Sunday 7/22/07

Sunday morning Bro. Jeff and Bro. Guna preached at Cuddalore where the tsunami hit in 2004. There they constituted a new church. At Shady Grove services, Ashley, Leah, Jill, Karen and I sang Blest Be the Tie that Binds and For the Beauty of the Earth and Ashley gave her testimony with Richard translating for her. Then Bro. Nelson preached a powerful message on election in Tamil and English. He really is an awesome preacher! That afternoon we visited Bro. Boopithy’s house because it was his 3 year-old daughter’s birthday. Bro. Boopithy lives close to Shady Grove and I visited his home the prior week. During that first visit, his children (Hannah and Abigail) showed me their cat, whom they had named “Cat.” They wanted me to take a picture of their skiddish little cat and it was really funny when I tried to call the cat – Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. The children said, “That is cat. What is here, kitty, kitty, kitty?” Apparently the cat didn’t understand English either but I did manage to get its picture. At the birthday party, the parents provided us with orange soft drinks and we talked and visited for a while. The Indians are very particular about their manners and protocol and when Ashley would not take a chair, they insisted. “You sit here!” She said, “I think I’ll sit.” Later she tried to share her drink with the family members and they said, “No.” Then Ashley said, “I think I’ll just drink all of this myself.” (It was very funny). The Indians get highly offended if they think they have not given the very best of everything to their guests. Richard showed us some coin tricks and we watched CSI on black and white TV. Bro. Boopithy showed us a beautiful drawing of the Tabernacle with all the furniture in it that he had made. Then we went back to Shady Grove and checked on Ranjanny (pronounced ron johnnny or rom johmmy maybe?), Bro. Jeff’s foster child. She is 13 but like most of the Indians very small – in America we would think she’s about 8 years old. She had been running a fever for a couple of days and we decided to take her to see a doctor on Monday morning along with another child who also had a fever. I felt really guilty going to bed Sunday night on a comfortable bed while the children were sleeping on mats on concrete floors. I held a conversation with Bro. Jeff about this the next morning at breakfast and he told me that he had said the same thing once to Bro. Guna and volunteered to buy lumber and build the children bunkbeds. He said Bro. Guna laughed at him and told him that the Indian way of sleeping is on the floor. They think we are very strange for sleeping on beds. We do definitely have different cultures, but the same need for Jesus Christ.