This is where we ate dinner most of the time.

My very favorite thing about the food though was eating with my hands. So fun.

The key is using your thumb to push the food into your mouth.

Street vendor food. Yes, that is a fried egg. It was actually delicious. Bonus: it didn’t kill me. Win!

My favorite food story: The main reason we went to India was to meet a new contact, A. A has a lot of big visions for ministry there but the main thing he’s working on is starting a school and getting clean water to a remote village in the mountains. When he was telling us about the food there he said that it’s too spicy for even him to eat. Remember when I told you that even the food they said wasn’t spicy made me cry? Yeah, my mouth probably would have melted had I tried to eat the village food. A told us not to worry though because they had peanut butter and jelly for when we’re up there. Great! We thought.

When we got to the village the first time it was just in time for dinner. Everyone was served their rice and whatever and they brought us our “peanut butter and jelly”. Except there was no peanut butter. And the bread was two giant tortillas. And the jelly was basically gelled sugar with fruit flavoring in a giant blob on one side. Better than having your tongue melt out of your mouth though.

Joel called it a jam-burrito.

::giggle::

-Abigail

The absolute worst were the mosquitoes. Oh my freaking god the mosquitoes. They were awful. What was worse was our contact didn’t quite understand our need for mosquito nets. We had deet but that only lasts so long. Or Indian mosquitoes are immune to deet. Or a combination of both. Anyway, they made me occasionally lose my mind just a little.

What? It kept the bugs away from my face instead of me constantly swatting them away like an insane person.

One thing that became my best friend while I was there was their bug zapper.

I enjoy killing mosquitoes way too much for a normal/sane person.

Mosquitoes weren’t the only visitors in our house though. One day I was sitting on the floor eating dinner when a mouse scampered across the floor. Now, I’m not terrified of mice or anything but it was under the fridge and right next to the kitchen so I figured they’d want to do something about it. I mentioned it to them and their response was:

Them- “Was it a big one?”

Me -”Well, no.”

Them- “Oh ok, that’s fine then”

Me- (thinking) okaaaay….

So yeah, mouse in the house? Totally normal. Apparently. As long as it wasn’t big, no problem. Awesome.

And lastly, this picture I took specifically for my twitter bff Mandy. Mandy, I couldn’t see one of these little buddies and not think of you. This guy was just above my bed. You’re welcome. Love, Me.

-Abigail

Joel and I with our contact, A and his cousin M. M is a politician but I’ll write more on that later.

The house we stayed in was M’s with his wife, mother and three kids.

The kids adored us despite what it may seem like by the look on the littlest one’s face in this picture.

One other semi- member of the family?

Aws! Ok, so it was a stray that had decided to make their front yard it’s home. Joel about killed me for picking it up but it was so freaking adorable! As far as I can tell I did not catch rabies, fleas or lice from it so yay.

The kids, Joel and I had a ton of silly fun.

My phone was fascinating to them. I guess that’s pretty much a universal thing.

One of their favorite things was playing hand clap games. They taught me a couple in their language. Don’t ask me to repeat them back now, I don’t remember. They were fun though.

Their mom braiding their very long beautiful hair for school.

I loved being their “Auntie” and treasure all the happy moments I got to share with them. Our flight out was early in the morning so I figured I had to say my goodbyes the night before. We were scheduled to leave the house at 5am and I was surprised that everyone was waking up while we were. But every one of them got up, showered, got dressed and piled into a tiny five-seater car. For the record it was Joel, Me and the wife with a child each on our lap. Then M, A and one of the pastors we met with in the front. In case you weren’t counting that’s NINE people in a car the size of a Geo Metro. I was afraid that little car wasn’t going to make it. It definitely bottomed out more than once. We did though and they parked and went as far into the airport with us as they could.

We were very lucky to have met them. I’m so glad that I now have an Indian family waiting for me whenever we get to go back. I hope it’s soon.

-Abigail

A – “Hey, I’m going to leave now. You’re in charge”

Us – “Uuuuummm….”

I ended up just picking random songs and games to teach them. Next time I’ll definitely have several activities planned out for them to do instead of just winging it, if for no other reason than the stress of feeling put on the spot was less than fun.

However, once I got in a groove I had all kinds of fun…

I think the kids did too.

- Abigail

This made for the bumpiest, scariest ride of my life. Especially when it was night. It’s a miracle we didn’t die. No really.

