Diarrhea, Zulma, Mice, and Jesus

People here talk about diarrhea as if they were talking about a common cold.
And toilet paper is like GOLD. We are currently ripping off pieces of a napkin to suffice. BUT WHO KNOWS what we'll do when that runs out.....!!!!! haha

Zulma Fernandez CANNOT come to India because every step here is steep and made of concrete. I think of her everytime I walk a flight of stairs, which is often.

Today we were sitting with our friend Naomi while she was eating lunch in the house when she picked something up from her plate and started laughing. It was a mouse. A cooked mouse. A spicy cooked mouse. The tail was a dead give away. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be there...unless that's the type of meat we've been eating all along.
Later I saw a live mouse running through the house. Of course no one saw it but me. It was probably looking for its friend.

The last two days we've gone to a "cell group". Its basically like a home group branched off from the church. People gather outside of church at different houses once a week for fellowship and bible study. There are many many cell groups. The two we attended so far were so different from each other. Yesturday the group was very large. There were people of all ages, including a lot of kids. And it was held in a tiny room. It was so hot. And when we stood to sing a few worship songs, it was like standing in a mob. But the people were so genuine. They don't care how uncomfortable it is.. they do it every week. They are all about Jesus. No fluff to get more people to come. They gather, they pray, they worship, they study, they pray, and they pray and thats it.
The cell group we attended today was in a bigger, wealthier lady's house. There were about 15 women.. and a few infants. So the mood was a little different. The women sang loud and passionately. We spoke to them about what God has been showing us lately...about TRUST. And then we prayed... a lot. That's one thing I want to change by the time I get back..the way I pray. Everytime people here pray, they are passionate and strong and full of faith...they know the power of prayer...and they act like it. The first woman to throw out a prayer request asked that we pray for her relatives living in another part of India..because they were being persecuted for being Christians....THEY WERE GETTING THEIR LEGS AND ARMS CUT OFF AND THEN BEING HUNG ON TREES...some were still alive after going through it! When I was asked to pray for them I didn't even know how! Please ask God to send mighty mighty angels to bind the evil things going on over here...and remember martyrdom is not something of the past! It is happening all over the world. And think, Christianity isn't even illegal here and people are getting killed for it still.
The real praise report here is the impact of the cell groups. Pastor Daniel was telling us that because of them, the name of Jesus is being spread like wild fire. The groups are growing every week! For some people, its the only way they are hearing the Word because the church is too far..or else their parent of spouse won't allow them to go to a "church". Our friend Ashan leads four a week!

Miss you!
Kate

Bollywood...for kids!!!

Find one of these things in a downtown park in India and for just a few rupees your kids can be entertained for...minutes!! Psh. Who needs technology?

I am the Tomb Raider

One of the funky things we ate :) Apparently its "milk product". I think its cheese in custard or something..i don't know. And when we asked exactly what was in it, nobody esle knew either. But it was good. Ignorance is bliss.

The crowds of people outside Jamma mosque.

Jamma Mosque. Amazing.

Exploring ancient ruins at Jodi Gardens.

Inside. It was dark.

There's a dead guy in there somewhere.

But wait..there's MORE

India culture is so different then ours in the US. For one, people here urinate where ever they feel led to do so. Spitting, littering, all completely acceptable. This can only garuntee one thing, that I will be returning to America a slob. Also, the men here and their touchyness is too much. They are all over each other and it isn't seen as homosexual AT ALL. Men and women on the other hand rarely show affection in public, if ever. AND, the men here dress as if they popped right out of the american 70's; with the tight dress pants, button down collared shirts, pointy boots, and chain necklaces. Its pretty much Rent and West Side Story meets the Jungle Book - thats the best picture i can paint....or just watch Slumdog Millionaire.

