Record Breaker!

How many GCC team members can you fit in an auto-rickshaw? We found out. Check this… when the water team was ready to go to their field, a single lonely rickshaw pulled up outside Pastor Sam’s house, ready to take the team. We all sort of looked at each other quizzically, and then inquired if there were additional rickshaws on their way. Raj just chuckled and said that he was sure we would all fit. So, without further complaint, every one of the Water Team members, plus driver, Raj, Naveen and Princy, piled into the rickshaw. Photo attached.

New Friends: Naveen and Princy

Through our new friend Roger Schmigdal at EV Free in Illinois (Rog is collaborating with us on clean water initiatives through Hydraid), we met two amazing young people: Naveen and his wife Princy. Both are wonderful, beautiful people with amazing passion for Christ and a desire to see churches empowered to reach communities holistically in their given environments, and we have learned much with and from them as they have been hanging out with us. While they have been spending the bulk of their time with the Water Team, they have also observed our Construction and Technical Teams in action, asking questions and also providing insight when we have sought it. Their primary purpose in hanging with us has been to observe how other U.S. churches are partnering with Indian organizations to provide holistic community development initiatives in conjunction with Indian churches.

Pastor Sam & Family…

Aside from the Justice Team (which is working in Ranipet with Pastor Nermil) and the Construction Team (which is sleeping in tents in a remote village outside of the town of Kalavai), most of the rest of us are staying with another of our Super-Pastors named Sam. For those of us who have had the privilege to come to India often over the past 6 plus years, Pastor Sam and his entire family have been staples and pillars of strength for the church planting movement in Tamilnadu. In addition, they graciously offered to host us in their home, and have treated us like royalty throughout our time here. Shown here in this picture are Pastor Sam (tall guy in the middle), his wife Jayanthi (yellow sari to the left), their two daughters Rosie (left of Jayanthi) and Suganya (right of Sam), and their son Sarat (right of Suganya). Also pictured, of course, are Raj, and one of our other Life Mission staff.

You’ll notice that Pastor Sam is wearing Life Mission Department “colors” (i.e. a solid black T-shirt), so… you know… we’re tight.

Someone Should Tell Dean’s Dairy Producers…

This is one of those, “wow… you really don’t see this every day in the US” kinds of posts. See this tree? It’s a banyan tree. It’s remarkable. It grows tall and strong, then it drops a sort of vine and root from its branches down to the ground. Each of these vines forms a new tree of its own, but is still attached to the original, thus supporting each other and forming a gigantic mass of connected trees. That part is way cool.

But do you see the little burlap and plastic bags that are dangling from the vines and branches? Want to know what’s in them? Cow placentas. Yup. See, here’s how the belief works here in India. If you have a cow, and that cow gives birth, you have to tie the placenta up into a bag and hang it from a tree like this. If you do that, your cow will give healthy milk for its new calf, and will produce many more healthy calves. If you do not, however, and dogs eat the placenta, then your cow’s utter will dry up, the calf will die, and will be barren. So… in terms of rural Indian dairy farming, when your entire life depends on your cow continuing to give milk… you tie up the placenta and don’t take the risk.

Justice Team Send Off!

We knew that the Justice Team was going to be working in a village (Ranipet) first, and that it would be slightly farther away from where the rest of us were going to be working (in sort of a loose smattering of relatively proximal villages). As a result, about an hour before the rest of us, the bus pulled over to the side of the road, and like a group of Marines descending from a landed V-22 Osprey onto a “hot” Landing Zone, the Justice Team piled out, grabbed their gear, and were ready to rock! Pastor Nermil (one of our GCC “Super Pastors” and the pastor who is training church planters in the area of Ranipet) met the team and shook hands, and then motioned to a fleet of waiting auto-rickshaws (think stripped down riding lawnmower with a covered “pickup truck” cab) who were to whisk the team away. After the team loaded all their gear, the rickshaws peeled away and putted off down the street.

Now THAT’s Fresh!

En route, Raj suddenly asked the bus driver to pull over. When the bus stopped, he asked all of us to follow him off the bus, where we quickly surrounded a little man standing next to a bicycle that was laden with fresh coconuts. As Raj approached, the little man took a bladed tool (looks kind of like a scythe) and hacked off the end of one of the fresh, green, skull-sized fruits, plopped a straw into the little hole he had created, and then handed it to Raj. Raj removed the straw, then downed the entire contents of the coconut in about 5 seconds amidst cheers of “Chug! Chug! Chug!” from us (too many fraternity movies in the mid-80’s, I guess). Then, each of us received a coconut and had a refreshing little treat. Manda Harris pictured here with hers.

Sing Along with “The Raj”!

On our way out to our respective fields, we took a little time to “sing along with Raj”. See, in India, despite the influence of television and media from the West, traditional songs and dances are still very important to Indian culture. This has amazed me elsewhere. Short of “the chicken dance”, we Americans don’t really have any distinctly cultural dances that celebrate our history, or really, any songs that tell about our mythologies or oral tradition. It’s interesting to me, then, to see what happens when we collide with a culture that does have such a rich history, and still knows its roots and traditions as they are so jealously guarded in their singing and dancing. Anyway, because of the above, it’s very important for GCC India teams to be able to do at least a modicum of singing (and dancing… oooooh, what I wouldn’t give sometimes to be Baptist and be able to play the “we’re not supposed to dance” card… but more on that later), so we practiced with Raj for a few minutes as we were en route. As it turns out, we weren’t half bad, actually, especially after having Don Reynolds coach us with his superb voice skills, and had even managed to master one “of our own” (Dan Vukmirovich actually wrote a song for us to sing that translates very easily into Tamil with minimum turbulence for our English tongues… you rock, Dan!). Ted Bryant was singled out as the best and most enthusiastic of all of us, and so was coaxed to join Raj at the front of the bus to help the rest of us with our head banging (yeah, literally… you are supposed to create a personal mosh-pit of sorts when you sing) and hand-clapping.