February 14, 2013

The adventures continue this week . . .

India seems to be throwing a lot more at me lately.  Last night, I was sitting in a room next to the one I’m staying in, talking with the principal from the girls' side about her experiences when she first started teaching at BTC.  It was a pretty funny conversation: she’s got lots of stories of the group of boys I’m really good friends with.  She was in the middle of talking to me about what it would mean for me to teach on a more permanent basis when she pointed at the floor behind me with an increasing look of concern.

When an Indian woman points at something with an increasing look of concern, that’s a very good indication that you are about to have a big problem.

I didn’t really want to look . . . but I felt compelled.  Sure enough, there was a big problem.  You know those foot-long centipedes you see in movies?  Like the ones that are in the ‘bug cave’ in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?  Yeah . . . they are actually that big in real life too.  I wish I didn’t know this, but unfortunately, I now know from experience.  This was that big, and that ugly. 

I was perfectly content to watch this thing just walk itself right out the door and go away because seriously, this thing was 5 inches longer than my shoe.  Our principal had other plans.   “I will kill!” she announced, and darted off into another room.  I just stared at this monstrous thing, walking across the floor in a wave motion at a leisurely pace, still trying to make myself believe that this wasn’t a movie prop.  It was so big that I wasn’t even freaked out by it anymore . . . I was seriously wondering if it was even real. 

Then it occurred to me: if this thing goes out the door, it can go to my room.  I jumped out of my chair, knocking it across the room.  This was suddenly an emergency situation.  Something had to be done thissecond.  But how do you kill a foot-long centipede with a body that’s as thick as a broom handle?  It could throw my shoe back at me.  I needed Mythbusters to come with C4, announcing that “Jamie want big boom.”  I needed an ACME anvil to fall out of the sky and flatten the thing like on the Wile E. Coyote cartoons.  I needed Steve Irwin to come back from the dead and yell, “Crikey, look at the size of that thing!”

I was watching it meander out the door in front of me with increasing panic when our principal reappeared with a 4 foot long bamboo stick.  She raised it over her head and pounded this thing.  She probably incapacitated it on the first shot, but she kept right on pounding it.  She pounded every inch of this centipede on steroids, smashing it flat.  My roommate came running out of her room to see what all the pounding was about and was greeted by a flattened monster centipede, complete with various scattered appendages.  Seriously, there were bits of this bug everywhere.  We found 2-inch long red legs of this thing everywhere the next morning.  Our principal used the stick to hit the flattened body of this thing over to the other end of the hall, scattering more bits of bug across the building.  She looked at me and said, “That was big like a train!”

Note to self . . . know where the nearest bamboo stick is at all times.  It’s more important than knowing where the fire extinguishers and emergency exits are here.

Earlier this week, I had taught a Bible study for the small boys and I ended up reading story books in English to them until it was time for them to go to dinner.  I ended up missing the dinner shift for the girls entirely, so I just ate with the boys.  I sat at a table with Inder (whom I unfortunately don’t see much because he has classes in town all afternoon) and Alok.  As I was finishing, our snake killing superhero came and found me sitting with them and pulled up a chair without a word.  I just kind of watched him for a second as he spaced out, quietly simmering. 

This was disconcerting: I hadn’t known it was possible for him to sit still.  If he had grown up in the US, he would have been a candidate for ADHD meds, starting in Kindergarten.  Something had made him really frustrated and from the look of his demeanor, he didn’t have a way to fix the problem.  I asked him, “What happened?”  He looked at me surprised and confused, like I had just read his mind.  That’s when I remembered that my ability to sense things on other people isn’t always a good thing . . . it can be intrusive.  He explained that he was mad about something that happened on the boys’ unit.  I didn’t ask questions, and I doubt that I could have gotten an answer I could fully understand.  Language barriers are such a pain.  I said “Ok’ with a shrug and went back to talking to Alok.  Our hero was still staring at me like ‘how did she just do that?’   Inder laughed at him and offered an explanation in Hindi.  I have this interesting ability to sense things on other people, like shifts in their demeanor and emotions.  It’s more than just watching their face . . . I can, to some extent, feel what they’re feeling.  I can usually differentiate between others and me without a problem.  Some people like Inder, Sunil, and my best friend Heather are a lot stronger than others.  I’ve been able to call Inder out on stuff several times before.

