COFM India Day 3 -Seeing the sights

1/7/07 –Sunday

Sunday we went to church with Anand. Here the women sit on one side and the men on the other, everyone sits on the floor. They had benches in the back for us to sit on. Service lasts about 2 hours and includes time for attendees to share any personal testimony. The entire service was in Telugu, but it was still fascinating to see how others worship. Jeremy got up and spoke about being zealous for the Lord, Anand translated. Jeremy did a great job speaking; I don’t even think he was nervous. One of the women commented later that she thought he looked like Tom Cruise. At the end one woman approached Jeremy and asked him to pray for her. The walls were decorated with scripture (“The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love” –Psalm 147:11.) and decorations for the New Year (which is in mid-January here).

We spent Sunday out and about seeing the area. Anand took us to a restaurant for lunch, lots of great food. Even the spiciest stuff still tastes great. At the end of the meal they bring you finger bowls to clean your hands, since everyone there eats with their hands. They also brought out a small tray of mouth fresheners, a mixture of fennel, anise spices, cloves and sugar type crystals.

We spent the rest of the day with Johnson, Anand’s brother, while Anand went off to take care of a few things. We had an opportunity to go to Johnson’s office and email home. It’s a great luxury to be able to let our families know that we arrived safely. Johnson and his wife Lily took us around and showed us some great area sights. We visited the beach on the Bay of Bengal and walked around Kailasagiri. Both are just beautiful areas of scenery, including a full view of the city at Kailasagiri, which means Hills of Heaven. At the beach we saw some ruins of where statues were of seasonal gods. Hindus have so many gods, that some are only worshipped for a season. When the season is over they tear down the statues and throw them in the bay. How lucky are we to have the real living God that is with us for life!

Another thing we learned in training is that the people there will be fascinating by seeing Americans and we will be followed and stared at. That’s for sure! We almost felt like celebrities. Anywhere we went a line of people would follow and everyone wanted their picture taken and to talk to us. That is going to take all week to get used to.

Transportation is interesting to see. We have a van with Hari, our driver, to take our group around. Normal transportation here would be on a bike (what we would call a motor bike), or an auto rickshaw; both get crammed with quite a few people. It’s pretty common to see a little auto rickshaw stuffed with 15-16 people, we’ve seen bikes with up to 6 people on them.

We’ve been adjusting really well to everything. We went to sleep pretty early so we may still have some adjusting left to do. Meanwhile, we came home and found a lot of construction had been completed. The bathrooms are completely done now and we are starting to have railings on our staircase and porch. That really helps ease our train of people slowly making our way to the third floor!