was faced with the same question as the mutants in the movie (yes, that is a funny sentence.)

Would I change myself if I could, to “fit in”? I immediately recoiled from the idea. Then I paused, I broke down the question and the answers and then came to the conclusion that yes, I would – but to only an external extent. I would change my height and weight (who wouldn’t?) and most importantly – my skin color.

Who I am inside – I’d never change that.

It’s all just a shell on the outside anyway. And it’s not like what I look like has any kind of super power attached to it that’d I’d lose were my appearance to change. (Except possibly the power to make people stare at me for unusually long periods of time and I really don’t want that super power anyway. I’d much rather have the super power of being able to choose ripe fruits that aren’t over-the-hill – specifically, canelope. – or at least learn how to spell canelope.)

Juice So Sweet

C. LOVES mangoes, she calls them “juice” because they’re so sweet and good and, well, juicy.

In school there is a little poem prayer the kids pray and E. and C. have shortened it to pray before they eat:

“Thank you God for the world so sweet, Thank you God for everything. Amen”

A few days ago when I put a plate of mango slices in front of C. she started to pray:

“Thank you God for the juice so sweet, Thank you God for everything, Amen.”

Oh, and she just came over here wearing a shirt and nothing on her lower half and asked me to scratch and itch for her – on her butt.

Congratulations, Jim!

Yesterday Mom wrote this to me:

"Jim was named as one of the best doc's in South Jersey in their magazine.":

Jim is my big brother. Way to go Jim! (Or "Dr. Uncle Jim", as we call him in our family.)

By the way, this is post 200, if anyone was wondering.

Somehow The Rain Knows

The rainy season where we live starts in June and it amazes me how the rain knows just when to come. Here it is, May 31st, and - wham - the heavens opened and down comes the rain.

It's just a soft, spring-like rain that makes the dirt smell good and cools things off (for a little while) but it's rain none the less.

I have a few worries, like, what am I going to do for the next four months to get my clothes dry after washing them and is our new neighborhood going to flood when the hard rains come (I think - yes)?

But then I come downstairs and find two ladies from our church who are basically squaters and live in a slum area about 15 yards from the train tracks. Rain to them means - our house gets flooded, our makeshift roof colapses, everything we own gets ruined. Our food supplies get spoiled. We get diseases - like last year (brain fever) and currently one of the women's youngest children has malaria.

We prayed and they'll be looking for a house to rent. We'll pray they can find one at the right price. Everyone works in these families and they can afford to live in a rented house but they've spent their entire lives living as squaters and the thought of having to pay a rent and an electric bill is offensive to them but it's a step they need to take.