Today we did lots of fun things after church. I love public transportation in India. Our friend Babu took us to Old Delhi to see Red Fort and Jamma Mosque, then to Con market and Jodi Gardens and India Habitat Center. The mosque was the most interesting part of the trip. Instead of paying 8 dollars to carry our camera's inside, we left them with Babu at the gate. Tori and I were a little confused when these men forced us to strap into these bright, wallpaper print, bathrobe/smock things...we looked rediculous. So in we ventured. People laughed at us. We walked around, but we didn't know what we were looking at or what people were saying because Babu couldn't come with us. We went in where the people were praying...then got kicked out by a man yelling at us in Hindi. So we strolled to another side of the temple, only to get yelled at by another man in Hindi..who then told us to get out of the mosque completely. It was a fun 5 minutes. It was prayer time though..and women can't be in the temple. As soon as we get outside a crowd swarms us like we really are Kate Winslet and Queen Victoria (our pet names from our Indian friends). People are videoing us and yelling at us and we have no idea whats going on...it was hilarious. Then people started attacking me because my shoulder was showing...during prayer. I'm sorry I have no more clothes and I was forced to wear tangtops and a shawl today people! I was really ruining things at the mosque today...or was I just making things interesting? haha kidding. The reason we went to the mosque is because Babu wanted us to see the dedication these people have to their religion.. how bound they are. These people spend hours on their knees in prayer everyday...it makes me think what Christianity in the US would be like and how it would grow if more people accepted the name of Jesus with that kind of dedication and loyalty...
Jodi Gardens was really really cool...i'll try and put up some pictures from that. Lodi was a king who died long long ago...the garden was built around his tomb. Pretty cool, huh? There's ancient temples and its the most beautiful part of India I've personally seen so far. I was expecting mummy's to attack me a few times.

ALSO, we got a domino's pizza on the way to Old Delhi today....and it was amazing. The people in India aren't crazy about pizza at all...there'll be about a kazillion people in KFC, and right next door at Pizza Hut there will be zero.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers. We still have yet to get sick, but we ate a lot of funky things today! Pray that God continues His work in me..I want to love people the way He does. I just finished reading this book about children written by Wes Stafford, the president of Compassion International.. and it really gave me a new picture of how important children are in heavenly perspective. I have a whole new ambition to affect every child I meet. Also to watch them and see how God uses THEM. I don't want the kids I'm teaching to be the same when I leave. I want them to have dreams and goals and hope..these are things that most kids in extreme poverty never have!

Love and missing home already :)
-Kate

My GREAT Communication Skills

Some pictures from this weekend :)

OKAY!!! So, the weekend was great. Friday night we saw our first bollywood movie. It was terribly funny and completely in Hindi which I think added to the humor. Also, there are random music and dance numbers about every ten minutes...YES... We took some of the kids from the childrens home to the park on Saturday and played allllllll day. We also did our laundry...which was interesting considering we did it in buckets in the bathroom. Church was amazing...healings like I've never seen. We are getting more familiar with the people in the congregation. Last night we went to a wedding...let me tell you I will go to one every night if I can! So much fun! We ate and danced. Man, these people love, I mean LOVE, to dance. When they busted out the reggaeton and 50 cent we HAD to join. HAHA. It was..intense! And so fun. If we had to try to speak to any of the people we were dancing with we wouldn't have been able to understand each other...but that isn't necessary when everyone is moving to the same beat and laughing and clapping and jumping. It was good because Daniel told us that some of the kids we were dancing with used to go to church but they had stopped coming a little while ago.. so he thinks that since we made a connection with them, they'll want to come back. We met a lot of people, and we were invited to go to another wedding tomorrow night..i guess the two white girls were a hit haha. We took pictures with the bride and groom and I bet they were so confused because they didn't even know us! And of course, we did stand out just a little, so the photographer and camera man got a ton of footage of us.. the newlyweds are going to be looking back through their album wondering who the heck these two chicks were..priceless.

Here's some pictures of the school we taught at today.. we are pretty familiar with the kids there now and we adore them. There are two rooms in the school.. one is smaller and the lights don't work, but usually the teacher takes the little kids in that room and lets them play while we work in the first room, which has light, with the older kids so they can write. But, since there are so many little kids in comparison to older ones, we let them have the bigger room today are we took the dark one. I didn't realize just how dark it was til we were sitting in the pitch black with 8 kids waiting for us to teach them. We had a little candle..which was useless. Eventually it burned so low that it caught the shelf on fire. Luckily Tori saved our lives by blowing it out. Later a little mouse came to hang out. It liked running around the room. I think I'll name it Gus Gus. Its a really good thing that Tori and I are animal lovers... :)

Also notice the creepiest back pack in the world.