Scary ride, but really pretty views.

The village is in the middle of a valley. They actually have some electricity, which surprised me but everything is very basic.

The biggest problem in this village and those around it is the water. It’s not safe to drink but since it’s all they have they’re slowly being poisoned by it.

The best part was, of course, meeting the kids.

This is in front of the school with most of the children who attend. Aren’t they sweet in their little uniforms?

No pencils, no books, no desks. Just a tiny room, some chalk and eager minds, willing to learn whatever was being taught.

Our contact didn’t really tell us what to expect before hand. We got there, he introduced us to them and basically said to entertain them for awhile. And left. We had no plan whatsoever. Kind of way scary. I made it work though by teaching them several different songs, games and telling them a couple stories.

Can you guess what song I was teaching them in this picture? Find out via the video below:

They seemed to have a good time. And I? Fell in love. How could I not?

There’s so much to be done still. We’ll post more about the specifics of the project on HelpSend.us in the near future.

-Abigail

Auto- Rickshaw: This is how many people get around

While in India we were able to visit several families homes…

Talking with one of our new found friends

We were able to spend a few days outside the cities in some local villages

Eating outside once night. Abigail has a story to share about the food.

]]> http://helpsend.us/2010/10/photos-sneak-peak/feed/ 1 http://helpsend.us/2010/10/hello-from-india/ http://helpsend.us/2010/10/hello-from-india/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:38:15 +0000 joel http://helpsend.us/?p=266 We left for India almost nine days ago. In the last week we have taken over 2,200 photos and have had many stories happen that we can’t wait to share! We are online now for only a short time, but want to let everyone know that things are going well. There are great opportunities for ministry in the future here. We will have many updates to post about once we return on Sunday. Please continue to pray for us… for safe travels, health and opportunities to minister.

As far as updates from the field go… We are not expecting to have internet access while in India, or to much electricity at all, but you never know. We will have many photos to share once we get back though.

Please pray for us. Prayers for our safe travels, our health, our ministry and work with the people of India would be greatly appreciated.

We are still fundraising. Our plane tickets will be about $400 more per person than we expected (even with flying standby.) If you can donate please do so soon. We may not be able to go if we can’t come up with the extra $800 needed. If you have any questions please contact us.

That means we have to make a choice soon. Do we just try again next year or attempt to fly standby to Europe (via my wife’s airline) and purchase tickets from Europe to India?

It looks like we will be trying the standby route. Abigail’s airline does not have service to India, but they do fly to Frankfurt, Germany. She is a flight attendant on furlough so she doesn’t have the active duty badge needed to pass ride for a discount on a partner airline that does fly to India.

It is important to note that there are possible problems with this plan. While it is likely that we will make it to Europe flying standby without a hitch; it is also possible that we won’t. There are all sorts of reasons this might not work including passenger loads, Abigail’s low seniority at her airline, weather, mechanical issues, etc. If we don’t get to Europe flying standby with enough time to catch our next flight then we lose our plane tickets to India and the trip is off.

As of today we have only enough money to buy the cheap non-refundable economy tickets from Europe on a no name airline to India. Is there that big of a difference in price between types of tickets? Yes. A non-refundable round trip airline ticket from FRA to HYD is around $800 each. A refundable round trip airline ticket for the same dates starts at $2,200 each.

Our Standby Plan

Once we get our India visas (hopefully in the next two weeks) we’ll purchase plane tickets from Europe to India. A couple days before we are to catch our flight to India we want to have already flown standby to Europe. That will give us time to get there, just in case we don’t make it to Europe on our first try flying out of Chicago. Please pray that things go well and that we don’t have trouble with any of our travel arrangements.

How You Can Help Send Us

We want to try and fly out of Chicago on September 27 in order to have a couple of days to get seats to Frankfort. It is possible we will be spending a couple of days in Frankfurt, Germany. Do you know anyone (or are you someone) who lives near the FRA airport and would like to offer us transportation and a place to stay the night? Please contact us. The same might be needed on our way home from India. If flights are full on the way back to Chicago we would like to stay with some rather than in a hostel. That will obviously reduce costs as well.

Don’t forget you can still donate towards our trip. We are still over $3,000 short of our goal! We are going to try and make it work with the whole standby thing, but all donations are still very much appreciated! Any left over money we have after the trip will be given directly to Fuel India to help with the needs of running the ministry.