Out of all the boys here, Inder and Sunil are probably the ones that I have been able to be the closest to because we just somehow understand each other.  Sunil just has to look at me and he can read me like a book . . . and vice versa.  I can just shoot a look his way and he’ll catch it.  That’s both good and bad . . . I have never been able hide anything from him, and if I try he straight up asks me about it.   Inder and I are so much on the same wavelength that we often communicate without using words.  This was no exception.  I glanced over at him and he tipped his chin up at me, saying that it was ok now; he’d explained that I’m not crazy or psychic.  Our hero was still looking at me like he was wondering what other superpowers I had.  Alok was still talking about how he wanted a girlfriend.  Inder stealthily pantomimed sticking his spoon through his temple while he straightened his hair.  I cracked up across the table from him.  This is why I love these boys: they have allowed me to come into their world and participate.

Our hero ended up walking me back to the girls’ unit that night with some of the aunties because I got held up trying to get on Facebook on one of the guys' cell phones. I got to read the messages, but not send any.  Our hero spent the entire walk explaining how he was going to wrap up scorpions or snakes and give them to us for Valentine’s Day . . . and how he was going to get in big trouble with the principal from the guys' side for doing so.  He said, “You should not be doing this.  This is very dangerous, you know.  They are your sisters and this is very unkind.”  We all cracked up.  Our hero had his voice and inflection down exactly, and that's pretty much what he would say on the matter.  Thank you, but . . . maybe you should just stick to candy or something.

When I made it back to the unit, the girls were dancing in one of the common areas . . . without music.  I decided that I had to remedy this.  I ran upstairs and got my computer and speakers, then came running back in, blasting Bollywood music.  This got all the aunties and girls in the courtyard running in the room behind me, watching me attempt to dance to the music.  There was a lot of laughter at my attempt.  The girls taught me some moves, and I showed them The Twist and what Dubstep is.  I got out my video camera and tossed it to one of the aunties: I wanted to film this one for posterity.  Once again, I turned on Gangnam Style and filmed the reaction.  These girls were also experts at this dance, and had their own moves to go with it.

We were dancing for about 45 minutes when the power flickered off.  I thought that was rather strange.  If I’m understanding how the water system works around here (I may not have this all correct, but the effects are the same), they don’t use the regular electric power to run the rooftop tank filling system.  They use a generator.  As I understand it, our handyman hero turns off the main power just long enough to fire up the pump generator every night at 9, usually when he walks back from dinner.  If he doesn’t fire that generator up right then, it usually means that the rooftop water storage will run dry sometime around 9 the next morning . . . so I pay attention to if it kicks on or not.  If it hasn’t kicked in by around 10PM, I know that I need to fill every bucket and water bottle we own immediately so we have water to flush our toilet tomorrow.  I was wondering what in the world had held him up when it dawned on me: he had walked me back to the girls’ unit at 9 . . . and our handyman hero is usually walking around the courtyard, clanking his snake-killing stick on the cobblestones, running behind buildings and tinkering with pipes and water systems or something, killing all nasty bugs and fixing all maintenance problems on the unit after dinner.  That would mean that  . . .

He had still been on the girls unit. 

He had probably been somewhere on the unit all during my pathetic and hilarious attempt to do Bollywood dancing . . . for around 45 minutes.  I hadn’t thought of that.  He's a busy guy and I've never seen him just standing around, so he wouldn't be standing around for this either.  But here I was shaking my hips in an attempt to dance like Madhuri Dixit for a laugh and if he had seen that, he was probably laughing his head off at me.  He was not the intended audience.  No one was the intended audience. 

The morning after, he didn’t say anything about it when I saw him on the way to breakfast and told him about the ‘centipede incident’.   I thought I was in the clear.  I did the exact same thing with the girls the next night, only the party was bigger this time: more girls dancing, more aunties laughing at me. 

The next morning, I got up late (yeah, my fault) and I ended up eating with the guys.  I sat down at a table and Akram and our hero joined me.  Akram asked me if I had done any dancing with the girls like the time I did Gangnam Style with the boys.  Our hero cracked up and about spat out his chai.

Busted.

He knew it too.  He looked at me a little sheepishly, but I just laughed.  So he knows I am capable of dancing like an idiot.  I do plenty of idiotic things in a day.  The next night, we did almost the exact same thing . . . with even more girls this time.  I didn’t even check to see if he was out there.  The girls didn't care either.  I said something about him maybe being around and they basically said, "Yeah, we know.  So what?"  He really is like their brother.  He doesn't even register on their radar as being 'a guy', just 'family'.