Love!

-Kate

This is the school we taught at today. It was pretty deep in the slums, reminding us a lot of the ones in Africa. The kids we worked with didn't seem to know as much as the kids in the other school did, even though some of them were a lot older. I couldn't help but think that this is the most these kids will ever get educated. The students here usually only stay for a couple years because the teachers encourage them to go to a real public school... thing is the public schools are farther than walking distance away and the kids can't afford to take 2 buses to school everyday. So basically this is it. The Hindi community doesn't even mind that we are Christians - for one, we are the only school in the area, and two, the kids get to eat a meal of bread and vegetables... which is more than they will get at home. But most important, they are getting the Bread of Life, the Word of God. And the rest of the community will hear the name of Jesus through them. Jai mashi ki!

-Kate

Indian children are probably the cutest things God decided to put on this earth. I walked into the primary school Tori and I will be working at 3 days a week and pretty much melted into a puddle of mush..well thats what my heart did anyways. The school is technically a house the church is renting out, there are people living in the three other rooms on the floor. There are about 40 kids that attend ranging from 3 to 11. Tori and I are mostly working with the older kids in the class with their english and math. It is sooo hard to communicate. Yesturday we went in and spent a good 45 minutes being frustrated with the kids as we sat on the floor and tried to tell them something and they tried to tell us something and all of us trying to make each other understand when we only know 2 phrases in hindi and they only know 2 in english. As soon as we got back to our rooms we spent hours researching and learning and memorize all of the Hindi phrases and words we could find on the internet. HINDI IS SO DIFFICULT. Thankfully our work paid off because today was sooo much better. Today we helped them with their spelling and homework, while the only teacher, Ashan, took the really little kids in another room so she could focus on teaching them their abc's. School ends at 1 and parents were probably confused when they found their kids playing duck duck goose with two american girls... :) We won't be back at that school until Friday. The next two days we are going to be at a different school.

One of the pastor's kids called Vikee picked us up today...craziest driver ever. He needs to come to america and be in one of the fast and furious movies. When we got home I flew out of the car and yelled "Oh my gosh I'm alive!" I would have kissed the ground but ew no.

The kids from the orphanage are still staying with us...they are getting to feel what its like to have a home, with a mom and dad...I wonder how it will affect them when they have to go back.

We are slowly being introduced to Indian food.. so far so good!

Its the afternoon here, which has become nap time for us. Everyone is at work by the time we come home from the school, so we have this little time to ourselves. Later, much later, we will have dinner. Its common here to eat around 10 at night. Even the markets are all booming well after 11...its strange to my old american granny 10 o'clock bedtime :)

We found out that the little brown man is actually a security gaurd that goes around the general area. He whistles and bangs his sticks to let potential theives and murderers know that he is present..or something like that. I'm pretty sure the entire town knows he's present, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Jai mashi ki (sounds like jay-ma-siki) means Praise God, and all the hindi-christians say it all the time. So, jai mashi ki! :)
Kate

