Finally Here!!!

Hey Friends!!

Feeling very guilty that it has taken me so long to post. Especially because I am sure you would have all loved to hear how stressed I was the weeks leading up to the trip- just kidding ;) But I do wish I would have had time to post during this first week of getting here, especially with all that has been going on. I think that I will have to do this in parts ;)

Our first team just left a few hours ago! It was so sad to say goodbye to some very special people, but I am very grateful for the team members that are staying for the second week. We had such an eventful week full of pastor conferences, kid jams, and village development programs!! It has been such a fun week and we were able to get so many great pictures and also have so many great moments with the kids.

Our Team!!!

We arrived in Hyderabad very early Thursday morning. The team got to have a few hours of rest time after breakfast and then we headed to the Big Bazaar!! The big Bazaar is basically like the Indian Walmart. It has everything there from fresh vegetables, tools, to clothes. The team was able to pick out some traditional Indian clothing to wear on Sunday. The other interns and myself were also able to do some necessary shopping to begin our new Indian Wardrobe. The team had lunch then went back to the hotel to shower and get ready for one of the Orphanages in Hyderabad, Raja's Home, that GHI teams frequent regularly.

Hyderabad

Glow Stick Fun

Raja's kids are some of my favorite kids. They are so welcoming and happy every time we come its such a great "welcome to India" experience. We were able to bring the kids Domino's pizza, which they loved!!! Kevin had the kids did a 'Call Me Maybe' music video with the team, and then we hung out with the kids for the rest of the night with tattoos, gift bags, and glow sticks!!! The kids had never seen glow sticks before and that was such a fun experience to share with them. I know that I speak for the rest of the team by saying that we always feel really refreshed and welcomed after visiting with Raja's kids. Its a really great way to start our trips, especially for the team members that have never been there before, because it is good preparation and practice for our kid jam teams. The kids at Raja's are no different than the rest of the Indian children in that they are always so excited to see us and so grateful for whatever we do with them.

Eating Pizza and playing hand games with the games with the girls!

Friday the team went to Nalgonda to train pastors in kid jams. Kid jams are programs similar to a short VBS where we teach a bible story and have crafts to share the gospel with the children of the village. Kevin stressed the importance of sharing the gospel with the children, not just the adults, of the villages. Many of the pastor's are not trained in ways to minister to children and so this was a great opportunity for our team to show them an easy way of communicating the gospel to small ears! The pastors were excited to learn and the meeting was a great success!!! At the end of the meeting we passed out bags of supplies and t-shirts to all the pastors. I should know better by now, but there are always so many more people then what we were told to plan for and there is never enough to go around. I am always surprised at the reaction, even from the adults, we get when we pass things out. Its intimating handing out things because people are always pushing and wanting to get more. Often I am able to look past it among the children, because they are young, but its so frustrating when grown men become greedy and pushy when we are giving them things. They can hardly stay in their seats and when they feel like they aren't getting what they want fast enough they start to grab things out of your hands. One even pulled my hair!!! Its hard to remember that they are excited to receive things and to remember to look past it.

Friday afternoon Becca and I got to go on a special pearl shopping extravaganza!! There were so many pearls it was so hard to choose!! We bought a bunch of earrings so that the rest of the team could pick some out too!!

Early Saturday morning the team spilt up into four smaller teams and headed to four different villages. My amazing team headed into a village of thatch-roofed huts and dirt roads. Eager children awaited us and we had so much fun singing with them and teaching them the bible stories. It's so exciting and easy when we have such a receptive and easy group and these kids were absolutely AMAZING!! They were so sweet and excited to learn all the songs. There was one girl there that I wish I got a picture of. Her whole face was covered in puss and boils and it made me hurt just to look at her. I asked the translator what was wrong with her but no one, not even her mother seemed to know. Its such a testimony to how this part of the world lives. Such an easy thing to fix if only she could see a doctor and yet she has to live in pain because her family is so poor. What a great reminder of how lucky we are and how easy it is to take things for granted such as doctors.

Later on Saturday night our kid jam team went to another village. This village was absolutely insane! What started out to be 50 kids soon grew to be 100 kids plus their families surrounding us. We did our kid jam in the extreme heat, but things did not start to get crazy until we handed out some cookies!! It was literally a mob of people trying to get to us and trying to touch us. We were basically trapped in the center of 300 people. It got so crazy that our kid jam team had to be escorted into the pastor's house while we waited for our ride to come. It was very overwhelming and crazy but fun. We sat with the pastor and his wife and we learned that he managed over 750 churches!! Just amazing that one man can handle that much. Our team was definitely ready to head to bed that night!

Sunday morning we woke up early to head back to our first kid jam church to preform two more bible stories and give out care bags filled with toothpaste, soap, and shampoo. I was so disappointed because that one little girl with the boils wasn't there and we had packed her a bottle of antibiotic cream and wanted to send her picture to a doctor. When I asked the pastor where she was he told me that her and her family had traveled over an hour to go to the kid jam!! I was really disappointed because I really wanted to help her!! We managed to make it out of our kid jam village and make it to church only a little late. Some of our members were starting to feel a little sick so we sat outside the church and were able to listen to the service while sitting on a really pretty Indian patio.

Sunday night proved to be more exciting than Saturday night!! We woke up from much needed naps and two of our kid jam members were sick!! One of them being our fearless leader! I realized that I was going to have to step up, which of course I was extremely anxious about especially because this was the kid jam that we were mobbed at the night before! If things couldn't get any worse it started to rain right before we arrived. Luckily we were able to start the kid jam in the small church building attached to the pastors home. Of course there was no AC so after three minutes it began to get very hot. When it stopped raining we moved outside where the power promptly went out (of course). Just as on Saturday night fifty kids soon became 100 which soon became 200 and we were entirely outnumbered. They were a crazy group and it was impossible to control them. As soon as we thought that our ride was almost here we learned that the bus that was supposed to come and get us broke down! And we still had almost 40 more minutes! Luckily we had Kevin there who lead the masses in a great game of Simon Says. We finally arrived back at our hotel and we were all ready for a good nights sleep!!

Monday morning our team (sickies and all) piled into two vans and headed to Ongole. But not before stopping at a local village and blessing some sheep! Perhaps one of the funniest experiences in India so far! We were able to bless each sheep to the village which will use them for food, milk, and money. Kourtney and I were able to provide some comic relief and gave each sheep a well deserved name! Let me introduce you!

Chester

Rocky

Lacey

Estella

Wilbur

Leonardo DiCaprio

Wendy

POOKIE!

Venus

Phoebe

Genevive

Sheep Not Pictured:
Coco Chanel
Jamie Robinson
Daphne
Jane
Bertha
Sydney
Serena
Helga
Paris







They were definitely a rowdy bunch of sheep!!! We had so much fun there and got to see the inside of some of the people's huts!!

After our Sheep Blessing Ceremonies (haha) our team headed to Ongole where we would spend the remainder of our trip!! I am excited to share more about our teams experiences as they only get better and better. Excited for WIFI and more blogging to come!!

Love from India!!
Grace

The verse on the wall at Raja's Orphanage