For Valentine’s Day, we gave the girls' staff a pretty good bit of money and asked them to go shopping and get something nice for all the girls.  They did not disappoint.  They went out and bought nice semi-formal tops for the young girls, really nice clothing material for some of the ladies and some gorgeous saris for the aunties.  They also managed to find flower hair clips like the ones I have (that earned me my nickname) to give to the girls.  They know all the girls personally, so they know what style and colors they would like.  We spent a late night on the 13^th sorting out all of the clothes and labeling who would get what.   We got to pick which sari to give to each auntie and match the flower clips to the tops the girls would be getting.  It felt like Christmas.

We gave all the clothes to the girls the morning of the 14^th.  They were so excited!  They had done an awesome job picking out what they would like.  Some of the aunties actually cried when we gave them their saris.  The flower clips were a hit.  Some of these girls never step outside their building without it in their hair. 

Amazing what a little love can do.  It was no problem for us to give what we did . . . and these girls were really blessed by it.  I hope I can always do things like this for others.

Also on Valentine’s Day, I received the best Valentine’s Day gift I have ever gotten: Potato Chips.

I’ve gotten stuffed animals.  I’ve gotten jewelry.  Heck, I’ve even gotten my absolute all-time favorite chocolate you can only get on the west coast ordered and delivered for me on Valentine’s Day.  But this trumped them all.

The day before, I had been talking to some of my guys about how all I wanted was some dang potato chips.  I discovered recently that the reason why I’ve been craving salt so badly is not just because I eat it all the time at home: it’s because the kitchen, under orders, doesn’t use any in the food it makes due to some people with dietary restrictions.  I’m chugging water all day long and I’m really not getting any salt, so I’ve been craving potato chips and fries and cheese and Velveeta with fish sticks and Oh God I need to stop now.

Anyway . . . there were some guests that came to visit Ashagram recently, and the kitchen made them fries.  As in, potatoes cooked in a fryer and slathered with salt.  I was coveting those fries like you would not believe . . . and my guys were paying attention.  So, the next day when they went to town for classes, they spent some of their own money and got me 8 bags of potato chips.  It’s not like these boys have regular jobs or an allowance.  This is their own personal spending money they get from the things they grow, create or sell themselves.  When these boys handed me these chips, I about burst into tears. 

It wasn’t the fact that I now had potato chips . . . it was that these boys cared enough about me and what I like to buy them for me.

I felt like the most loved person on the planet.  Happy Valentine’s Day to me . . . my boys buy me potato chips!  I am LOVED.

Today, I realized something.  I don’t feel like I’m a mission trip.  I feel like I’ve always lived here.  I’ve settled into a pattern and standard of living that is different, but is very doable for me.  This life is suiting me very well: flying-ninja scorpions, broom-handle centipedes, intermittent electricity and all.  We’ll see if that changes when I run into a snake.

February 6, 2013

We make our plans, and it appears that both God and India laugh at them.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I had some plans I thought were pretty solid.  I was going to come here, get the testimonies of the boys, and put them together in a book.  I thought I had the necessary approvals from the right people and stuff.  However, this week the staff has asked me not to do this.  They have concerns about the fact that I’m a girl talking to the guys, and there are problems with even publishing the stories themselves.

They have instead asked me to teach the girls to write in English. 

This is a huge undertaking.  Most of them don’t speak English well.  They don’t use it around me.  I’m teaching this English class on grammar with a translator, and I just taught them what a conjunction is and how to make things past tense.  I have books, but I don’t have a curriculum for this.  I don’t have a way to call the US to get some help from my friends who are teachers.  I don’t even have access to the internet right now.  I didn’t prepare for this one.

But that’s what they need, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I don’t know how in the heck I’m going to do this.  Remember the movie Freedom Writers?  The movie is playing itself out here, in India: Sister Erin, teaching girls coming out of sex slavery to write their testimonies in English. 

Wait, stop . . . what?!

Good Lord . . . I just got goosebumps typing that.  That’s way better than my plans.  This is seriously good stuff here.

If I can pull this off . . . If I can help them make some progress in writing in the two months I’m here, Lord God Almighty, this could work.  Also, I may be useful in other ways.  There is a desire to have the girls express themselves more in art, music, and drama.  Um . . . hey, I can help with that too.

It’s not my plans, but Thank You Lord, this is bigger and better.  It will have many more lasting returns for these girls.  Heck, there might end up being a book that the girls wrote themselves: Setting Beautiful Free: Our Stories.

Whoa . . . hello, that’s so crazy it just might work.  And seriously, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.  This can totally happen.  Not in two months . . . but it could happen.  If God is with me, I can really do this.

Is this it?  Not the job, but the cause I have been waiting for since I graduated from college?

