Posting again!

Appararantly the Indian government 'accidentally' blocked a number of blogs including www.blogspot.com. They have removed the ban so now we are free to post again! There are many more pictures and posts comming, but for lack of time I can't put them up now. I miss you all so much!

Here is an article on it:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/20/asia/web.0720blogs.php

Indestructible Joy

More than all of the different areas, the exotic buildings and ways of life, it has been the people of this country that have touched me the most.

The solid lives of so many who live in a place with so much chaos, beauty, and of course suffering. So much does not make sense, and there is generally a hardness or a distance from this in many. Perhaps it is only my American eyes that see this.

The blessed of course have their smiles, but the stricken and the poor seem to have forgotten how. Children playing in the best of homes or the slums see little difference, but it does not stay that way forever.

Yet their are some who have undergone immense pain and sorrow in their life, but they carry on dancing and singing.

Husbands bereaved, children lost, diseases dealt, property stolen, cheated, and so much have made their mark. But the mark is gone in some of these people.

I ask,(knowing the answer) what, or who enables these people to dance with exceeding joy upon the dangerous and devastating hand of a fallen world? From what power come their smiles? How can old women have a joy that is so child-like and innocent even though they have nothing left?

And O what comfort and relief they give to those who have undergone the same sufferings! I tell you this, those who harden themselves in the face of the dirt and mud of life, they will only be able to share in the quiet silence and distance from the flux of the few years each has to live.

I have known this before I came to India, now far clearer. It is only love that will
heal these broken lands and nations. A giving hand with a turned face is a cold shoulder to the poor, who will go and dwell with them? Who will serve them not from a distance, but next to their hearts? Him who dwelt with Tax Collectors only. Not us!

I am still far and cold, but I am getting closer. My vision of these people is still like yours, images, names, faces that are so far away and do not touch us. I am here though, and the joyful onces, those dancing children, some even with gray hair--these are shaking things loose.

It is only the indestructible joy that awaits those who would let go, lose, dive into this fallen abyss that mankind has made for itself.

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable...Other than heaven, the only place where one's heart is completely safe from the dangers of love is hell." - C.S. Lewis

Three Days and a Day in Pune

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	The City of Pune, flourishing market for western companies, much more of a free market than other areas.
	The Naomi fellowship, these women are full of the joy of the Lord, though they have been through so much.
	They all call him "The father of our nation", and rightly so, few have loved this country more.
	A palace where Ghandi was kept under house arrest, and where is wife and secretary died.
	The less wealthy streets of Pune.
	This big temple in Pune was preceded by many shops selling images and articles to offer to the gods here. It was quite uncanny.
	Outside the temple area was a river where many bathed and did their laundry.
	The homes are real, the people are real, and the mud is real. The slums in Pune are no joke, people live their lives here.
	Pune is filled with malls and high-class stores in India's growing market economy.
	The youth in Pune worship the God of the whole earth.
	A couple of shady characters.
	This couple administrates the YMCA in Pune. Their love for people is evident, and they have done much to bring the YMCA to take poor churches under its wing and give them a place to worship on Sundays.
	The youth group of St. Paul's church, Pune. They have a heart for the Lord and a heart for the poor.
	The David family.
	They live in India, but their lives are not too much different from us, as Pune is a very Western area.

Images of Delhi

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	Anthony, Seebu, and myself in one of the auto-rickshaws. These things are fun to ride. It is a combination between a golf-cart and a taxi, only it has three wheels.
	The Sikh temple near Connaught Place in New Delhi.
	The Birla Mandir, a large Hindu temple constructed in the twentieth century. Much marble artwork is found inside explaining different facets of the Hindu faith. There is Hindi and English writing, with heavy tourist trafficking here, it seems to be less traditonal.
	The Indian Parliment bulding. This was as close as we could get. Behind the pleasant looking gate and wall is a nice electric fence.
	India puts the "hill" back in "capital hill", the architecture and road structure of the capital in New Delhi is amazing. The north block and south block on either side of the General Secretariet are completely symetrical.
	Everything costs money in Delhi. Even the left turns are not free.
	The Hanuman temple in Delhi, on the day of Hanuman (tuesday). The temple was very crowded, filled with incense and all manners of things. The picture of the man on the sign in the upper-right corner...that man is a god to Hindus.
	A brahmin priest sits outside the temple of Shiva, down the street from Hanuman's temple.
	A side-street in New Delhi. It looks rough, and it is. People live and work here everyday however.
	In the foreground is a Jain temple. Next to the temple is a bird hospital that takes care of birds, and has very graphic pictures of karma experienced by those who would harm animals inside. Looming behind it are two Hindu temples.
	Inside the Jamma Manjid, Muslim worshippers carry out prayer outside of their normal five-prayer routine.
	The Jamma Manjid in all its glory. Even the birds like it.
	This is a glimpse at what nearly all of Delhi looks like from up high. The picture is taken from one of the minarets in the Jamma Manjid.
	Yes, this picture was taken within the borders of India, but not on Indian soil. A friend of Shiela's, married to an American man invited us to a 4th of July celebration inside the American Embassy. This man is the American ambassador to India, soon to be the Secretary of Treasury for the United States. The little girl is her daughter, Safia, who reminds me of my sister Emily.
	A tug-a-war with eight U.S. Marines. Eight on eight. We lost. (I would be worried if we won.)
	Brajen and Seebu enjoying some ice-cream. A treat everywhere.

