This is a map showing my train ride to Kakinada on Friday. I will be here for the next few days visiting churches. The map has some pictures posted on it towards the end of the train ride, showing the scenes out the train window. It might be difficult to see the pictures in the map below, so you can also click on the link beneath the map.
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That is to say Sunday Oct 23rd through Thursday Oct 27th
The map below shows you my Sunday wanderings. Rather than mark the map with the lines of my travel as normal I have marked the various spots with pictures. More pictures of these areas can be seen down below.
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Pastor Sudhakar a year ago belonged to a another group of churches with Baptist ties. He audited the Bible School in Nidubrolu for a year, then just recently joined the CLCI and has started attending the Bible School. He has one small church and another small preaching station just outside his brother-in-laws house half a mile away, both are marked on the map. The village is a shepherd village and is filled with sheep and cattle.
On this last visit to the US I picked up a gps unit, a fun new toy for me. This means I can now easily upload gpx files that display my recent travels. Anytime you see a post beginning “Map:” you can click on the title to see a display of where I have been traveling to recently. Which will probably also be accompanied by photos and a description of what I was doing there. I plan to also create a map page which will contain overlays of my most recent travels. You can also always click on the “maps” categories to the right to see the most recent maps posts.
This map is the tracks of a short trip we took last night out from Guntur to a nearby congregation in Vejendla village. This was my first attempt and the gps unit only started tracking after we arrived at the congregation, so the tracks information you see here is from the congregation back to the Sindoori hotel. The “start” point is the church and the “End” point is the sindoori hotel where I am staying.
Made it back to India.
I left the US last week on Monday Oct 3rd I traveled through London and Bahrain, arriving in India at 5am Wednesday October 5th. This return to India is “quick” because I will be leaving again in under two months, not because the plane ride was fast. The actual travel time to get here was longer than normal since I had two layovers rather than just the normal one. I need to return to the US in December again to get all my visas and prepare for my trip to Africa in January.
My return wasn’t exactly as smooth as one could hope. My AC wasn’t working which made sleeping a bit uncomfortable and the day after my arrival I came down with a fairly bad cold. Read the rest of this entry »
Generally speaking the power in Chennai is fairly reliable. Certainly nothing like the US, it goes off almost every day during the “summer”, but it is almost always at the same time every day, for my part of the city that is from 4pm till 5pm. Today however for whatever reason it went out around 10am. Usually even an hour without power just means I’m giving my laptop battery a workout and doesn’t really disturb my work. Today however the power reminded me just how dependent I am on computers. Even the books I want to read are mostly e-books on my computer. When the power still hadn’t come back at 11:3, I gave up waiting and went to run some errands. Returning at 1pm, the power still wasn’t back. Again I waited trying to find work that didn’t involve my computer, but eventually I gave up and took my laptop down the block to the coffee house. I’ll probably spend most of the afternoon here, since it is entirely possible that the power won’t be back on at my house until late afternoon.
Last night I was in for a pleasant surprise. When we got to D Paul’s house his eldest son took me over to the government boys hostel, where the boys from the villages stay while going to school here in Nagalapuram. There we watched a game of Kabadi. In the picture below the young man in the black shirt and white shorts attempts to tag any of the seven players on the other team, while they try to tackle him. I have a video I will upload once I get home.
After watching the game we returned to D Paul’s house where the children gather every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday evening for bible lessons and treats afterwards. In the first picture you see them listening to the bible lesson. In the second picture they are eating boiled peanuts.
A few weeks ago Rajamani ( see picture ) asked me how he could learn to understand me better. My speaking that is not some weird spiritual journey into my inner psyche. Since I had been contemplating means to get a closer look at the normal daily lives of our Indian brothers, I immediately suggested I could bunk with him for a week. So here I am three weeks later in Nagalapuram, without air conditioning or pizza, eating rice and stepping over sleeping forms to make my way to the bathroom at night.
The first night has come and gone pleasantly enough. I was supposed to arrive Monday afternoon, but something came up and Rajamani had to be gone, so we came late Tuesday instead. Kumar my faithful and ever vigilant driver dropped me at Rajamani’s front door and then he was gone, not to be seen again until late on Saturday evening.
Sheep on a bike
