The last week is always tough to get through, especially this year since everyone had gone home by Thursday evening except for David Owen and me. After teaching classes Friday and Saturday, we had morning services with the Mumbai church this morning. As mentioned before, this is a young church with mostly immature members. They do, however, invite many of their denominational friends, so there is a good opportunity when we meet with them. This morning we had around 100 in attendance at the schoolhouse where they meet situated in a slum area of Mumbai.

Now David and I have the Long Wait until we get on the airplane. We have kept David’s room through the early evening (checkout at 6), then we will eat at the hotel restaurant followed by waiting until around 9 PM to go to the airport (which is virtually within sight of the hotel). Our plane leaves at 12:25 AM (~2 PM Sunday CDT) and 17 hours later we’ll touch down in Atlanta (let’s hope they get that fuel tank filled all the way).

The trip has been fruitful and satisfying, but it’s certainly time to come home. And the wait certainly is long…

Sunday Morning With the Mumbai Church

It’s been a very busy week, which has led to fewer posts. Last Saturday I flew to the southern city of Madurai where I spoke at morning and evening services on Sunday. We try to cover as much ground as possible on the weekends in order to make the most of our time here. There is a small church of about 50 people meeting in the city. They meet in a rented upper room, although they have purchased land and hope to build a building in the future. (Dr. Harrell has raised funds from individuals over the past several years to help Indian churches build that otherwise would not be able to. Of course, demand for such funds always exceeds supply.) Their preacher is named Roy Ebenezer, a young man in his late 20s who married a lovely girl named Juliet less than a week prior to my arrival. Roy served as my translator, and, between services, as my tour guide.

Madurai is a smaller city so flying in and out is more difficult. As a result I spent most of the day Monday flying to Chennai (Madras) then on to Hyderabad where I joined in the teaching of classes on Tuesday. We ran four classes simultaneously, three at Moula Ali and one at Balanager, with the teachers rotating between them. We had a total attendance of approximately 170 in the four classes. The three classes at Moula Ali were divided by language, a native Telugu class, a Tamil class and then a class for the preachers from the Northeast, which was conducted in English as most of them speak English well (or at least understand it). On Tuesday Ed Harrell and Tom Kinzel both left for the US (due to previously scheduled engagements), which cut down on our available teachers.

Classes ended on Thursday, and Bill Robinson, Rod Amonett and David Barnes all left for their return flights to the US. That left only David Owen and me to fly to Mumbai on Friday morning for a brief session of classes and a weekend meeting with the Telugu speaking church here. The church in Mumbai is very young. It was started through contacts bro. Surender of Balanager had among Telugu speakers who had moved from the Hyderabad area. We are meeting with those of the church who can attend during the day. The classes are pitched at a more elementary level since we are not dealing with preachers and teachers, but often Christians very immature in the faith.

At this point, of course, I am very eager to finish the work here and fly back to the US to see Traci and the girls. The trip has been a very busy one; a lot of ground has been covered. The churches continue to be strengthened in India, and we have been blessed to be a part of that.

Roy & Juliet in Madurai

At Balanager with Surender translating

Benson being translated in four different languages

With the first week of Hyderabad classes over, our team is splitting into four groups for Sunday preaching. While Tom Kinzel and David Owen stay in Hyderabad, Ed Harrell, Bill Robinson and Rod Amonett travel to Bangalore. David Barnes will be speaking in Chennai and I am going to the southern city of Madurai this evening. I’ve never been to Madurai, and am very much looking forward to the trip.

Last night Bill Robinson preached at the first night of a weekend meeting at the Moula Ali church (David Owen continues it tonight). Following the services one of the young men was baptized by Ed Harrell.

We also took our ‘official’ group photo of the trip. Thankfully, my camera made it through without breaking!

Today is the final full day of classes in our first week in Hyderabad (Friday is a half-day so the students can travel back home). We have two classes going simultaneously, a preachers and a non-preachers class. Those in attendance are almost all from the area around Hyderabad so they are Telegu speaking classes. I taught both Tuesday and Wednesday. I spoke on Hebrews 11 and Abraham to the classes. We had around 80 people total for the two classes.

Starting tomorrow night we will begin a weekend meeting at the Moula Ali church then on Saturday a group will travel to Bangalore for Sunday while I travel by myself to the far southern city of Madurai. I will speak there on Sunday morning then travel back for our second weeks of classes in Hyderabad. That will be a much busier week as we will have 3 classes–in three different languages–running in at the Moula Ali church plus an additional Telugu speaking class at the Balanager church at the same time.

Teaching at Moula Ali

Benson, Tom Kinzel, Rod Amonett and I touched down at the new Hyderabad airport at around 8 PM on Sunday night bringing an end to our trip to Manipur. We had originally been booked to return on Monday, however our travel permits were only granted through Sunday. In order to stay longer we would have had to reapply. There was also the threat of a bandh (or city wide strike in which everything is forcibly shut down) so we decided it was prudent to leave.

Manipur borders Burma (or Myanmar, controlled by a military dictatorship ), and is politically unstable. I was aware of that, but not prepared for the very, very strong presence of Indian military forces. Soldiers with machine guns were everywhere. We were stopped a couple of times at military check points traveling between Imphal and Lamka. The brethren have complained that they are often shaken down at such checkpoints at the rate of Rs 100 per person (100 rupees, or about $2). That’s not an insignificant amount of money for most of them.

The Lamka and New Lamka congregations are about 2 hours south of Imphal, the capital. We stayed at the hotel in Imphal on Thursday and Friday, commuting for the lessons with the brethren. Both congregations have very fine buildings by Indian standards, and both congregations have 125-150 in attendance. Because of our visit everyone gathered together for our sessions, plus a number of people came in from the rural areas. There were even several brethren from Burma. We can’t go to them, but the borders are pretty porous for them as the Burmese and the Manipuris are ethnically the same.

