Arranging A Marriage

Another reason the eloping is coming at a bad time (see next post) is because we are in the process of looking at a boy to marry O.'s sister, Martha. One marriage at a time please.

Actually, O. is at the boy's family's house today meeting them.

The boy in question studied in our Bible College last year and never forgot Martha. His brother is one of our village pastors.

So, the boy, Amar, called our pastor last month and asked to talk to the pastor's wife and Amar told her he wanted to marry Martha and then she told her husband the pastor who told me (I already knew Martha liked the boy) and then our pastor talked to O.

This is how it's done people!

There is a whole set of rules to be followed when arranging marriages.

So, if all goes as planned we want to hold the engagement (which you know from faithfully reading my posts :) are big ordeals close to the wedding ceremony itself) before we come to the USA in the end of January. Then we'd plan a wedding for Sept/Oct.

That is IF we agree. We'll see what O. says when he gets back from meeting the family. I have a feeling everything is going to go through.

I wanted to go to meet the family too but it was a 5 hour drive (which turned out to be 8 hours b/c of bad roads) and after the 24 combined hours in the car between Sat to Mon, I was not ready to do it again. Looks like I made a good decision. Plus my E. is very sick with a cough that turned in to vomiting that turned in to a pretty high fever with small itchy pimples all over her body. We just went to the the clinic tonight and I'll see how she is tomorrow. She's a nightmare to give medicine to.

If she doesn't show some improvement tomorrow I'll take her to a pediatrician. I like the clinics because they're close by and you can get in and out fast. I know, I'm a horrible mother. (This is the first time E. has been to a Dr. since we came back from the US in Aug. '05. Healthy as a horse that one.)

Will Everyone Pa-leeze...

...Stop Eloping!

Thank you.

Actually, maybe that's only for people over here like my brother-in-law who eloped with a girl last week.

Such a long story. The girl was staying with us for a while at the request of her fiance, O.'s friend. Yeah.

So, the girl and O.'s brother fell in love. None of us had a clue. I know, hard to believe when you live together but remember this is an Arranged Marriage society so falling in love before marriage is a Big No No. It's amazing how cunning people can learn to be.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, O.'s brother told O. how he felt about the girl. We immediately removed her from our house and told them to wait, we'd do our best to work something out. Hey, the girl was engaged to another man, a friend of O.'s.

Then she called her family and told them and then her brother responded by threatening to throw acid on her face. Lovely. Well, it wasn't 24 hours after that phone call that the 2 of them disappeared. Had a court marriage and came back 9 days later. Thank you very much.

Well, she is a nice Christian girl, so it could be worse.

But it does come at the Worst time. We've got to make a lot of well thought out plans. They'll probably have another wedding in the girl's state (with most people not knowing that they're already married). Then a small ceremony in O.'s place.

We're not sure what we'll do in our city, I think the best thing to do is combine a reception with some other program that is already scheduled. (There's only a million of them in December and January to choose from.)

Walking a very very thin line.
Not what we need right now.

12 Hours

12 hours in the car on a pot holed road to the wedding on Saturday.

12 hours on another pot holed road home from the wedding on Monday.

I couldn't actually see anything going on at the wedding on Sunday since the stage was full of pastors and the bride and groom were facing them. Plus, it was all in Marathi, which I don't understand.

The best I can say is that it's all over and I surely don't feel like traveling anymore.

Prayer For Our State

Tomorrow there is a special fasting prayer day being held in our city which we are hosting.

Pastors and leaders from all over our state will be coming here for the special prayer day. O. is VERY excited. He lobbied A Lot to get us to host it.

One of the main focuses of the prayer will be for our political leaders and some upcoming state elections.

This threw a bit of a wrench into the wedding plans for Sunday (see post below) but it got worked out. O. will be here all day Saturday, take a night train to Bombay and get a flight from there to Aurangabad where the wedding will be held.

Please pray with us during the prayer on Saturday.

Pray with/for us Everyday! : ) We need it.

Wedding Number 2, Uh 3

Do you remember in the beginning of February when one of our co-workers got married and then a few days later the girl's father came and took her back home? To another state.

Well, after 10 long months the wedding in the girl's place is this Sunday, November 26th.

Five of us from here are going there for the ceremony this weekend.

