Here's the video I made from Holi!

Okay Go!

"Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words" -St. Francis of Assisi

Because the Hindi and Muslim faiths are so rooted and firm in thier foundation with the people here in India...the way they come to know Jesus is by seeing the way Christians live. God is love. So if they see love in us, they see God. Its a big deal to accept Jesus here. You will probably be kicked out of your own family if you do. I think this is why the people who do decide to follow after God are so on fire...it was never a light decision in their lives. It really humbles me...seeing Christians here so pure in heart and honest and loyal...I want that.

Since everyone has holiday from school (including us!) we have been spending allllll day in the children's home with the kids. We've started working with them everyday. At 3pm we always teach a lesson...because these kids want to learn! For 2 days we made bracelets; they got so good at it that they used all the string I brought from home! Last Wednesday we had drawing lessons, Thursday we made banana icecream, and then Friday we HAD to have an icecream party after their work had freezed overnight. Yesterday we made brownies and today we taught about preventing foodborn illnesses...you know. Its been really fun getting to know them. Everymorning they come in our rooms about a thousand times so they are there when we wake up. The littlest girl, Mary, usually just ends up crawling in bed with me.
Because we are spending so much time with them we are finding out how little they really have. We came home the other night and Pramod, the oldest boy (13), came to unlock the door for us since everyone was sleeping...in his jeans and long sleeve shirt. Its like 90 degrees outside, first of all. As I was asking him where his pajamas were I realized that I've never seen any of the children wearing pajamas. He answered by saying how he only has one pair of pants now because he gave one pair to one of the other kids...My little foster sisters at home get a bath, and lotion, and a clean pair of pajamas EVERY night...These kids have probably never had those three things together...ever. Its funny what we take for granted. And I would never have noticed if I didn't live here in the home. I don't even think the children here notice, or care, because they really are such a joy to be around.

Sunday we went to a leper colony. I had been wanting to go since we got here. If you have never seen people living with that disease it will take your breath away the first time you see it. There are many forms of leperousy, I think we saw them all. Most people are just left with nubs instead of fingers and toes. One of the men we met, his wife was in the hospital getting something amputated. Everyone understands that if one of them has to go to the hospital, they will be coming back with one less limb. Sometimes the leperousy manifested itself in people's eyes so that they were very large and red and sunk in. Sometimes it attacks the outer skin, making people look like burn victims. And sometimes it just causes the skin to become extremely dry and shrivel up. The hardest part about being there was seeing that they were suffering with this disease living in a slum. Every house was dirty and hot. Some people didn't even have fans. I wanted to stay there all day and put lotion on people. Their skin was so dry! I wanted to bathe them and clean their houses...There were a lot of kids in the colony. Once someone is declared leperous, it doesn't matter what caste they are in, or how wealthy they are, their entire family is outcast. There are 36 leper colonies in New Delhi...so many people. Tori, Eunice (Pastor Danny's wife), and I spent all day visiting and praying in every house. Even if they weren't Christian, people willingly kneeled down as we laid hands on them asking Jesus for salvation and prayer..

Missing home but I have new strength to finish out the next 40 days thanks to your prayers and exhortations and encouragement!!!!
Love, love, love!!!
Kate

He is Always Faithful...Always.

