Meeting with New Believers

Ok, so we have continued to do Mother Teresa's and we met a group the other day at Daya Dan (a home for mentally handicapped children) that were from a church in Houston, Texas. Pretty sweet. They were southern baptist and had about 8 in their group. They were almost all older people, which was cool. I feel like it is much harder for the older generation to get out of their comfort zone and go to hard places. Granted, these guys are staying in an A/C hotel, but still. Who cares, they are still here. And that is pretty sweet. They are supposed to bring 40 youth back some time during the summer to serve at Mother Teresa's homes. Lol, I wish our youth could do that. I told the missions pastor that he needed to put those kids under the fans (no A/C in the hotel room) so they could get the full experience. His reply was, "parents."

We went and had dinner last night with Beth, Kyle, and Sarah, as well as some Canadian friends. It was an incredible time to fellowship with the Word Made Flesh staff. It has been awesome seeing them. I love those people. I love SariBari too. I love that it seeks to free women both physically and spiritually. Anyways, I was sad to say goodbye last night. I am terrible at goodbyes.


Ok, now to explain the title of the post. We went to Pastor Kaushik's house the other night (the guy in the front and center of the pic) to talk about the Bible with some relatively new believers. These guys are all interested in the Bible and have tons of questions to ask. We talked some about Hinduism and routes that Hindu's come to have faith in Jesus. It is usually more of a process where the Hindu begins to see Jesus as the main god that they serve, and then they begin to realize that he is the only God. Any way that someone comes to the faith is cool with me. I'm down for using whatever strategy. Anyways, these guys were solid believers who haven't been baptized yet. One of them told me he wanted to clean up before getting baptized. For example, he told me that he wants to look at girls a lot of times when they walk by him, so he wants to quit this bad habit before being baptized. We gave them the answer (and Pastor Kaushik expounded) that our whole lives are a process of sanctification and we are going to always be fighting the battle against sin. We will never fully reach perfection until the next life. I think they got it. We played a very small role in this meeting that happens every week with Pastor Kaushik. It was a cool ministry to play a small role in.

We leave for Raipur to see my compassion kid in 2 days. I'm excited. Pray that we make the most of our time. We have had opportunities to share about Christ and have taken them. I love the Christian life. I love Jesus. I hope I love him more.

Pray for the Charis fellowship church and many churches that meet across Calcutta. Pray that they would be full of the Spirit. Pray for us to continue to use every opportunity to share about Christ in our lives. Pray that the tracts we hand out make a difference in these people's lives. Pray that God would move in Calcutta.

Flesh n Bones

Today at Kalighat (The home of the dying) this guy had a pseudo surgery performed by the nurse. There is a doctor that comes every once in a while, however, the nurse does all of the work. Anyways, today the nurse was pulling crazy things out of this wound. I didn't watch, and the only reason I know is that I saw part of the remains in a dish. She walked by and asked me and Josh to take it to the trash can. It had bones in it! I was like, Josh you got this one. He's going to be a nurse. He can take it. I would have thrown up probably. The poor guy operated on had no pain killers. They are too poor here. I guess he is lucky just to have his foot fixed. It was his foot by the way. I looked at the wound but that is all I could do. He was screaming big time.


This pic is the flower market, it's still going strong. We actually walked through more of it this time that I had last time and it is pretty amazing how much bigger it is than this picture looks. This place is huge. It's primary source of income is Hindu's buying these strings of flowers for their gods that hang in the corner of their homes, as if they are watching over them. bogus.


This is the front of the college library that William Carey helped build. That's about all there is to say about that.


This is the Hooghly river I think. It runs through Calcutta. It is a branch of the Ganges so it is holy. People throw lots of things in this river, including bodies I think. It's holy though so people bathe in it also.
This was dinner last night. Pork. Moa cooked it for us. Big time. Naga food, not Bengali. That means its northeast Indian, if you don't know where Nagaland is. Native food to here is Bengali. The state we are in is West Bengal. Anyways, this pork was money. I had to have way more rice than pork stuff though because it was so hot.

Sari Bari + Momma T's day 2

I forgot to mention yesterday that the day before we got to go see the new SariBari unit in the gach. This is the same building I helped clean out last year. Absolutely gorgeous place for sure. 40 new women are there working now. So now SariBari is up to roughly 60 women. Freedom. I'm going to be bringing some bags back to hopefully sell at Temple. You better buy them. Or else.

