Three days after I returned from the Philippines I left for a week in northern India. A friend here told me that India takes everything out of you because, well, it's India. On this trip I understood what she meant. The first time I went to India I was mainly in a large city, but this time, the religion, culture,sights and sounds that are India came alive.
We stayed with a local Indian family in the middle of what seemed like nowhere. After flying into a large city in India and an overnight layover we then flew into a smaller city, then got off the plane and drove four hours north. We slept on the floor in a small room of their concrete home. The concrete made it seem a lot colder inside than outside. The home had a small kitchen and two other small rooms. The family (mom, dad and three kids) all stayed in the one bedroom. The other room, their guest room, is where an older couple traveling with us stayed. In following Indian culture we ate all our meals in that room, on the bed. The family spread out a tablecloth of sorts on the bed and we all crowded on to eat. The food was really good and we have chai tea, my favorite, every day. One day we had a record-high five cups.
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| Rolling out the dough on the floor |
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| Game of cricket. This was the view behind their home. |
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| Entrance to their home/church |
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| Another view of the backyard. It wasn't uncommon for a cow to try and wander into the house. |
One afternoon we walked down the road to a Sikh temple:
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| They didn't mind at all having photos taken. |
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| They gave us "sugar rock candy." |
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| Walking down the road to the temple. |
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| The kids came running up to us and wanted to take photos with us. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence. Apparently the white faces stood out. One day we even had village kids come inside the house and bang on the bedroom window. Then, they came back with their parents. |
Another afternoon we went to an old fort. The rain came just as we were about to leave:
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| View at the top! |
We also went into the city a couple times. Little bit different than the countryside:
It was another crazy week, but God was good. No one got sick on the trip and our hips survived several nights of sleeping on a concrete floor. Plus, we got to meet families serving Him in the midst of a culture that doesn't make it easy.
Grateful to be back, and grateful to have seen Him at work.
