Faithful People.

“And those who know Your Name will put their trust in You, for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.” Psalm 9:10

I read this verse two days ago. I like when you read a verse, or a quote, and it really speaks to you so much in the moment. It seems to say that simply remembering the name of the Lord should help me to trust. It reminds me of other verses that talk about remembering the faithfulness of the Lord whenever you feel tempted not to trust Him. I was thinking about what the term “support” means since that’s been part of my life the last year getting ready to go overseas and now really a part of my life while I’m moving to Omaha.

I could measure ’support’ in so many ways. I could look at the amount of money in my support account, I could count the number of regular monthly supporters I have, or the number of people who are on my e-mail and mailing list. But actually I’d rather look at the e-mails I receive from people, or the blog comments, or the Facebook messages. I kept remembering the faithfulness of the Lord in the packages to here and Grand Rapids, small gifts, food and drinks shared, tons of love and joking around. That’s really been the best part of raising support. It has re-opened old relationships and deepened new ones as people have become a part of my heart and life.

Now I’m kicking the support raising up a notch to meet some new financial needs I have with moving to Omaha but I never want to forget the faithfulness I’ve already seen. Nouwen talks about how money is the least important part of raising support, it has to be the means and not the end. Yeah, that’s true. I have super faithful people in my life and their faithfulness has given me tangible evidence of the faithfulness of the Lord. I hope I’m faithful to support and love them in return.

Me In India.

List of Places that Are Dead to Me:

1. INDIA.

 

 

Just kidding.

But only a bit. Here are some of my favorite pictures of three weeks and the entire country of India. We started with a flight to Kolkata (5 days), 30 hours on a train to Chennai (5 more days), and then 64 hours home… on a train (this one infested with cockroaches) through the entire length of India to Gorakphur and two separate taxis through Nepal to Kathmandu. 

 

We are so happy to be on airplanes, flying away from Kathmandu!

 

Then I think we were having too much fun visiting WMF Kolkata to take any pictures but this one of KFC food in India. The KFC in Kolkata I think is better than any KFC anywhere. It was heaven. It was also so great to spend time with Brooke, Beth, Sarah and Kyle. Thank you for hosting us, I loved our talks and good meals and episodes of the Long Way Round on your projector!

 

Fast forward 30 hours and one angry Liz later… we made it to Chennai to visit WMF’s Chennai community with the Samuel’s and their home of 34 crazy/fun kids. I loved those kids! But we did realize, after seeing this amazing Basilica (Santhome- the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle) and everything else there is to see in Chennai, that you really only need about half a day to tour the city of Chennai. After that, and a good meal at Subway, you’re sitting in a hot, nasty hotel room thinking “hmmm, we might have overshot the length on this field visit.” Fortunately, at that moment:

 

SAVED! By JERRY KIM! This man saved Chennai for us, words can never express how much we think of Jerry Kim. He took us out and showed us some of Chennai’s sweet restaurants, including authentic Korean and the Ambassador Hotel. We also got to swim and meet a crazy Indian film producer who has a projector and full on mini bar in his basement. In general he loved us well and in the meantime filled us in on lots of good stories about my brother (one of his best friends from college) at Michigan State. I asked “Did you ever live with Keith, Jerry?” “No. He always want to be naked.” 

 

I liked walking in Chennai, the streets seemed quieter and it has tons of trees. I also just liked this picture from an auto rickshaw.

 

At one point Jesse said “I can’t wait for our five days on the train, just to relax!” Oh how he regretted those words. Let’s just say that I was not the angry one this 43 hour train ride. (There is film footage of the most angry I’ve ever seen Jesse, but sadly I’m still waiting for clearance to post it.) If you’ve seen one Indian railway station, you’ve seen them all. This also goes for train samosas. 

 

Yes! We’re so happy! One long roadtrip, boil surgery, swollen eyes, and at least two cases of giardia later… We MADE it the long way up!

~~~

Well, “the bottom line is” that I love roadtrips, even when they’re hot and long and tough or “intense.” Because “it’s hard, but it’s good.” “The crux of the matter” is just that we have a lot of “free love and all that bs” between us, so thanks Scotty and Danny. You guys are great friends and I’d do it again any day. Just preferably not for a couple of years.

I always thought I was a morning person…

Until I woke up after 15 hours of sleep on a train. Jesse, Calvin and I were going from Kolkata to Chennai (where I’m currently sitting in an internet cafe), and were in hour 15.  I slept almost the whole way, but something about waking up to a loud train horn, in the heat because the fan isn’t quite getting to my face, and seeing 4 extra Indian people who don’t have tickets, squashed in your cabin…

I got down from my bunk and said “Where are my sandals?” to the world at large and Jesse/Calvin in particular… no response. I repeated again “Where are my sandals?” Still no response. Then my barely suppressed morning rage caused me to morph into Chris Farley’s woman from Saturday Night Live with “WHERE are MY SANDALS?!” Oh dear.

After about twenty minutes a man in our train cabin bought us all a cup of coffee, I felt bad for my outburst, apologized to the offended parties, and we sat and chatted. I spent some quality time with Harry Potter, ate some good train food, and enjoyed watching India fly past to the sweet sound of (what else) “Daffodil Lament” by the Cranberries.

Six short hours later I went back to bed but this time with my face towards the fan. I felt happy, ready to begin another night of rocking sleep on the high bunk of the small train compartment. At about 3:45 am I woke up and had to use the bathroom. I looked down from my sleeper bed, and now there were not the five people who went to bed together in our cabin but a total of NINE people somehow sleeping and sitting on all the beds. This includes one man who had decided to take half the sleeper seat of the elderly woman who was on her way to Chennai to get treated for gallbladder cancer. He looked healthy enough so as far as I’m concerned he could have ridden on the top of the train and I prepared to tell him so but bit my words back. Instead I angrily got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

Typical Indian train bathroom (a hole in the bottom of the train), it had clogged sometime in the night. So, you know… just carefully position yourself around the clogged squatty toilet full of urine and fecal remnants, thank God you’re not passed out on the floor (oh Phileena! ) and then leave to go back to bed. First, of course, I encountered the bossy woman in the garishly colored sari who tells me it’s ‘my turn’ in the bathroom by jabbing me roughly in the arm and pointing towards the toilet. ARGH. I am not blind.

I still held in the morning rage… but on the way back to bed a man stopped me and gestured dramatically with a demonstration of how to use the broken flush button… as if I was too stupid (or maybe my femininity/whiteness has prevented me?) to see the large NEON green button that says, I quote, “PUSH TO FLUSH” on it. As if I would have gone to the bathroom, filled the squatty to overflowing with all sorts of good looking treats, and then WALKED away from it without any shame.

Well, folks, that was it. Welcome to India… and by the way one of my greatest struggles is anger, often expressed in frustration but this time in total white-hot rage. “IT’s BROKEN.” I said in my nastiest tone of voice and facial expression. I think he literally took a step back away from me, afraid that I would punch him in the face. Then I huffed back up to bed where, of course, I could not sleep and so resorted to waking up Calvin in the next bunk over and retelling the whole story complete with mental narrative.

Thanks Jesse and Calvin for traveling with me and my morning rages. Just think, that’s only a foretaste of the five day journey back to Kathmandu from Chennai by train and bus. Woohoo!