We have now been in India for about a month and a half now. We have been going village to village encouraging the church. I will write another blog talking about that, but this one is suppose to put you into two typical days on my trip. Ill try to make it detailed because I dont post often. Hopefully you can imagine and go on the great journey with me. This is life…
Jan, 4th, Saturday
Today I woke up at 5:30 AM in Hmarkhawlien, a village in Assam state. I crawled out of my tent, deflated my sleeping pad, put all my clothes in their bags, put down my tent and put it in its bag. I took everything and shoved it into my backpacking pack. I grabbed my toothbrush and went to the community bathroom ( 3 toilets and 1 shower for 32 people). I went to use the sink but no water, which is typical. My time in India has made me realize how privileged we are, our water and power turn off multiple times a day for hours at a time, but yet we are still so privileged. I then go on the roof and gaze upon Gods creation. The roof is an unfinished slab of concrete about 100 feet long, with pieces of re bar sticking out all over. I go up here to pray in the mornings. After praying, I go down grab my bible and headphones.
Jesse and I walk to the Bungalow, its a big tent where we eat all our meals. It is about a mile walk down some dirt roads. It is a cold morning as Jesse and I walk, which is typical. We wave and high five all the little kids. We watch all the chickens roam, dozens of dogs starting their adventure filled day, and dozens of goats eating all the garbage on the sides of the road. At 6:30 we arrive to the tent, its tea time! Tea time is an every morning thing here. It is a hour and half of tea and biscuits (cookies). I normally talk and get in the word, but this morning I mainly talked because we were leaving the other teams. I also played with the puppies who are here. Around 8 most of the squad would get to the tent for breakfast. This morning Chad, a big goose was making lots of noise and so were the pigs in the back yard.
At 9 the buses arrived and we brought our stuff out of the school and walked to the road and threw them on top of the little bus. We said goodbye to all our local friends and pilled in the bus. The boys team, one girls team, Cal are SQL, and Rama our liaison (soon to be best friend) headed out. The ride was a quick 3 hours of bumpy dirt roads. We passed brick factories, rolling hills of tea plantations, fields full of cows, water buffalo, and numerous other grazing animals. We swerved in and out of traffic, horns honking all around and eventually we stopped at a police station. We had arrived in Sai Phai in the state of Mizoram and we stopped at the border police to sign forms. We went in and talked to the police.
As we get back on the bus and continue for the next ten minutes, we all gaze out the windows, for we are on top of a mountain, in the middle of a vast jungle. We look all around at all the people waving at us, the beautiful bamboo houses build on cliffs and jagged dirt trails. We immediate felt right at home. We finally arrived at our new house, another school for 600 kids. We have to get out of bus and walk the rest, for it was to dangerous for the bus to go any further with all of us in it. Looking down off the mountain at endless rice fields a thousand feet below and more mountains dotting the horizon. We are staying at the headmasters house with a wonderful family with 3 little kids.
As we drop our bags in our room, this man named John comes in and tells us he is going to the next village to get green beans if we need to ride. About six of us hopped into the back of his truck, we were going to get dropped off just a mile away at the village, but we stayed on and he took us to the next village. On our way to the next village we stopped at his house, went in and met some people and some people in the house hopped into truck to go to next village with us. Swerving around big mountains with dirt making us slide, we finally arrived to another village after 15 minutes. This village had two big bodies of water and the village was on a big land bridge in-between.
We arrived in this village with 50-60 bamboo houses, about 20-30 kids come running up to us. We go into this one house. A girl who we had picked up along the way lived here. While here we got some green beans. A bunch of people came into the house to take pictures with us. We got handed babies to hold and take pictures with. As we were leaving that house we saw an older lady walking with a limp, her hip was injured. We helped her into the house and got to pray for her. Not many people spoke English here, but we had translators to help. We walked down the rode and these kids told us to follow them to playground. We went with them and got to the playground, which was just a empty field with a pole. Minutes later kids were coming from everywhere, 60 kids must’ve randomly come to say hi and play. We started picking kids up and launching them into the air.
After a while, we went to a couple more houses, we went to the pastors house and prayed for him. We then headed back to our house. We played with the kids who lived there and then we had a big dinner at a table for 6, but there was 14 of us. I felt right at home at this place.
January 5th Sunday
Today, we woke up had breakfast, and walked down our mountain through some village trails. We stopped by Johns house and sat there for a bit, then we continued and Rama took us to his grandparents house. We meet his family and stayed there a bit. We then walked 10 minutes to another house and the girls with us got traditional dresses put on for church. We continued walking again, saying hi to little kids on the way.
We finally arrived to a church, this church was on the cliff of a mountain in the middle of the village. As we were walking in the big drums were going ( the only instrument they use in Hmar churches are drums, it is tribal), we sat down in the front next to the pastor. As we began to worship people started to get up and walk to the front and danced in circles. The pastor then got up and introduced us, he then asked us to preform a number (sing), so we got up and sang some worship songs. Then the Pastor wanted one of us to share. I got up and went to the front and shared my testimony and why we are here, Rama translated to the people.
After service, we went outside and shook peoples hands, encouraging the church with big smiles on our faces. Then we ended up being in a huge photo shoot that lasted 15 minutes. 100s of people wanted a photo with us, most had never seen a white person before. We then got invited to a feast later in the afternoon. So we went back home to eat, then we went back to the church for a feast. They killed a lot of chickens for this feast. It was the 5th day of the New years feast, yes they celebrate new years by having a community feast everyday for a week. Sometimes they would kill a cow, pig, whatever, then you cooked it and brought your own rice, now that is a feast. We had tea at the feast and talked to many people.
We were leaving and got invited into another persons house, we went in, sat down and had tea. The doorway had about 15 kids looking in at us. A bunch of the girls had to go back home, but the rest of us headed back into the village with a bunch of locals taking us around. We went to the police station and sat by a bonfire. We then went to some more peoples houses.
After some house visits we went another church. This church building was unfinished and had walls of sheets hanging. The entire village did not have electricity because the transformer blew a few weeks prior. So, we go into this church of 500-600 people, squeeze in a pew. The church only had one light hanging from a ladder shining on the preacher. The 8 of us were asked to come up front and preform another number, so we did. We also shared some testimonies as well. After church we hung outside with locals and encouraged them. A huge mob of kids followed us down the street back to our house. Tonight we had a huge bonfire and we worshiped with the students at the dorms of the school.
Sai Phai is such a great place, the next few days we would teach English with middle schoolers, then try to teach English with elementary kids, singing and teaching about Jesus as well. We would do some manual labor and one day we got to go to the dam. Because we are Americans we got to go inside the dam and the powerhouse, we met the engineers in the control room, had hardhats and went in the ground and saw a big turbine turning. After the 6 days in Sai Phai we would go to Silchar another city. Ill explain more in another blog… I hope you enjoyed being in a typical day with me..