We'll head out tomorrow morning and come back on Monday. It's about 10 hours away. (Not looking forward to the drive). I'm leaving the girls home with their 2 aunts.

Thanksgiving Nonsense Fun With Family

On another blog I saw a link to this website: http://www.myheritage.com/

There is a place where you can do celebrity face recognition. It's to see which "celebrity" you most favor.

So I cropped a picture of my face from a family photo (like I have individual frontal face shots of myself - I don't think so. Unless I'm applying for a visa or something).

After getting past the "register" (it's free) spot and then narrowly escaping a subscription to People magazine, I got my results.

According to myheritage I have a 72% resemblance to... (dun dun dun DUN....)

Maura Tierney (played Nurse Abby Lockhart on ER) (photo in post below)

Yeah, she's kind of a plain jane, but to the best of my knowledge, she did date everyone on ER.

Now to the better (or most amusing stuff)

Coming in at #2 with 64% match is... Sarah Michelle Geller

I Am Not Kidding.

If you don't know her : Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - also Daphne from the Scooby Doo movies. (married to Freddie Prince Jr)

There were several other "matches" going down to Jessica Alba and Sinead O'Conner at 55% and 53%.

I'm only revealing the beautiful people (whom I recognize)- it did also match me with Leelee Sobieski at 63% and and Asian actress and some old lady, as well as other people I've never heard of.

Later when I tried another picture of myself - half the matches were Men. Lovely.

Actually, most of my "matches" went according to the shape of my face. I have a long, perfectly rectangular face. Most of the "celebrities" matched to me had the same shaped face.

Try it and let me know who you "match." (hard to believe, but my "comment section" actually works.

Oh, I did O. too, he most closely matched Cuba Gooding Jr at 64%. Uh, not really. (They went for dark skinned men with facial hair for O.)

Celebrity Match?

Well, I don't know. But we do have a very similarly shaped face - altho you can't tell as much in the "deer caught in the headlights" photo of me.

Holiness In Hindi

A quick update on the Ladies meeting message from Friday.

It went smoothly, thanks for your prayers. I said everything I had prepared to say and I didn't even have one of those "Oh Shoot!" moments afterwards when I remember something I had meant to say in my message but forgot to.

It really was a blessed message for me on holiness/brokeness and I know the Lord is using the Word in my life and I hope and pray in the lives of others.

This reminds me of something else. Many of us on our team are suffering from deep discouragement. I know it's an attack of Satan. But it's still just so- discouraging.

Pray for us.

E At 6

Today is my E.'s birthday. My precious girl is 6 years old.

Some things about about E. She is a sweetheart. In fact, she has already chosen the name of the new baby (if it's a girl - which she desperately wants) then her name will be: "Sweetheart." I have no idea where she got that from.

Lately she's decided that she wants to be called "Waterfall*." Don't ask.

She loves to eat, she hates studying, she loves to color and ride her bike. She LOVES to play with kids. She's the boss, the ringleader, the little mommy.

She speaks neither Hindi nor English very well, but she's darn cute when she does. She's an excellent mimic and should probably get in trouble for mimicing her mommy - way too often - but she's just so good at it.

Her favorite thing to do in the wide whole world is dance. She's actually won contests - ask any member of my family about the "I dance, I win!" incident.

She's my girl.

I could have chosen a cute picture of her - she is the most photogenic person I've ever met. But she pretty much looks like a ragamuffin ALL the time and has recently grown into REALLY bad hair. I figured I'd put up a picture of what the kid really looks like.

So, here she is now, holding a distant cousin - baby holding, also one of her favoritest things.

E. Then. She still has the dimple.

*C. insists on being called "Barbie." (rolls eyes)

Nesting

I made Chocolate Chunk Cookies today. I actually pulled my little oven off the top shelf where it's been unused for the last 2 years. I also had to unplug the fridge to plug in the oven. It SO must be the nesting kicking in. Is this what people do at 10:45 on the night before their daughter's big hairy birthday party for 70+ people when they have a serious backache and should be sleeping?

Yet, I've been dying to make Chocolate Chip cookies, but we don't have brown sugar here or chocolate chips for that matter*. So, I searched the internet and found a recipe without brown sugar.