I always love Sunday mornings

There is a little brown man that lives outside our window that blows his whistle and hits two large sticks together from sundown to sunup... atleast thats the image I have in my brain of him. Seriously, if our window wasn't grated, Tori and I would have thrown everything in our suitcase down there by now, trying to hit him and make it stop. Sometimes he'll stop for a few minutes and we will look at each other, hoping...but then he'll start up again and we'll both groan as loud as we can at the same time.
IN OTHER NEWS... the past two days have been great. Yesturday our friend Attu took us on a real tour of the city. We went to Delhi Haat, which is a market that has booths and food from almost every state in India. So we got to see the different tribes and cultures found in this huge country. It was a very touristy area so it was the first place where Tori and I didn't stand out so much. We also saw parliament and the presidents house and India gate. India gate is a huge memorial for the fallen soldiers in ww2. It was all very impressive. Everywhere people are begging or selling. People will come right up to your face and not leave you alone.
And I still cannot describe to you how crazy the traffic is. Oh, there are lines and lanes, but they are invisible to everyone. And when you are trying to travel somewhere it takes 1000 times longer to get there than it would in the US. And there aren't just cars on the road, there are school kids walking, and bicycles, and carts, and bicycles pulling carts, and monkeys, and dogs, and cows, and beggers, and motorcycles, and 5 people and a baby squeezed on a motorcycle, and trucks... its pure chaos. I have yet to see one accident though, maybe its because even though your never more than centimeters from someone else, you are never traveling more than 5 miles and hour. Usually you are sitting in traffic, and then the driver slams on the gas, then harder on the break... haha it makes me carsick just thinking about it! Also, anyone and everyone is laying on their horn for any and every reason. You could pretty much stand outside your car and scream at the top of your lungs and still no one would even turn to look at you because the traffic musical going on around you is that loud... in other words its fun.
We had church this morning and it was awesome. Tori and I dressed in our Indian clothes. We were told we looked like true Indians, dressed in white skin. A visiting preacher came to speak and he talked about the glory of God and Ephesians 1:16-19. It was hard to get past the language barrier, even with the person next to us trying to translate in our ear. The congregation is so loving though, and pretty big. I loved seeing everyone with their bibles circling and writing and digging into the Word. Its so funny that even on the otherside of the world, I have so much in common with these people. Our love for Jesus is the same, and that similarity is enough for them to consider Tori and I family. We are getting to know the kids a lot better too. Pastor Daniel has two adopted children that are 2 and 6. And also his sister in law, Isolet, (she is staying the same apartment as us) has 2 young children. We all went to lunch after service, it kinda reminded me of being back home, with the little ones driving us crazy, and the adults trying to have normal conversations. Isolet's daughter is 2 and she reminds me so much of Renee. I love it!
I still have yet to eat a real Indian dinner.. that might be a good thing I'm not sure haha. Everything is spicy here.. even if you order is without spice, even if it isn't "Indian" food. Last night we had KFC, which was still spicy. And we've eaten Chinese food a few times already, still spicy. I was really surprised to see the influence the Chinese culture has here. Everyone loves Chinese food. And there are a lot of people from places like Napal and Mongolia living here. I guess that Asian flare is worldwide! :)
Tonight we are going to see Slumdog Millionaire at a movie theatre with the family...so excited.
While you guys should just be waking up.. I've already had a full day! Tomorrow we will hopefully be starting work at the schools.
Love love love,
Kate

MADE IT!!

fyi I'm alive! The plane ride was a quick 14 hours. We arrived Thursday night and the first thing Tori and I did was make mac and cheese we brought with us (thanks mom!)...India is 10.5 hours ahead of Florida! Our little apartment is really nice. Tori and I share it with other family members that are visiting the pastor who is taking care of us. Most people in America have never seen anything like it though. The toilet is a hole in the floor.. haha. And though its cold showers, we have a microwave to heat up the water, which we then pour in a bucket, which we then pour on ourselves.
New Delhi is a huge city. There are people everywhere. And it is loud. Even living on the 5th floor, we can hear a million things at all hours. And it is dusty. Even the trees look dirty. But it is still surprisingly beautiful. I havn't seen any elephants yet, but I think I heard one last night.
Yesterday we saw a lot of the city. We travelled around with Eunice, the pastor's wife, who is amazing. I think we are going to be spending a lot of time with her while we are here, which I don't mind at all! After we got home yesterday, Tori and I were so tired that we walked into our room and completely passed out. I woke up this morning still in my shoes and everything. We were supposed meet up with friends of the family for our first Indian meal later that night, but I guessed we missed everything.. haha. Today is Saturday, which is fun because the kids don't have school. So we will hang out with them the majority of the day. All the kids from the orphanage are staying with us and Pastor Daniel, and some other friends for now because the police ran everyone out a few days ago. But hopefully this week the kids can move back in. Daniel told us today that we will be working at 4 slum schools and the orphange during the week. Can't wait to get started. Just wanted to give a little update.. hope everyone is dong well back home!
Learned our first Hindi word... tike means "that's good" haha
Love love love,
Kate