India trip Day 6

After sleeping again in our original rooms at the Pee Fifty-One House in New Delhi, we ate a continental breakfast (Indian style) with other guests before leaving to walk to the Truth Seekers Office.  I was unclear about the details of the day ahead of us - it was one of the "plans are subject to change" sort of days. Flexibility is ALWAYS important when doing mission work.

The Truth Seekers staff told us that we were going to drive to a village an hour away from Delhi and minister to the people there.  I loaded up all the snacks, toys, and trinkets that I had left with the hopes that I would be able to give them away to children in the village.  We would be working with an Indian woman named Kanta, she has been a friend of Truth Seekers for a long time and have been involved with social work in villages for 20 years.

Traffic was bad in Delhi (very obvious statement) and at one of the red lights we were stopped at on  the way there we were approached by a eunuch.  Eunuchs are castrated men (natural or forcibly) who dress in female saris and wear lots of makeup as they roam around on the streets and in marketplaces asking for money.  They live in their own communities and are looked down upon even though their blessings or curses are considered to have power.

An hour later we arrived at the village Auchandi.  This was a newer village for Kanta's work.  She knew several believing women in the village but also knew that there were many women, men, and children who weren't believers.  Kanta met us at our vehicles, shook our hands, and spoke english.  We followed here to a large house and sat on blankets, cots, and chairs in a large room with a stone floor.  Women from the village also joined us and it got crowded.  Together we sang both Hindi and English praise songs, drank chai tea, and ate snacks.  I was sitting on a cot with four other women and we were unable to really talk with each other, but I tried regardless.

Next thing you know, the older woman whose house we had been in was escorted the American women in our group to go pray for the families in the village.  The first house we went to had a really sick old woman.  She was in a tiny, dark room in the back of the house.  We picked her up from the cot she was on to a sitting position.  She couldn't really hold herself up because she was was weak.  She looked like she was on the verge of death and we couldn't do anything but pray aloud for her for several minutes before we laid her back down and moved on.  I felt the Holy Spirit moving and I got really emotional.  It continued to be very emotional for me as we walked with Kanta and the women from house to house praying for the women and families.  Not every household had an obvious illness - sometimes we prayed against evil in a home, other times we prayed for food and resources for a poor family.

No one was translating our English prayers to Hindi and tons of women and children stood around and watched each time we prayed.  I got the feeling that we were being viewed as some kind of healers and it was not a feeling I enjoyed.  As I prayed for the hurting and sick in Auchandi, I also prayed that they people there would see God and not us as we ministered to them in His name.

The homes we visited were all concrete buildings that were tall and narrow, most shared walls as they were all lined up along the same street.  Alleys and streets looked the same; cows milling around, children running and playing, doorways to homes every 12 feet or so... It was quaint and cozy and quiet.  At one home, we were ushered to sit on cots and were served little fruits from a tree and a warm-yogurt-type-drink that was super salty - called a lassi (NOT my favorite by any means!).

When we headed back to our hostess' home, we had a few minutes before the food was going to be ready for lunch so we headed to the roof of the home and got the bird's eye view of the village.  Dry cowpies were on almost every rooftop and the neighborhood children shyly waved at us from their roofs.  We handed out all the toys and trinkets to the children that we'd brought and not been able to give away yet.  Most of my  gifts were Southwest Airlines treats - thanks boss!  The kids (and even some adults) were all excited to see what we had for them.

Lunch was served by a team of 10 or more Indians, with three women still cramped in a 5x7ft room (the kitchen) who kept the food coming until we were all stuffed. It was one of the best meals I'd had yet in India!

We prayed with a few more families before loading up into our vehicles again and beginning the long journey back to the city.  All the conversations in my vehicle on the way back seemed to stay in the serious category.  Pranjal shared his testimony with us and Winn opened up to me about his life story.  I still feel immensely blessed to have met such incredible, loving servants of God.

Because of traffic, we went straight from driving to the book release event for Kancha Ilaiah's new book.  He had already written a controversial book entitled "Why I'm Not a Hindu" and this second book is titled "Post-Hindu India."  Kancha is a Truthseeker in terms of fighting against the Caste system and many of the Christians involved with Truthseekers think that he might also follow Christ (he's a Buddhist) or at least have a healthy knowledge and curiosity of God.