Keep praying guys, this is big.  Like, movie plotline big.  This can happen.

But right now, I somehow have to teach them what the heck the past participle is.

I have settled into life here pretty well.  My appetite is in a more usual place for me, but the aunties still insist that I’m not eating enough.  I have a feeling that they would be saying that no matter how much food I ate.  I have found the point where I’m comfortable and functioning well, so I’m sticking with it for my own self-preservation.  There are a few girls here that have taken it upon themselves (I would never ask them to do this) to come into our room and do whatever we need.  So far, they have helped us do our laundry (a huge help, you have no idea how infuriating it is to wring out and rinse a pair of jeans 6 times using a bucket, and somehow they still have soap in them) and they reorganize and clean our room.  The reorganizing thing is taking a little getting-used to.  I usually leave things within easy reach (often leading to a pile) but these girls have found places for everything.  However, I still can’t find my toenail clippers.  I’ve looked.  I have no idea where they put them. 

I’m actually spending quite a bit of time with the smaller boys, ages about 7 to probably 13 or so.  One night, I was in their house watching a Veggie Tales movie with them in the common room.  When the movie was over, the house leaders sent the boys to their bunks to get ready for dinner.  Akram was sitting on a couch across the room from me while the house leader had a chair in the other corner.  I picked up one of the dozen pillows they have in the room and pitched it Akram.  the house leader made a smart comment and I pitched another at him.  He took it and bopped the kid standing next to him in the chest as I took one upside the head from Akram.

I should have known what was going to happen.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what the end result of these actions would be until I was very much stuck in the middle of it.  Within 30 seconds, I had 24 boys running into the room, tossing pillows everywhere.  I was getting pummeled from all sides because I was still in the middle of the room.  I kept watching to see if the leaders would get angry with the pandemonium, but they were lobbing pillows past me at the guys coming into the building to see what in the world was going on.  There were no bystanders in this one.

Eventually, the leaders broke it up when they yelled for the boys to line up for dinner.  Akram and I started putting the pillows back in their cases.  He had a huge grin on his face.  I said, “Come on now, you guys have never done that before?”  “Not like that,” he said, “We usually stop them, not join them.”  I cracked up.  “You guys probably don’t start them either!”

The next night, I finished teaching a Bible study on Romans for the older guys and went next door to say hi to my little guys that had just gotten home from school a half an hour before.  The little guys leave at around 10:30 and get back at around 7.  When I walked in, the house leader was making a show out of wanting to do something important looking on the computer.  All the boys packed around him, asking him silly questions just because they wanted to be near him.  He acted like they were annoying him, but they all knew that they were welcome.  I pulled out my music player and went looking for something to distract them when I got another bright idea.  I asked the little guy standing next to me if he knew this song, turning on Gangnam Style.  He threw back his head and yelled, “OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE!”

Once again, I was right in the middle of it.  All the boys came running back into the room.  This time, I was ready with my video camera.  I then proceeded to get the funniest footage I have ever had the privilege of shooting.  All these boys not only knew the dance, but were experts at it.  They danced and flailed around the room, laughing at each other.  The house leaders stood by with huge grins on their faces, watching me laugh so hard I couldn’t hold the camera straight. The guys from outside came wandering in the front door, laughing at the chaos.  Kartik stood by the front door and gave me a look that said, “Causing trouble again?”

This is why I love being here.  I love teaching and helping the kids . . . and shaking things up a little too.

My Bible Study with the aunties is going really well too.  Yesterday, we were reading Romans 5 where it talks about God producing perseverance, character and hope in us.  I asked a question: when was a time when God strengthened you and gave you hope?

Sometimes you can forget where you are.  Sometimes, I am so at home here that I forget that I’m at a Teen Challenge facility.  Heck, sometimes I kind of forget that I’m in India.  I apparently was guilty of all of those at once, because somehow I had forgotten that this is Ashagram.  It’s a residential facility for people coming out of the red-light districts and drug addictions.  I guess I was expecting the answers I would usually get in the States when I asked this question: answers of “I prayed for my aunt and she got saved” or “I was feeling really bad about my life and God helped me through it.”  These are really awesome things, and they are important.

But this is not what I got.

Instead, I got: “I grew up really poor, living on the streets.  My family married me off young to an older man.  My husband used to do drugs and he would beat me and my son.  So, we ran away.  We met a man I thought would help us, but I was sold and made to do ‘the work’ (yes, they do mean that).  My son had to live there with me, and it was very bad.  Then, a staff member from BTC found us and brought me and my son here.  God gave us hope because he brought us out of a bad place.” 