So we moved into the orphanage 2 days ago! It was kind of unexpected but because of circumstances we had to immeadiately. The room that we are staying in didn't have glass in the windows the first night because the floor we are staying on was just constructed. The miracle there is that we didn't get one mosquito bite :) But they put some in yesturday. We have to be quite too because there are people staying in the room next to ours and the walls dont reach to the ceiling yet...since they go to bed at like 8:30 we go and sit on the roof at night so we can talk and listen to music and workout and scream at the top of our lungs if we wanted.
The huge plus side is that we really adore the kids here...I mean its extreme how much we love them. Everynight from 7-8 they have "devotions". They do it all by themselves. The oldest girl, Brianca (12), leads it. The kids pray. Sing. Recite verses they've memorized. Give testimonies. And then pray again. They do church right there everynight! I'm pretty that God had both ears and eyes towards them at that moment. And you know these little ones are commanding the mightiest angels in heaven. Its inspiring.
Today when we were walking back to the children's home from Pastor Danny's house, Tori and I started talking about how much we miss home. We were depressing ourselves so much that we got lost! So lost. Then we basically stumbled across a litter of 6 puppies. haha I think God was just reminding us that He's here and He hears us. Its funny because everytime we see puppies while we're driving somewhere in the car we scream. Its become this big joke to the people here that we're obsessed. Our friend Vicky even got us a poster he found with 3 little puppies on it. Anyways we had to take at least 2 with us! Eventually we found our way back. Later someone who knows where they're going went with us all around town till we found puppy formula. You can probably guess that they are pretty dang cute. We named them Abu, after the monkey in the movie Aladdin, and Benaiah, after one of the mighty men in 2 Samuel 23 :)
Please continue to pray for us! Its hard being away from home this long! I am resting on Philippians 1:6 and am excited for whats going to be result of the next 6 weeks!
Love!!!!!!
Kate

Holi Guacamole Day

Probably the greatest holiday ever...besides Thanksgiving. Today was the Festival of Colors. No school, no work. Its traditionally a Hindu celebration of the burning of Holika and the coming of spring (its a long story, but you can google it :)), and its become more of a national holiday for India. Basically, you put some paint in your hand... sneak up behind someone... then smush it in their face. Then try the same approach with a bucket of water. Needless to say its chaotic and hilarious at the same time. And everyone in the country of India plays. If you don't want to get wet or colorful (the color takes days to wash off of your skin) then you lock your doors and stay inside. Tori and I woke up this morning to an ambush by the neighbors. People throw paint at cars from the tops of buildings... old ladies dump water on your head... everyone laughs at how funny everyone else looks...it was intense.

I miss the negritas!!!

"Truely I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you." Mark 11:23-24

Vicky shared this verse with me and it basically sums up the faith of the Christians I've met here. It reminds me of Elijah and Elisha who's amazingness I recently discovered in 2 Kings. Read it!

Less than 2 months to go! Today was such a long day but church was great. We sang and danced during worship. Babies were crying more than usual during the teaching but nobody cared because we were so happy that Pastor Danny was back. People don't get bothered by that kind of stuff here. Babies and small children just end up getting passed around from person to person during service. We are getting familiar with everyone in the congregation now and since we are picking up some Hindi being social isn't so awkward anymore. haha.

I found out today that the church has 86 cell groups with a total of 1200 adults and 1300 children! ..At the same time there are 3.2 million people in this city.

Caanaa achaatha means the food is tasty... a sentense we will be repeating to a lot of people this week as we get invited to more and more houses for dinner. The family we've been staying with hasn't been letting us do that because they know that the food will be too spicy for us... but i guess they think we're ready for it... hopefully we've picked up enough tricks after a month to eat a spicy meal without running away to stick our burning faces in the sink.

:) Kate

Because I know you are wondering what we do in our spare time...

-Find things to add to the tops of our rock hard mattresses


-Take pictures of mannequins that look like Nick Beach


-Watch cows relieve themselves in the middle of the street.


-Take pictures of things that don't make sense in English.

-Make fun of how small Attu looks when he drives

-Listen to Neha talk about everything ever

-Eat penutbutter by the handful

-Explore the roof at night

-Try to recreate scenes from Slumdog Millionaire

-PET ELEPHANTS. Everyone...look at me petting the elephant!!!

-Ride elephants

-Try and figure out places to hang our clothes after we wash them. It probably won't surprise you that our fan stopped working after this night.

-Find any excuse to be near this baby

-Sunbathe on the roof

-Complete life

-Watch and join random wedding processions that occur outside our apartment

-Listen to classical Indian music

-Play A LOT of "Snake" on the cell phone.

-Go for a nice rides in the car...with 8 other people

-Climb things

-Prevent malaria

-Spy on our neighbors