At the event, light refreshments were served before everyone was seated in a small auditorium.  Many important political and religious figures were there.  A few white people, our group being the majority (and, once again, standing out a mile).  Sunil told us that it was important that we were - that our very presence made everyone else there perk up and wonder that this issue must be important if so many white people were in attendance.

The media snapped a lot of photos of Kancha, speakers, book reviewers, and those of us in the audience during the two hour event.  I learned so much and purchased both of Kancha's books to read in order to understand more of the issue of Hinduism and the Caste system.

End of Day 5

This is quite a vivid memory of the trip - the only time I really felt in danger - and an interesting story that I wanted to include about the end of day 5.

After our sight seeing in Agra, before we ate dinner on the roof of the hotel, I walked back down the road toward the Taj Mahal with John Kim.  He was going to be my negotiator for exchanging the rest of my money.

We walked briskly, it only took about 10 minutes from our hotel to reach the Taj Mahal gate where all the tourist shops and money changers are set up.  The sun was slowly disappearing and the last of the tourist groups for the day we leaving.  Since we were walking toward the Taj unlike everyone else, all the shop owners were eager to get our attention. I believe I had mentioned earlier about how children and men would crowd around us and try to sell us their ware...well in this situation we received more than double the attention!  I'm glad that John let me loop my arm through his--it definitely felt dangerous.

We walked to two shops asking about their exchange rate, but John wasn't happy with what they were offering.  At this point, every time we left one shop for another, there was a crowd of 10-12 children waiting for us outside.  They were all crowding close and talking loudly, asking us to come to their father's shop.  We pressed on through the crowd of kids and as the sun dipped down a little more as we walked to one final shop.  (I knew it was our final shop because I told John I wanted to leave asap!)

So we finally step into the final shop and all the kids wait outside.  For the record, it's disconcerting when you walk into a narrow shop and the owners close the door behind you, but I suppose it was necessary to muffle the noise from the street.  We haggled and negotiated until we got the price we wanted for my money exchange--my hands were shaking with adrenaline when I handed over the cash. Whew, I was glad to have that done and ready to head back to the hotel for dinner.

Now it was completely dark outside.  Great.  The street wasn't lit very well and we still had a crowd of kids following us and pressing in from all sides.  There were no other tourists in sight and shops were closing.  John and I were walking briskly, so briskly that I was getting out of breath - but then again, that could have still been the adrenaline.  Now, in addition to all the kids, we had bicycle cart drivers pedaling alongside us, crowding us and cutting us off.  Finally we just hopped in one and told the man to pedal, just to get us away from the dark street with the crowd following us, and to get us to the hotel faster.

We started getting momentum and leaving the crowd behind us.  One persistent young man, probably 10 or 11 years old, with Taj Mahal memorabilia in his hands, kept jogging alongside the cart next to me.  I was busy ignoring him and praying he'd give up when I felt his hand INSIDE the pocket of my kurta (the long top I was wearing)!  My skin started to crawl as I realized that this kid was pick pocketing me!  I snatched a hold of his hand and stared him in the eyes as he grabbed his hand away and finally left.  He didn't seem guilty that he had gotten caught, merely annoyed that he'd run after us to no avail.  Thankfully I don't keep things in my pockets so he didn't get anything.

I was speechless as I sat there in that bike rickshaw.  And our poor driver, he was so small and pedaling as best he could, but our hotel was up a slight hill and he couldn't get the momentum to pedal up the hill and had to get out and walk next to the bike, pushing us up the hill.  (I tried not to let this affect my self esteem about being chubby.)  I told John that this poor man had taken us far enough so we hopped out, paid him, and walked the small way back to the hotel.

Whew!  All this happened in the span of 45 minutes.  I can't believe I almost forgot to include it!

When we arrived back at the hotel, we ate dinner and then loaded up to go to the Agra train station again.  Gosh I hated the train station.  Not only was it always crowded, and the staring worse than anywhere else, the children who beg there just break your heart and there is nothing you can do to help them.