That shut me up.  After hearing that, I was pretty much in tears.  How in the world can I live a life of more than enough in the US when things like this are going on?  I’m not even talking about feeling guilty . . . I’m talking about helping to make it stop. I can’t go back and step back into my old life, pretending that this isn’t going on, or that it’s happening far away to some people I’ll never know.  I know this is happening now, and to whom much is given, much is required.  I have a ridiculous, embarrassing amount of blessing.  I now know where that ‘much is required’ is supposed to go. 

Then, I asked her who her son is.

Her son is one of my little guys. 

He is one of the small boys dancing in the Gangnam Style clip I shot.  I played Go Fish with him yesterday afternoon.  He’s not like a compassion child I write letters to or something . . . I’m going to go play with him again in a few hours.

This is where this ministry makes the jump from ‘helping those poor and needy people over there’ to ‘going to hang out with my friends’.

I pray I get to stay on the ‘hanging out with my friends’ side.  I don’t want to see them as ‘people over there.’  I want to be here.  Right where they are.  Even if all I do is play Go Fish with them.  I’m not a ‘support sender’.  I’m the person you send . . . with overweight bags.

God, please let me be useful.  Somehow.  I don’t really care how.  I have had so much good in my life  . . . just let me do some good here.

Seriously, I can’t live the same life I had in the US anymore.  I’m feeling this on a very deep level.

I don’t know what to do about that yet.  But something’s going to have to change here.

This week, we were visited by the couple that head up the education department.  They are very much British . . . pretty much everything you can think of that would be “British”, they were.  They called called our particularly mangy and dubious dog Tiger a “detestable animal”.  Every morning at breakfast, it was “Good morning, Erin.  So nice to see you this morning, I trust you slept well?” They asked for chai without sugar and jam for their rolls. I thought about asking them if the rest of Doctor Who season 7 has started airing yet, but I figured that they might not be as obsessed with that show as I am.  They were very proper and scheduled.   And, they were amazingly good at up with great ideas for the education department.

Praise God, they showed up the same week they asked me to teach written English to Hindi-speaking girls.  I was feeling pretty adrift in attempting to figure out and then simplify the rules for when you need to use helper verbs.  They told me that there were English chapter books that the girls could be reading in the library on the boys’ side.  I would have never known they were there.  They also offered a lot of suggestions for teaching that seemed like should have been second nature for me . . . if I wasn’t so hard pressed to figure this one out with my own resources.  I now feel quite a bit more equipped for this and not so stretched thin.  I have a few more methods in my arsenal. 

Our hyper chai-chugging friend has been insisting for the last several days that we must not leave the dining hall without him after dinner when it’s dark.  I never really knew why this was . . . the path is usually lighted when he’s not fiddling with the power.  I never turn him down though; I figured there was some reason for his insistence.  Today, I saw what that reason is.

We were walking back from the dining hall at around 8:45 or so.  An auntie was walking a few feet in front of me.  I had my flashlight on, and thank God I did . . . because a red scorpion the size of my hand was on the path, and had somehow walked on right between the auntie and me.

I’m usually pretty cool with bugs . . . but this was like a Jurassic Park-sized scorpion of doom.

I didn’t freak out or anything, but I just stopped dead in my tracks.  I was just staring at the single biggest and most deadly bug I have ever seen, painfully aware that there was no glass between us.  Our snake killing superhero swooped in, took off his shoe and pounded the scorpion with it.  I was wondering if his shoe was big enough.  Apparently, it wasn’t because he spent the next few nerve-wracking minutes looking for the stinger.  He eventually found it in the top of his shoe.

Yeah . . . I never walk anywhere by myself at night anymore.  After that, he doesn’t let me anyway,

The staff on the girls' side have figured out that I like jewelry and Indian clothing.  They get jewelry and clothes at a wholesale price and sell them for a fair market price, with the money going to BTC.  These women are funneling me rings, necklaces, earrings and saris.  And believe me, they’re gorgeous.  I now have this black sari that is amazing . . . with jewelry to match.

I went to ‘vocational’ (where the girls sew and make jewelry) and asked for a few of the long shirt-things, called kurtas.  They took my measurements so these would be made to fit me exactly.  I’ve been getting them back this week, and they totally rock.  Between these and my MC Hammer non-lame pants, I’m totally set.  The girls also braid my hair and stick the flower pins I have in it.   They have given me a nickname: Fulmaya, meaning Flower Love.  I’ll take that.

