Cultural Driving Lessons and Skype

Spent a lot of time on the bus Thursday. Driving through the country-side, we saw several different perspectives of how the people lived. We went through a brick manufacturing village where they sun-dried mud then burned them in these tall furnaces to make them solid and red. Then they’d load them on a cart and a camel would cart them off to be sold/delivered. Speaking of furnaces, it felt like we were walking through Bible times. The furnaces reminded of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo. We saw shepherds herding their flocks, women drawing water from wells, fields of wheat being gleaned, and then children and poor mothers going through the fields gathering the leftovers… just like passages we’ve read about in the Bible. I could just picture Ruth out there in Boaz’s field. With the lepers and orphans, it was sort of surreal… like walking through a time-warp. At one point, it was easy to blame the government for not progressing and for poor leadership keeping the country in poverty. It was easy to feel sorry for the woman trudging through town with a water jug on her head. With a little technology, I thought, they could improve things, get running water, … something. But then you think that as easy it is for us to judge and say, “I would be miserable living like this” in the dirt and dust. But they’ve been living like this for centuries. Our civilization may have running water and electricity but we also have divorce, depression, suicide, etc. In the words of P. Diddy, “the more money we come across, the more problems we see.” To see these orphans happy with just a cricket ball, or kids on the side of the road playing in the mud makes you wonder if you really need an Xbox to be happy. These were some of the thoughts/feelings/discussions that came out of our devotion time that Joelle led after the trip on Thursday.
It was a pretty full day all in all with the driving, so we were exhausted when we finally got to the hotel. Jon and Veer risked their lives in a taxi ride to retrieve us Pizza Hut for dinner. We got our second wind as the whole team crowded into our room to eat pizza and video conference with school chapel on Skype. Lots of parents came to the school and some people on the team here in India got to see and talk to their families on the internet. What a great end to the day!