Here is the first batch cooking.
They came out OK, but very sweet. I don't have any measuring tools so I "wung it" on the ingredients amounts. Next time I won't wung so much sugar.
* I used a broken up Cadbury chocolate bar. It could have tasted better in the cookies, maybe I'll try another brand next time.

Christmas/Anniversary Saree

We did go to a big city and go shopping on our anniversary. O. asked me what I wanted for our anniversary and I said I wanted a saree to wear to our Christmas Celebration on Dec. 21st. (keep praying)

I had the colors red, black and white in mind (any combination would do.)

When I saw this saree I loved it. I still do, I keep taking it out of the bag to look at it - a good sign that you made the right choice.

The border is gorgeous and the blouse will be made from the same material with the same border on the sleeves.

It wasn't cheap - but it is a "standard" saree, as someone called it. Meaning - it's not going to go out of style. (And yes, Indians are VERY style conscious.) I have sarees from not even a year ago that I don't even wear anymore b/c they are out of style. (Good thing I only pay $5 for them.)

If you're going to lay out the big bucks (this saree cost $84) you may as well go for somehting you can wear for the next 10 years or so.

On The Computer

Well, I've been on the computer a lot the last several days - but no time to blog.

It's that old Christmas season sneaking right up on us. No time. No time.

Tomorrow I am speaking at our weekly ladies meeting. The Lord has given me a powerful word to speak to the women - at least it's powerful in my life.

Holiness.

Only problem is - my Hindi message giving isn't quite so powerful. I guess that's the whole point. Let God do it.

Jubilee

I call it our "Year of Jubilee" although technically it's not.

It will be our 7th wedding anniversary tomorrow. But Jubilee would really be the 50th year. And even if we were counting by sevens, well, the Jubilee year would have started after the ending of our 6th year - meaning today would be the LAST day of our year of Jubilee.

Regardless, I still intend to call this our Year of Jubilee.

Christmas Praises And Prayer

The good news is that we got the 5000 New Testaments that we needed. Yay - and free too.

Thanks for praying.

The other thing is that been have been praying FOREVER for an LCD Projector. I cannot tell you how many times we've needed, it wanted it, tried to borrow one, rent one...

They're really expensive as you know, but when O. and our team went for the Bibles and some other things, they inquired about the LCD and we were able to get one with 30% down and the rest on an installment plan. These people had never seen O. before, but by talking with him they offered it to him this way.

I just came from the meeing where the man came and explained how to use it and we will inaugurate it this Sunday in church. Very Exciting.

Continue to pray for the Christmas program. (December 21st)

We still need to get permission to use the land in front of our school. Please pray for that land owner's heart.

We also know that Satan is and will continue to attack. Pray for unity amongst us all.

There are many enemies of the Gospel- I am praying that through all these Christmas programs while the Word of Truth is going forth that it will be like in the time of Elisha and the army of the king of Aram. (2 Kings 6)

Please pray and praise with us.

Praying right now would be a good start.

Thanks.

No Dancing For Me

The ladies in church have decided to do a traditional dance to Christmas music for our December 21st Christmas Program.

We had our first practice tonight.

I can't dance. I mean, I can, but I can't dance in the program because I'll be 7 months pregnant.

I love dancing, it's torture to sit and watch everyone dance - half of them don't even like it - and all I get to do is sit there and say - "Right leg! Right leg!"

Sad.

About the only thing I can do this year for our program is be a pregnant Mary. I'm too old, I know - thanks for rubbing salt in that wound...

Sankart's Death

Do you remember in the spring I wrote quite a bit about Sankart and his kidney failure.

My sister-in-law and 4 other ladies from the church went to his area to visit on Saturday evening and found that he was once again very sick. Martha told me on Saturday night that she thought he was going to die.

She was right. On Sunday afternoon he passed away.

The Lord truly healed him and brought him back from the brink of death earlier this year and since then Vinita and I visited once every six weeks or so. We encouraged he and his mother to come to church. We always got the same excuse, he wasn't allowed to walk much because of the continuing dialysis.

I always had a hard time believing that a teenage boy stayed at home all day every day, even with Doctor's orders. But they were resistant to walking the short distance to our church.

Vinita and I cautioned them 3 times about drawing near the Lord in our time of need and then, when things are going well pulling away Him. We were clear, we were bold. Sadly, Sankart didn't get a 2nd chance.

