‘Home’ In Hyderabad

2010 -

I finally arrived in Hyderabad this morning along with Tom Kinzel and David Owen. Our home base in India is Hyderabad, which is where both the Moula Ali and Balanager churches are. As much as India can feel like home, Hyderabad is it.

One of the things I was told when I first started coming to India five years ago was “be flexible.” Transportation is often a challenge, schedules can be fluid. The former was reinforced as we sat on the tarmac at the Mumbai airport and were told that there would be an hour delay before takeoff as the plane had missed its runway window. We were actually served breakfast while sitting on the tarmac!

I was reminded of fluid scheduling when Benson picked us up at the Hyderabad airport. He mentioned that it would be good if I could travel to the city of Warangal to preach on Sunday rather than fly, as previously planned, to Vijayawada for Sunday services. No one from our group has ever traveled to the church in Warangal, and the church has progressed to the point where they are considering building a church building. This also has impact on the scheduling for the timing of my trip to Chennai. Hotel and plane reservations will have to be changed all around. It’s certainly no crisis, but helps give a window into what can happen.

Today was spent in meetings to discuss our various plans for the time here, interviewing two Indian preachers and, of course, recovering from our travel. Tonight will be a chance to get a real night’s sleep and start acclimating to Indian time.

Tomorrow Tom and David leave for the Northeast city of Shillong, while Bill Robinson goes to Bangalore. Ed Harrell, Rod Amonett and I will remain behind to begin a weekend meeting at the Balanager church before splitting up to different places on Sunday.