Picture this.  We get out of the taxis and standy aside the vehicles while the men unload our luggage from the top racks.  As we stand there--a timid huddle of Americans--young barefoot children quickly approach us with their little arms extended asking for food or money.  Because we ignored them and avoided making eye contact, the children got more agressive in trying to get our attention.  They began to pinch our arms, just above the elbow and walk directly in front of our path as we headed to the station entrance with our luggage.  The reason we didn't help this children is because we were told that if we gave one or two children any food or money that it would cause a riot amongst the children.  Someone said, "unless you can permantely remove that child from their situation, you won't be helping them by giving them anything."  Like I said, heartbreaking.

Once inside the train station, there weren't as many children begging but rather cripples.  One man with no legs and a mangled arm was persistantly tapping on our feet and stayed within a few feet of us for more than 30 minutes while we waited for our train back to New Delhi.  It's hard to not do anything.  It's hard to realize that this is someone's livlihood.  It's hard to know that some of these people were deliberately injured in order to bring in money for someone else.  *Sigh*  I didn't like the train stations.

Day 5 side note

For our sight-seeing day, we had hired a tour guide to take us to the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, and to a marble making place. I can't remember his name, but he spoke good english and was knowledgeable of all the facts we needed to know about these places. At the end of the day, while the rest of the team was inside the marble making place, I was sitting outside with Deshpande, the tour guide, and our two taxi drivers. Deshpande and the tour guide were having an interesting debate about Christianity vs. Muslim. The tour guide, a muslim, kept flowing back and forth between Hindi and English so I had a hard time keeping up! But at one point he looked at me and said, "If you marry me, I will convert to Christianity." HAHA! I turned him down and continued to listen to the debate. Later I found out that he's already married and has two children! Regardless, I thought it was funny. Now I can say that I received a marriage proposal in India.

Day 5

These are the events of Tuesday November 24:

After sleeping in, I finally felt adjusted to India time! This was our sight-seeing day. In hindsight, I would have been perfectly fine with spending only half a day sight-seeing so that we could have had more time working with the Indian people. But, we did see some pretty incredible things on this day:

Day 4 part 2

Okay so now it's Monday afternoon and we just left one village for another. Since the debacle with the taxis earlier in the day put us behind schedule, we didn't have time to eat lunch. We snacked on a few things in the taxis, but it was only an hour until we reached the second village.

Because the road we needed to take to the location of the footwashing was down a less-than-promising-and-quite-crowded road, we got out of the taxis on the main road and then walked down said street. Fortunately or unfortunately, at this time in the day there were a lot of children and teenagers walking home from school and it was obvious that many of them, and other men and women on the main road, had never seen white people before. The staring in this village was unlike anywhere else we were in India.

As we walked down the side street, we literally had a growing crowd following us down the street and into the field where the ceremony was set up to take place.

We started right away when we sat down and had a small amplifier that emitted a surprisingly loud sound of our singing and talking across the field and thus brought even more people off the street and over to hear what we were saying. The crowd grew and grew. I noticed a deep sadness in a lot of the faces--this place was noticeable different from the previous village. The people seemed oppressed and weighted down. I prayed hard as we sat there before washing feet.

When we began washing feet, the women were shy but there were enough of them in the crowd that we were busy. So many young men were taking our pictures on their cell phones that I tried not to get distracted from my task of praying over the women whose feet I was touching and washing. Sometimes someone came alongside me and translated what I was saying, but not always. I just remembered to let my face show my heart and show God's love (as best I can) to each woman, man, and child.

When we finished we had quite a crowd eager to follow us up the road to a school where we locked ourselves in so that we could use the toilet before the long car drive back to Agra. We managed to leave the crowd safely - I don't exactly think that having an entourage is as glamorous as one might think.

I started feeling carsick on the ride back to Agra - I swear the roads got bumpier on the way back! About 2 hours there in the dark, still sitting in the back seat, we got a flat tire on our taxi and had to stop on the side of the road until the men could change the tire. I opted to take a middle seat for the rest of the journey back to Agra and slept the whole way!

Even though it was relatively early in the evening, I walked up to our room in Agra and slept on my face for 40 minutes before reviving for dinner downstairs. Everyone was exhausted from the travels and emotions of the day so we quickly ate and went back to bed. One of the girls gave me some pills that helped me sleep through the night for the first time - it was awesome!

Day 4 done!