I had an awesome time seeing Beth, Kyle, and Sarah. Me and Josh got to go to the flat (same place I went to all the time last year) and eat dinner with a team here. I might have said that on my last post but I can't remember. If so I apologize.

I'm whiped out today. We've been here 5 days now and its taking its toll. haha 5 days. I've lectured Josh too many times already about how different it is for us to come for 2 weeks and if you stay here 4 months. Totally different experience fo' sho'.

We went to kalighat again this morning. It was pretty intense because as we walked up, we were asked to help load a dead dude into the truck to head to the crematorium. I noticed he was fat. Later, I realized who the dead guy was. I took his temperature on Tuesday and he had no fever. Ridiculous. I could tell he was in bad condition though. He ate like 2 bites and didn't really even chew. He basically let me fill his mouth with rice and spit it out later. The sister said it was ok.

William Carey?

So who woulda thought that we'd go see William Carey's college that he founded and a little museum they have for him. I'm inspired now to read his biography lol. It was really cool to see it. Me and Josh went on an epic adventure. We basically went from Howrah station and started with the name of the place we needed to go, knowing we had to take a local train. So I bought a ticket to serampore and we hopped on one of the local trains, hoping to find the right place. At this point I had no clue how we'd find some college in the middle of an indian village outside of Kolkata. We got off at some station named "shrirampur" and I kept asking people if it was "serampore." They kept saying yes. So then we went to some random salesman sitting on the ground and with my terrible bengali skills I said something like, "William Carey where?" He pointed us inside the station area and we saw that there was a plaque there dedicated to him. Pretty cool. But I wanted to see more than that so I was like, "William Carey where?" lol. He pointed us to some rickshaw wallahs and we took a bike rickshaw to the college that he founded. They told us at the gate that the college is not in session right now so we might not be able to see the museum. Luckily, those people were very nice and let us go see the little one room (it had A/C) museum. I touched the desk that William Carey used when he was here. Our tour guide told me that he took it here from England and assembled it. She said that it hasn't been re-painted. And it was in great condition. So I learned that William Carey helped translate the Bible into 35 languages. What a balla'. After seeing all of the cool William Carey stuff, we came back to Kolkata and I am about to arrange for our trip to the taj mahal during the last few days.

I figure we'll do some mother teresa's again tomorrow.

I shared with a guy in an auto rickshaw last night. He gave me the same sort of response that I would usually get on USM's campus during last school year. That would be one of sorta indifference. He didn't seem to care. I don't know what is happening in his heart though.

I can't wait to hang out with my Naga friends some more tonight. Woowoo!

momma t's

Ok, so we are here. We= me and Josh by the way. We are staying alone in a place that is really good I think. It is near where I stayed last time that I was here. We will eat dinner every night with my friends from Nagaland that work with the church here (Charis Fellowship). Nagaland people are the most generous people ever. Or maybe just these few that I know.

It has been incredibly sweet to see these old friends I used to live and go to church with. I look forward to spending lots of time with them over the next 2 weeks. Also, It is confirmed for us to go see my compassion kid, so that is exciting.

We did our first day volunteering at Mother Theresa's home of the dying today. I love that place. I almost forgot how awesome it is. It was cool to see some of the people there too. I was actually remembered by a worker! I only recognized a handful of patients. I guess they only let a few stay there long term. Everybody else comes and goes. Either they get better and leave or they stay there and die. I saw a guy today who had a hole in his chest that was somehow connected to his lung. He could breathe out of chest or something. Pretty crazy.

Josh is doing great. He is doing a lot better than I would have been.

I tried to show a couple of guys John 3:16 in my Bengali bible. It was kinda funny because a lot of these guys its like impossible to communicate with so I can't really tell if they have a clue what I'm trying to get across. One guy told me he only reads Hindi so Imma bring a Hindi bible next time. Woowoo.

Pray for us. That we don't waste any of the time we have here.

packing and stuff

I'm packing right now. I just realized I'm a bit nervous. I've never felt nervous about a trip like this before. I think it's because I've never actually tried to do it without an organization doing all the logistics for me. I hope we make the most of every opportunity. I'll try to update a good bit.