I finally feel like I’ve hit my stride here.  I have a role that is helpful and needed.  I hang out with the girls and have a good time.  I have work to do, but not so much that I don’t have time to do actual ministry or do my own writing.  And bonus: they actually really like me here.  They want me around.

Shocker: I’m totally digging this place.

 . . . so much so that I've been telling the staff that if they needed me to stay on and teach English on a more permanent basis for a few years, that I am in a position in life where I could do that.

Yeah, that just happened.  Are you really all that surprised?

February 3, 2013

This week has had several more “If My Friends Could See Me Now . . .“ moments.

 . . . the first of which was my first attempt at cricket.

I was on the boys’ courtyard for their free time, goofing off and attempting to play racquetball with Akram with rackets that had holes large enough for the birdie to pass through untouched.  One of the younger Sunils (There’s three.  No, that’s not confusing or anything.  I’m pretty sure this is the middle one, who’s a teenager) came over to me and asked if I wanted to play cricket.  I laughed and was like, “Yeah, right” until Akram said I should give it a shot.  I was handed what appeared to be a flattened wooden club.  I was staring at it, wondering what the heck to swing the thing when I suddenly found a rubber ball flying at me.  I blindly swung the thing like a baseball bat and cracked the ball over the house on the other side, clear out of the compound.  There was a moment of silence when all the boys just stared at where the ball had gone, followed by hysterical laughter.

“Ok, so um . . . I guess I’m going to play cricket now?”

It took me a few more tries to realize that this was not actually a baseball bat, and I probably shouldn’t swing it like one.  The boys’ laughter was kind of a tip off.  Every time I took a swing, the middle Sunil about fell over he was laughing so hard.  But he wouldn’t tell me how to actually swing the thing.  I think he didn’t want to lose the entertainment.  I got a crash course on how to swing from one of the little guys.  You are supposed to tap the bat on the ground next to your right pinky toe (which explains why a lot of the boys have bandaged right pinky toes) before you swing. Then, you’re supposed to swing it almost low enough to take off your toes, with an upward follow-through.  It reminded me of a mix between a baseball and a golf swing.  It doesn’t matter if the ball is rolling on the ground when it gets to you, you have to try to hit it.  There doesn’t seem to be a concept of a wild pitch or a ‘ball’ in this sport.  If there is, these boys didn’t tell me so they could laugh at me trying to hit everything that came at me.  At one point, one of the boys got a whistle and pretended to be umpire, blowing the whistle twice and waving his arms at the imaginary opposing team whenever I would miss the ball.  This was unhelpful.

I’m sure this was a funny sight: me, standing there holding a cricket bat about as long as one of my legs, in my black cotton MC Hammer pants and a bright blue t-shirt.  I probably swung that bat 100 times.  Toward the end, I got fairly consistent in bouncing the ball off the roof of the house across from me, when the boys weren’t throwing the ball directly at my ankles.  My arms were pretty much useless for the next two days after that.

On Saturday, I had a chance to go to church in Mumbai.  I had been to this service before when I was here the last time.  These are some awesome services . . . it’s ground zero ministry.  We like to talk about ‘outside the doors of the church’ in the US like it’s a jungle out there or something.  Well, right outside the doors of this church is the largest red-light district in Asia.  This was the service that I had walked through the red-light district with 50 kids to get to the last time I was here.  This time, I would be taking the bus with the aunties.  I was told to be ready to leave at 12:30.  It occurred to me that the service happened near sunset, about 50 miles away. 

Question: Why do I need to leave 5 hours early for a church service 50 miles away?

Answer: Don’t ask stupid questions.

Ok, so first off, I would like to say that I was fortunate that I was going on a BTC bus, because at least I knew I was safe on the bus.  I was also glad that it wasn’t overcrowded.  Everyone had a seat.

But this was a 4 hour bus ride in India.

I had known that we had been pampered quite a bit the last time I was here, traveling around in enclosed jeeps with air-conditioning.  This was a whole new kind of adventure.  The smells alternated between spicy food to hot metal exhaust fumes to burning trash.  Within 10 minutes, my face had a clammy, coated feeling.  We were pretty high up on this bus, so I could see everyone staring back at me in my window seat. 

The BTC bus that has “Ruby Wedding” (that one has yet to be explained) printed on the side has been granted with the most ear-splitting, shrill horn in the entire city of Mumbai.  There are regular car horns that are incessant in this city (No, really, I do mean ‘not ever ceasing’), but then there’s this . . . an octave above that and three times as loud.  I do wish I was exaggerating.  I was sitting on the bus trying to come up with the right words to describe it, thinking that this description was an exaggeration then  . . . but then the driver would lay into it again and I would realize that yes, this is an accurate description.  This does, however, make it quite efficient at weaving in and out of Mumbai traffic.  I think people just wanted to get away from that sound as fast as possible.

