Thomas Family

Tuesday 1/9 7:30am – While in Kota, we stayed at “The Bishop House” which is where Sam and M.A Thomas live, as well as where the Emmanuel Bible College is located. They have nice living areas for guests (with hot water), but the best part is the food. Sheila cooks all of the meals, and really runs the whole place. She walks around holding a cordless phone like a monarch’s scepter, directing people and making sure everything is in order. We had pancakes and omelets for breakfast, and for lunch, she sprinkles in some traditional Indian food (but she knows how to cook for Americans… not too spicy). Dinner was also exciting as we ate with M.A., and were joined by his brother (visiting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates) and their father (a ripe, 98-years of age). After the meal, the three of them broke out the hymn book and sang. It was pretty incredible to hear them sing “When the roll is called up yonder” in Hindi. The father also prayed over us before heading to bed. Sam came and joined us as well, and it was incredible to see the three generations living there together. We had an interesting conversation about how this is rare for us to see and how typically in American cultures, people often send off elderly to retirement homes, and visit them once a week. Sam explained it like this, “Why would I want to send off the Ark of the Covenant from my home?” It’s incredible how they treasure him even though he requires a lot of care.

1:00pm – At the conference, we made some interesting connections. I was given a tour of the Talwandi School in Kota (where the conference was held), and I got to see their computer lab. They have about 15 computers even though they don’t have Internet access. The students learn Microsoft programs, and build websites off-line. It will be interesting if we can help them get set up with Internet connection and begin to do some exchange with them. I met Ira and Indu: the Social Studies teachers at the Emmanuel School – Talwandi. They were very savvy (Ira already has her students do History projects using the computer lab, and Indu has an email address, so we will hopefully be able to be in contact), and we may be able to do some sort of dialogue with our classes.