Some Pictures

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	Our lovely half-hour in Shanghai China. It looks like America except for the UPS workers are Chinese as are the letters above them! Okay, so we only saw the airport...
	The city of Gurgaon, like Delhi is very much modernizedand has a great deal of malls similar to those in the west.
	A snapshot of the streets of Gurgaon.
	Hanuman, the monkey god...
	A small boy sitting outside the Hanuman temple, with a brahmin priest in the background.
	The hill country of Bhimtal. The weather is considerably cooler, much like California. The hills are amazing!
	Roadside shops in Bhimtal. People are always selling things everywhere. Even children risk their lives running beside cars two-inches away from a steep ledge, just to sell pears. They do have much experience though.
	This dog was a friendly guest in the YMCA center in Bhimtal.
	This is a wild, un-zood monkey. These little guys carry diseases and are the equivalent of large rodents in India. Except on the day of Hanuman, the locals will feed them bananas.
	Everyone from the retreat.

A Taste of the East

Right now I am quite literally like the father of John the baptist before his birth when it comes to online communication. Do not be suprised at the sudden shift in focus. The reasons for this will come later.

...

India is an amazing place! After being here a week now, I am still six days behind in taking all of this in. I have learned more in this week than any other week or month in my entire life. There is so much, but my heart is so slow in taking it in... no it is caliced. I hope that it will open up to engulf the lives that these people live that are so different from my own. Here are some of my thoughts (the most precious I cannot share, later I will)

A tractor driving slowly down the street in the seering heat pulling a widetrailer carrying large sticks. On these sticks sit three boys, silently. Their days work is light, they pay too is even lighter. What do they talk about together, what do they think? Their lives are so simple!

The mountians, these foothills of the Himilayas are covered in green providing a relief to the furnace outside. Our pine trees are neatly stacked on our mountins, a uniform canvas. But here the hills are very steep and the trees on the tops of the mountains stretch so much higher and their trunks are exposed well above the hilltop. These are things I have only seen before in my dreams.

A people so different so exotic. Some speak sixteen languages, others usually three or four. Every 60 kilometers a new language and new region and new culture. The road system is the very embodyment of choas, yet it is more efficient than the streets of California. One god blends into the next, and the western gods too, the heralds of materialism, they too have entered the sythesis.

A small temple stands next to a large factory. In a village, the temple is the pinnacle. The huts and homes bow down. But in many places here, the greater diety, Progress has assumed a throne, raising the earth and calling many forth into the hectic lifestyle we know in the west. Others choose to sell watermelons in the shade by the street all day.

Again, I apologize for the obscurity, you will find out soon why. I miss everyone so much. I have so much to share. I hope all your lives are going well, and your summer is not fleeting into obscurity, but you are finding deep satisfaction in Living Water.

What Have I?

I am about to embark on the second scariest thing of my life...

Six days from now, I will be ****.

Now I ask this: what does a twenty-one year old male southern California philosophy major, trained in western thought and lifestyle, raised in suburbia and economic prosperity have to offer these women? I remind you again that I am a guy!

And these women, who are they? Many likely to be older than I, raised in India which defies description, land of 300 million gods, where the urban and the rural are in flux and poverty is rampant.

And what deep experience of life and suffering these women must have! How can my words speak to their soul, what can I say that will be of any service to them? I who am young and inexperienced, they who have much in experience in life and perseverance...what have I to offer? ... Nothing.

Yet ****, the missionary we have come to serve, has Anthony and I coming to speak of God to these women. It might be easy at this point to ask "what was she thinking!?"

But it is not us. The words we say, if not built upon the words of God which have sustained millions to this day, though they be stories of the ancient world. The story of His Son, who imparted peace, love, and reconciliation with God to this woeful world. The words of this God in flesh, Jesus Christ who offered Himself up for us all, these words, O these words can do something for anyone's soul!

Yet words from two-thousand years ago, and stories more ancient still...are they dead words? How can such words be useful to these women who live in the midst of a suffering nation in lives that are full of many things I have never known or imagined... I may speak them, but who am I to speak them? What weight will I have with them? ... None.

It must be the power of God. If my words, whatever they are based on, are to do anything for these people, there must be power. Words cannot bear the sorrows, the guilt, the grief that all of us have. There must be a person behind them, a presence.

But who, among all us humans could bear even one person's needs? Are we not all crying at the top of our souls to be know and to be loved, our thirsty souls...(or we stuff this longing with the amusements of this world) ... when we face ourselves at night... O how needy we are!

That Person, that sacred presence, God who has chosen to dwell in men and women must meet them through His words. ****

I long to see God move. I want to know what it means for Him to speak through me, to give me the words to say. I don't know where any of these women are at, and am the least qualified to speak to them. But God loves them so much!!! Giving His Son over to death on a cross is a proof of that love! I must give my tongue and words to God, and bow before Him who meets hearts and loves sinners for any good to come of this...