I also noticed an interesting bit of communication between the driver and the co-driver.  The co-driver would have his arm out the left window (because the steering wheel is on the right side) and would periodically bang on the side of the bus twice.  The entire ride, I couldn’t figure out if he was acting as a turn signal and warning other drivers of our massive presence . . . or if he was signaling the driver that there was a car or motorcycle attempting to run between us and the car in the next lane over.  When the traffic got especially thick, the co-driver would actually leave the front compartment and go hang out the open bus door at the end of my seat.  I don’t know if this was so he could see the traffic better or if he wanted to stare down other drivers who tried to squeeze past us.  At any rate, he pounded on the side of the bus from outside the door.

The adventure was further compounded by a mysterious and surprisingly persistent beeping alarm sound I kept hearing from the front of the bus.  Michael had told me that this particular bus had broken down in Mumbai traffic a few days before I got there, causing everyone on it to have to catch those dubious black auto-rickshaw scooter-engine things.  I kept praying that this beeping was not the sound of the bus’ imminent demise . . . In Mumbai traffic . . . going uphill on a one-lane flyover onramp.  (I did figure out later when we were returning at night that the beeping sound is the bus’ indicator that the 4-way flashers are on.  And I thought that we were overheating or something every time we tried to pull up a hill . . . or pulled up to a toll booth . . . or sat in traffic.  It was beyond nerve-wracking, but that bus got enough prayer for a week in my bus ride.)

Oh, and Mumbai traffic . . . my memory had not exaggerated on that either.  In fact, it seemed worse than I remembered.  At least when I was in it the last time I was here, traffic felt like it was moving.  This . . . not so much.  Gridlock everywhere.  Lane lines, stoplights, and turning lanes optional.  Motorcycles seemed to defy the laws of physics, squeezing into spaces between cars that seemed smaller than their handlebars.  And it apparently doesn’t matter if you are moving or not, you can still use your horn.  As my friend put it, “In the US, the horn is only used if something is wrong.  In India, it is used to say ‘I am a vehicle and I am moving.  Or I am not moving and I want to move.’”

When we got there, we were joined by the kids from another BTC ministry called Jeevan Jyoti.  This is a children’s home that is inside the district itself for kids that have been born there.  It’s a safe place for them to live and grow up, otherwise they would be living in the brothels.  Really.  I had seen some of these kids before and I remembered them, but they have so many visitors that they did not remember me.  I was cool with that and sat with them anyway.

I had a surreal moment in the service when we sang a song with this as the chorus: “There is power in the name of Jesus/to break every chain, break every chain, break every chain”.  Suddenly, it hit me: I was singing about Jesus breaking every chain while standing in a red-light district.  There was a question: did I really believe what I was singing?  Did I act like I really believed what I was singing?  You want to talk about chains?  This is modern-day slavery of the ugliest sort, and I’m just standing here singing this song.

What was I going to do about it?

It was in this moment that I realized that I’m pretty much ruined for life in the United States.  I knew this before, but now I’m probably going to end up with a serious problem when I get back home.  I prayed that God would not make me stay in the US.  I prayed that I would be of some usefulness to this ministry and that I would be able to help them in any way I could.  I prayed that I would be able to stay on and help them break every chain. 

I don’t know how I’m going to go back.  If I’m going back to the exact same place I was before . . . putting clearance stickers on things and straightening shampoo bottles, I really will have a problem.  You can get me back in that job, sure . . . but I’m going to have a hard time caring about accuracy counts.  I can tell you that I will not give a rat’s left whisker about the drama that happens as a daily thing on the pricing team.  In light of what I had just seen and done, all that really doesn’t matter to me anymore.  And really, to some extent, it shouldn’t matter as much as it does to most people anyway.

God help me, I have no idea where my life is going.  I think I know what I want, but I have no idea how to get there.

One night, I was just leaving the dining hall to go back to the girls’ unit with the aunties when the power was cut, causing all the path lights to go out.  There are deadly scorpions (really, you can die if you get stung) and snakes here, so that’s really not good. I stopped in my tracks and said, ‘Um, hey . . . I kinda need the lights so I can . . . you know, not find a snake accidentally and die?  Ok thanks!”  5 seconds after I said that, the lights flickered back on.  I was like ” . . . ok, um . . . I was sort of kidding.  I didn’t think anybody heard me . . .”

