Greetings!
Another week has flown by. Unbelievable. I just don't know where the time goes! It has certainly been an exhausting week.
First, just to let everyone know, I lost my phone a couple of weeks ago and have concluded that it is not likely to be returning, so please don't text my old UK number.
Balwadi has gone really well this week, although we have a massive number of kids there. Whenever we are doing colouring with them, we hand out a load of wax crayons, but then when it is time to collect them in there are a significant amount missing. So then we have our little crayon body searches, going around all the kids and patting their pockets and fishing out fist-fulls of crayons that they have stowed away. It was a nightmare this week when one kid came in wearing cargo pants! We had a chat to the teacher this week and told her when we are leaving. She was asking us about our time at Balwadi, if we would be sad to leave, if we have enjoyed it, etc. She looked so surprised when we told her that yes, we really do like the children! It was encouraging to know that she does appreciate what we do there.
Jacob's Well has seen the addition of two more new girls, Deevia and Jayalakshmi. Apparently they will join the new group which is FINALLY starting next week. Indian timing! English reading has been going quite well. Two of the girls in particular have picked it up really quickly and seem to have much more enthusiasm now than they did before. I also taught a science lesson this week, about the human heart, and brought in a 1 litre bottle of red water that I tried to convince them was Sabrina's blood (it did have a purpose other than that, though!) We have had some fun afternoon lessons: made egg parachutes which we dropped off the roof of the block of flats (Devika and I were the winners with our amazing parachute!) and we also brought in some henna for the girls to do designs on their palms. I now have one very orange hand.
The Vyasarpadi Fun Club is going fairly well. Numbers have been a bit more variable this week, but still generally high (20-30 kids). We have had a few new Hindu girls start coming which is fantastic, and a lot of the kids have been going to the Sunday School held by the church we run the Fun Club in. Because the kids are getting to know us more now, they are getting quite noisy and often we don't have a translator which is interesting. The older ones are very helpful whith controlling the younger ones, though, and shouting in any language still seems to have the desired effect of shutting them up. "What's the Time Mr Wolf?" has become their favourite game (pronounced, "What's dee time meesta olf?") and I am always required to be the wolf, so I get my fair share of exercise while I am there.
The SD Puram Fun Station is still growing in numbers. We arrived to find about 10 billion (well, 17) boys there on Thursday and had to go back to get more colouring materials. The room we hold the club in is so small that it is getting harder to play games with so many kids. We were learning about how God provides for us this week and so asked them to draw a picture of things their family needs. Most of these kids are from the slum, but the things featuring on the drawings were still things like bicycles, ice creams, pet dogs, cake, etc. Yesterday we were doing painting which was total chaos. I left with blue paint all over my face and was going straight to have dinner at someone's house- embarrassing! One of the girls advised me to shave my arm hair this week, and another girl insisted on correcting my English (which was correct in the first place, may I add.) Sabrina and I had some fun winding them up, too: Helen has infected mosquito bites on her arm and had to go to the doctor to get some cream, so we told the kids that Helen Aunty was having her arm chopped off. They were so worried and believed us completely until yesterday when they saw Helen, intact with both arms. Man, were we in trouble then!
We stared teaching the Oasis staff English grammar this week and it has been really good fun, despite being another thing to prepare for. I am learning things, too- I never knew that we had a present perfect tense in the English language! It is all so complicated and illogical. I'm glad I'm not learning it!
Although we have finished Tamil lessons now, our mornings at the office seem to be equally busy and filled with typing and report writing and stuff like that. We have also been using every spare minute to try to plan this holiday (well, Sabrina has!) which is finally coming together! I think we are nearly there, although I still think it is going to be more expensive than I would have liked.
Thursday was a really crazy day. As well as all our usual work, we had Marjory (a neighbour) over for English tea and biscuits (everyone here LOVES Hobnobs) after Fun Station. She insisted on bringing some fish curry with her (delicious) but we had nothing to eat it with so said we would cook some rice. Believe it or not, this was the first time we have cooked rice since we have been here because we try to avoid it at the weekends (Sabrina says she is giving it up for lent!). So Helen and I trotted off into the kitchen and scooped some rice out of our bag, only to find it was crawling with little black bugs! We weren't sure what to do, so ended up spending forever washing the bugs off and checking through to make sure they were all gone. What a wonderful situation- cooking bug infested rice for an Indian who is an expert on the stuff (rice, not the bugs). When we emerged from the kitchen half an hour later, Marjory wanted to know what kind of rice we were cooking that made us take so long! We left her to think that our cooking skills were really bad rather than admit that the rice we were going to eat was infested! That evening I was up until the early hours preparing a finger puppet craft for Balwadi (at the teacher's request) and stomping around the flat moaning about the ridiculousness of cutting out 100 finger puppets for the kids to colour. Still, I was a little less resentful about my late night when I saw how much the kids loved them the next day!
Last weekend we went to see The Golden Compass with some friends. Apparently a lot of it had been cut out because the censoring is much stricter here, so all of the anti-religion stuff was omitted. Made the film a bit jumpy but it was still good.
At church on Sunday we had John Bilborough and his wife visiting (Dave Bilborough's son, apparently, if you know who he is... I didn't.) He spoke about the Kingdom of God and about how the early church is a real model for living in community. It was a good message, even though he told us that his gift is in music and not speaking.
Oh, and the other notable event this week was Pancake Day! I have never eaten so many pancakes in one day. We had pancakes for breakfast and made pancakes to bring to the office and share with the staff and then had late night pancakes that evening (about 10:30!) to use up our milk and eggs (milk doesn't keep long here). The flat was smoky for most of the day!
Well, I think at last my blogs are getting shorter, mainly because I don't have time to keep track of everything I do during the week anymore, so it comes to Saturday and I have totally forgotten.
Prayer Points:
- Holiday plans!
- New Jacob's Well group.
- All of the things we have to do before winding up and leaving.
- The Balwadi group- Oasis has had some more contact with the people in charge, so pray that opens the door for them to make changes to the way ti is run.
- Vyasarpadi, that the work there continues to develop well and that we get to know the kids more and have more control over them!
- Energy!
I can't wait to see everyone again. It is going to be bitter-sweet leaving here, saying goodbye to new friends but knowing that I will see old ones again. Anyway, still three weeks left so won't be thinking about that for the time being!
Ta ta!
Kandace x
Jeremiah 17:5
Cursed is the strong one
who depends on mere humans,
Who thinks he can make it on muscle alone
and sets God aside as dead weight.
He's like a tumbleweed on the prairie,
out of touch with the good earth.
He lives rootless and aimless
in a land where nothing grows.
My Utmost for His Highest
"You have no right to complain, "O Lord, I am so exhausted." He saved and sanctified you to exhaust you. Be exhausted for God, but remember that He is your supply. "All my springs are in you" ( Psalm 87:7 )."
"Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the work of another believer— to pour out your life sacrificially for the ministry and faith of others? Or do you say, "I am not willing to be poured out right now, and I don’t want God to tell me how to serve Him. I want to choose the place of my own sacrifice. And I want to have certain people watching me and saying, ’Well done.’ "
It is one thing to follow God’s way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a "doormat" under other people’s feet. God’s purpose may be to teach you to say, "I know how to be abased . . ." ( Philippians 4:12 ). Are you ready to be sacrificed like that? Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket-to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served? Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted— not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude, because they feel such service is beneath their dignity."