We won't know til we get to heaven ourselves whether he made a true commitment for Christ. I know I personally shared the Gospel with him as did others. He heard the truth.

In the midst of the sadness, my heart is light from a clear conscience.

Fear Of The Lord

I refrained from commenting on Steve Irwin's death, I held back my thoughts about Anna Nicole Smith's son's death - although both of these things affected me and I had the urge to write about them.

But I feel the need to comment about this whole Ted Haggard ordeal. (I keep up with my news from MSN.com).

It's not about him, fact is, I don't think I ever even heard of him before all this.

But it's just the scariness of it all.

Couldn't it be me? Couldn't it be you?

Mission Prayer Points

On the last day of every month we have fasting prayer from 10Am to 4Pm. Our co-workers and believers come and you can sit for as long as you have time or all day. There are usually between 20-30 of us.

We have a prayer list that we go over as well as a time of testimony and personal prayer requests.

While we were praying for our Mission Department and our village pastors the following prayer requests came up. I thought I'd share them with you as well. These are especially beneficial to any of you who support our pastors.

Our Mission Director, Suresh, shared the following requests.

Pray for:

Pastor Yesudas and his wife. They've been married 4 years and no child.

Pastor Baria who has a large personal debt.

Pastor Samuel S. who is getting married in December.

All our pastors working near the city of Udaipur. There is some disunity between them.

100 new pastors to join with us in 2007.

500 new churches/house churches to be started in new villages in 2007.

500 new sponsors.

2 more informal pastor training centers to open.

Pray that Satan will not hold us back or allow us to stagnate but that we would move forward in our mission.

Pray for qualifed coordinators and trainers to work at training and encouraging our village pastors on a regular basis.

Bathed And In Clean Clothes

O. arrived home yesterday morning with 2 other pastors in tow. The man can't go anywhere without making friends and bringing them home.

He's back to his old self. Clean again.

He had a wonderful time at the conference. One thing they taught was the prayer life of Jesus, which he, in turn, taught us all last night at our Friday prayer service.

He said the conference was the best one he'd attended so far and he is looking forward to another one in the beginning of December.

Thanks for praying. Always keep him in your prayers.

Church/School

This is a continuation of the post yesterday about the stolen equipment. I wanted to get this picture up then, but it wasn't loading, so here it is today.

Not a great picture of our school/church, but the only one I have on hand (All my other photo disks were taken for making a 2007 wall calendar).

Anyway.: 2nd floor, left side is our church hall/6th & 8th grade classrooms. You can see that all walkways and everything are open.

Thieves

When we went for our Church retreat we took our own instruments and sound equipment with us. Once we arrived there we realized that a box with mics and wires and some other equipment was not there. We searched and called and looked but finally fingured it got lost somewhere along the line.

This was a big, expensive blow and our pastor, worship leaders and sound guys were pretty discouraged. We were left with only 2 cordless, fickle-ly mics.

Then on Sunday morning before church when they were setting up the sound system, they realized that the little bit of sound equipment we had left was also missing (including the fickle-ly mics). After the service several people started searching all over our school building (our church meets in our school and 2 classrooms of children meet in our church from Mon to Sat.)

Amazingly, a small adaptor was found hidden on the roof under some construction equipment. That's when we realized we were dealing with thieves. The original missing box must have been taken before we left on the retreat and then the thieves came back afterwards for some more.

We suspect it is someone who works in our school. During the day the church hall is always open because classes meet there. The lock on the cabinet where we keep the material was pryed open and won't work. (We thought school children had done it just to be naughty, we now know better.) It seems as if, during daylight, "working" hours someone came and hid the smaller equipment on the roof and then probably came back at night to squirrel it away.

We have a watchman who stays on the 1st floor of the school but the church is on the second floor. Two nights ago the theives tried another attempt to get into the church. They broke a window, but by God's grace could not get it open.

We had someone sleep in the hall last night. We need to get a big steel box or something to keep everything in, but we're talking about drum sets and keyboard and all the sound equipment boards and stuff. Big things. (The small stuff is already long gone.)

Needless to say our pastor and worship/sound people are feeling pretty bad. And right before Christmas too.

This just emphesizes to us all the more how much we need a separate church building. And soon.