We had three sessions–morning, afternoon, and evening–on Friday and Saturday. We were originally scheduled for three sessions on Sunday, but circumstances (as discussed above) forced us to leave on Sunday. We had around 300 people in attendance on Sunday morning when I spoke at the New Lamka church.

Preaching at New Lamka on Sunday

Friday evening, at the strong request of the brethren, we agreed to stay in Lamka as opposed to Imphal. This allowed us to participate in the evening sessions. Rod Amonett stayed Friday night, speaking that night and Saturday morning, while Tom and I transferred down on Saturday. One of the main issues was finding a suitable place to stay. There was a new hotel in Lamka, the Venus Hotel, that had only been open for a month. This is important as Indian facilities tend to deteriorate rather rapidly. Also important was that the hotel was built with six rooms having Western bathroom facilities. The downside: no air conditioning or even electricity at night to run the ceiling fan. Furthermore we couldn’t leave the windows open because of mosquitoes. Price per night: Rs 500, or about $10 (cash only, no credit cards). It was probably priced pretty accurately.

Morning services on Sunday had to be moved from 10:30 AM to 9 AM in order for us to make our 1:30 PM flight out of Imphal. Imphal has very few flights, and we had to be out of the state that day. After a 90 minute drive to the airport we flew to Guwahati (the capital of Assam state) then on to Kolkata (Calcutta). From there we flew to Hyderabad, arriving at around 8 PM. Benson had to spend about an hour discussing our flight changes (from Monday to Sunday) with Kingfisher Airlines in hopes of getting some of the money refunded. As you might imagine, not much was forthcoming.

The new Hyderabad international airport, though, is a wonder to behold. India has traditionally had very poor airport facilities. This airport was opened just last spring, and is as nice of an airport as you could imagine. It’s a very impressive structure.

Finally, we arrived at our hotel in Hyderabad last night, thrilled to have not only electricity (amusingly as I typed that the electricity just went off!), but a soft bed and hot water. Thankfully, today (Monday) is an off day so we can recover before beginning classes at the Moula Ali congregation tomorrow.

After a dreary rainy day in Mumbai, Tom and I fly out at 6:30 AM to Kolkata to rendezvous with Bill Robinson, Rod Amonett and Benson on the way to Imphal, India in the far Northeast. It’s the capital of the Manipur state, and is over agains Burma (aka, Myanmar–some brethren from Burma likely will travel over while we’re there). We have never been able to go there before, although some of the Christians there have traveled out to us when we visited nearby Shillong. It’s a restricted access area for foreigners, and we had to apply for special permission from the government in order to get in.

We will be speaking at the New Lamka and the Lamka congregations Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’m not sure how far of drive it will be between Imphal, where we’ll be staying, and New Lamka, but at least one hour, and probably more like two. They don’t have Interstates in Manipur, either! The church in New Lamka is fairly sizeable, around 150. I’m not sure how big the Lamka church is.

It’s likely I will have limited–or possibly no–Internet access while in the Northeast. If so, I should resurface sometime on Monday when we travel to Hyderabad where we’ll spend most of our time while in India.

I touched down a few hours ago on a Delta 777 only about an hour late. Tom Kinzel and I flew together from KC to Atlanta, a flight with plenty of ‘give’ time scheduled in. We ended up needing every minute of it! First we were delayed on the runway in KC due to a backup caused by bad weather in Atlanta. Then when we got to Atlanta we were put in a holding pattern for 40 mins. Our flight to Mumbai was scheduled to leave at 8:05. We touched down at about 7:40, and needed to go from terminal B to terminal E. We were afraid we wouldn’t make it. Thankfully, however, we did make it in plenty of time as the plane we boarded had itself arrived late from Miami. Boarding the plane I ran into Ed Harrell already at his (first class) seat. Neither Tom nor I knew Ed was going to be on our flight. Ed was to fly with Brent Lewis, who was the flight delay casualy in all of this. Apparently he didn’t make it in time to board. So he’s out there somewhere.

The Indians, it seems, are very worried about the swine flu. All of his had to fill out swine flu forms attesting to the fact that we didn’t have it, nor had we had a fever in the past 10 days. Once we disembarked from the plane there were about a dozen booths set up with attendants wearing surgical masks (lots of people around wearing surgical masks). I presented my form, it was dutifully given an official stamp (Indians love official stamps), and sent on my way. Swine flu will never get through such an impregnable wall.

It was nice to get to the hotel to unwind after the 15 hour flight. However, I was only able to doze for about 2 hours, getting up at about 4 am local time.. After sleeping on the plane then dealing with the time change it will be awhile before I get a normal night’s sleep. This is a down day before we fly out to Imphal in the Northeast tomorrow. Tom and I are hoping to pay a visit to the Elephanta caves if the weather and scheduling will cooperate.

Time to get everything packed is winding down–there’s never enough time! Finally you just have to leave. I fly out of KC at 3:10 then from Atlanta at 8:05 PM on Delta 184. If anyone is reallly motivated, you can track the flight here.

Welcome to my India blog. I’ll be posting updates and pictures here throughout my India trip. I leave in two days on July 6, flying from Kansas City to Atlanta then direct to Mumbai–a 15 hour flight! Tom Kinzel, who preaches at the Vivion Road church in Kansas City, will be flying to Mumbai with me. From there we will travel to the Northeast city of Imphal, but more about that later.

Thanks to webmaster Phil Wist I also will be able to post maps of my location as I move around India. Check back, and I hope to post as often as I can.