Just then, our friendly neighborhood handyman/snake killing superhero emerged from a little building (that just happens to have a transformer station and a generator attached to it) just up the path from me and triumphantly announced, “Lights on!” 

I just stared at him for a second as it dawned on me: this crazy-hyper little man with the big snake killing stick has control over the electricity, and I suspected the water as well.  This was the man that had his devious little finger on the ‘power button’.   There is a schedule because  he makes it so there is a schedule.

Note to self: be friends with the man who controls the electricity.   Do not make this man mad.  He has the power to make your life miserable, quickly.

I started my teaching schedule this week, and it is an adventure.

First class: Bible study with the aunties, right after morning devotions, for a half an hour.  I wasn’t going to try to go on a theme or try to pick stuff out from all over the Bible every day for two months.  I decided to start in Romans and just read it, adding in some of the historical knowledge and cross-referencing knowledge I have.  There are some problems with this though: I don’t have a commentary.  I don’t have a concordance.  I don’t even have an index in my Bible!  I’m just going by what I know.  For instance, I went through Isaiah basically looking for any of the lyrics from Handel’s Messiah.    If I could sing it, it was a prophecy about the coming of Jesus.  I have been systematically pointing out all the ways that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies, weaving those in and out of my explanation of Romans and how Jesus fulfilled the law.

God keeps pulling out more and more detail for me to tell them, and they really appear to be getting things out of it.  Yesterday, I told them about David and Bathsheba because of a reference to Psalm 51 in Romans 3 (David wrote Psalm 51 right after Nathan called him out on Bathsheba.)  Today, I told them the story of Paul’s pre-Jesus life because he cross-referenced 6 different Psalms and some Ezekiel in 3:10-18, and the ladies were wondering how he knew the scriptures so well.  I told them that Paul was once called Saul, that he was a very prominent Jewish leader that studied the law for many years, and that he was known for killing Christians.  When I got raised eyebrows, I told them the whole story.  They then told me that they wished the class was longer.  Yay, I’m doing some good here!

Then there’s English.  Now, this is a trip.  I have a workbook that all the students have as well.  It looks like a standard upper-level English as a Second Language book.  Then I have another textbook that looks like the one I used for my Advanced Composition course my senior year of college.  This is nuts.  I’m reading this thing and going “. . . How do I teach students who just learned what an adjective is about how to form gerundial infinitives?  Do I even know what a gerundial infinitive is!?”  I have to simplify and narrow that one down quite a bit.

I’m also tutoring someone on what resembles my “good citizenship’ course I had my freshman year of college; conservation, values systems, sources of stress and how to deal with it . . . stuff like that. 

I’ve also got Bible studies on the guy’s side twice a week: once for the young boys and once for the older guys. 

This doesn’t sound like a whole lot . . . until you have to do it between 24/7 on-the-job ministry.  I did it this week without too much trouble.  We’ll see what happens next week.

Also this week, I jumped in with the worship team and sang on Sunday.  We did 6 songs in the service, but I only sang 2 because they were the only two we did in English.  I don’t know the Hindi songs, and Sunday morning worship is not the time to guess or screw up the words.  It was really good though . . . I was up there singing with Sunil and my friend Rajani.  She would mostly sing the melody with Sunil, but it was really cool when she sang a harmony.  I would pick a different harmony line and we’d end up with 3 parts.  I also discovered that the songs take on new meaning when you’re up front and leading.  It becomes much more important to understand what you are singing, and God really helps you concentrate and enter in.  You become aware of the fact that you are like God’s amplifier.  Other people can see you connecting with God and they can follow your lead.  I didn’t understand a word of what Sunil actually said between the songs, but I could tell that he was very gifted at leading worship.  I didn’t have to know what he was saying; I could actually see where his heart was.  It made it very easy to follow his lead.  The kids responded beautifully.

This coming week, I hope to teach the worship team some songs . . . maybe Give Me Faith, the song I used in my message last week.  I’d also love to learn the Hindi songs . . . or at least the chorus of Hindi songs so I could sing a harmony line on those.

The staff have asked me to spend more time with the smaller boys, hanging out on their unit and just playing with them.  I can handle that one.  These boys are the most fun kids in the world.  Not to mention, they don’t laugh at me when I try to play cricket.

Oh and for the record, I still don’t have a consistent way to get the internet  To actually get the internet, I have to either get a car to take me to town or another campus, or use one of the guys' cell phones.  I love getting messages on Facebook, they make my day . . . I just can’t always respond to them very fast.