Good Morning!
Well it is 8am on Saturday and I am in the Oasis office with the intention of getting some of my masses of typing done. I fugured that I would warm up with the slightly more pleasureable task of blog writing, though. Not that I am not warm enough already. The weather is definitely getting hotter again here. Last weekend we had a bit of rain and the humidity combined with the heat made it feel like we were living in a rainforest. I am glad we are out of here before the really hot weather gets going in April!
Last week at church we had a guy called Andre de Villiers (http://www.andredevilliers.com/) visiting Powerhouse. The church seems to have friends all over the world! He is a pretty amazing muscician (sounds vaguely like Jack Johnson to my untrained ear) who spent most of the morning service sharing his testimony with us and playing the songs that he had written during the different stages of his life. He was so honest, unassuming and talented as he performed. I think all three of us really enjoyed it.
After church we decided to try out a new restaurant someone had recommended to us. We discovered that Chennai does actually have a whole host of really nice restaurants that we never knew about in an area called Nungambakkam. How typical- right at the end of our stay we discover them! So we are going to be eating out quite frequently in the next couple of weeks, just so we can try a few more out. Having said that, Marjory has been making us some delicious fish curry over the past week which would rival any good restaurant, so maybe we should just hang around Jacob's Well and hope she invites us in for more.
Our working week has flown by in a blurr of naughty children, English lessons and craft activities (which are officially my worst enemy). Balwadi has been quite controlled lately, actually. We did hand painting on Monday and I left Balwadi absolutely covered in green and blue paint. But it was fun! The teacher found out we are leaving in two weeks and started making a real effort to be extra nice to us. However, we soon discovered there was another motive for the niceness- she suggested on Monday in her rather broken English that we might want to give the class a tape player as a parting gift so she can play her Nursery Rhyme tapes. We checked that this was OK with Oasis and then decided that we would be happy to do that. Since then, we have been invited to sit with the teachers for tea, given bangles and even invited back for lunch on Friday. (Yum, veg Byriani! It was so hot - temp - that I am sure I have permanently damaged my finger tips with burns. And I managed to put a whole chilli in my mouth resulting in me smiling at the teacher, eyes and nose running, assuring her that it wasn't too spicy for me at all!) And just in case we forget, she sometimes reminds us to contribute a tape player when we leave. It makes me angry! Still, they are genuinely sad to see us leaving and the teacher seems really keen to get involved in some spoken English classes run by Oasis which is great.
Jacob's Well classes are going fairly well. Half of my class are doing really well on the reading front, but half seem to be seriously struggling. I think a couple of them might be slightly dyslexic which can't be helpful. I would really like to have the time to sit with each one individually and help them with the things they struggle with, but it just isn't possible. I do get annoyed with them when they just don't try at all. Some of them are so bright and could do so well if only they applied themselves! Our fun afternoon lessons have definitely been a success this week. We had a hilarious 'rubbish' fashion show where the girls dressed each other up in all kinds of junk. They were all very excited on Thursday because it was both 'Lovers' Day and Devika's Birthday. Lovers Day is almost as commercialised here as it is in the UK, and the cards in the shops are horrendously filled with cheese. It is quite entertaining to read them!
We are settling in to a routine with Vyasarpadi now. There are about 30 kids attending which is good. They love the dramas we do with them! And the feedback we have had from the church leaders is good, so despite the language barrier the kids must be enjoying it. We were invited back to have tea at the Pastor's house on Tuesday and had a chance to hear some more about the church. It has such an inspiring story! The Pastor used to be a Catholic Priest, but Catholicism here is a bit different and incorporates quite a lot of Hindu rituals. Most people do not class Catholics as Christians. His wife was saved and prayed fervently for her husband and 5 children, with the outcome that the whole family are now Christians and are doing amazing work in the community. It is only because of the Catholic background that they are allowed to stay in the community. Most other churches have been kicked out. And the kids coming to the Fun Club are all new children who have not previously had any contact with the church, so we are praying that they will draw their parents in, too. Oh yes, and the wife of the Pastor is apparently totally illiterate (she only finished Year 1 at school) and yet somehow can read the Bible! I think we may be going back over for dinner one evening, so hopefully some more amazing stories then!
Fun Station at SD Puram is going OK, although we have had some behaviour issues recently. I feel like I am forever telling off badly behaved children! On Wednesday the boys got completely out of control: locking themselves in the toilet, overflowing the sink, fighting with each other. There were about 18 of them, and because of the activity we were doing a few got bored and started making mischief. Finally we got them all sitting on the floor ready to listen to us, and I gave them a fairly severe telling off. One kid had come in with a stick, so I had confiscated that at the start and still happened to be holding it. So just imagine- I am standing in front of 18 boys, shouting at them in English which they barely understand, waving my arms around and brandishing a stick! I think the Tuition Master who was sitting in the other room thought I had gone mad. He told me at the end I was 'very emotional tonight'. I think he would be too if they behaved as badly with him! We cancelled Fun Station on Thursday for them as a punishment, and they were excellent yesterday, so hopefully it has taught them a lesson.
Prayer points (will be brief as I have just seen the time!):
- For energy to finish everything off before we leave.
- Safety on holiday.
- Vyasarpadi kids' parents to get involved in the programmes running there.
- Behaviour of SD Puram.
Right I have procrastinated for long enough now- really need to write these reports!
See you all soon! X
"Our imagination so powerfully magnifies time, by continual reflections upon it, and so diminishes eternity...for want of reflection, that we make a nothing of eternity and an eternity of nothing." Pascal
"Christianity has come to the point where we believe that there is no higher aspiration for the soul than to be nice. And we are producing a generation of men and women whose greatest virtue is that they don't offend anyone. Then we wonder why there is not more passion for Christ. How can we hunger and thirst after righteousness if we have ceased hungering and thirsting altogether?" The Journey of Desire
