Quiet Time

Believe it or not, this week has been eventfully low key. Let me explain.

The kids were doing testing all week long, so we haven’t been able to interact with them as much as we usually do this week. AND-they left for fall break right after testing was finished so it has been a little quiet. I ended up having to work through the last playtime we had with them before the break started and I was legitimately bummed about that. It is amazing to me how much I miss them—even when we are on the same campus. I’m going to have to work on that.

On Monday we went to Bethel Nagar colony—which is one of our larger ones. I was in charge of taking some video for an upcoming project, so I wasn’t able to man any of the actual stations, but on my down time I got to observe Navumani—who is the nurse that does all the debridement and bandaging of the ulcers. It was awesome! Of course, first and foremost, it is sad to see the infections/sores some of these people are fighting, however, I found joy in the dead tissue and bad parts of the skin that Navumani was removing because it means that the treatments are working and progress is being made! For the most part, people can’t feel it, which is one of the blessings/curses of having leprosy, however every once in a while people would wince—which obviously was hard to see as well. Navumani rocks her job! You can tell she loves it and loves being able to help her patients with this step of the process-which is perhaps the one of the most crucial steps in the process 

For whatever reason, watching her go to town on wound after wound after wound made me think of the repentance/healing process we all go through in this life. It is so sad to see the ulcers and infections people have in their lives and/or on their hearts, and especially painful to see these things in ourselves. But, like Navumani, God rocks at his job, and eagerly wants to clean out the blah and the gunk in order to help us heal.  I know that sounds incredibly cheesy but being around so much sickness and healing has caused me to draw all sorts of parallels between these unique experiences and how I can apply them to my life.

After the colony we did some patient home visits and went stopped by the preschool Rising Star Outreach helps fund. The little boy screaming in the front row pretty much explains how it went. Some were happy to see us-but some/most were utterly terrified of us.

We welcomed another volunteer this week, Berlyn from China/Alpine/St. George/Canada. She always has us laughing, until she randomly falls asleep-which has been happening a lot this week. And she breaths like Darth Vader, but it’s cool because she knows it and we all talk about it.  Ciera and I started doing henna on ourselves because we have a lot of henna and figured it would be fun to learn. I attempted this design on my foot. It's a lot harder then it looks but it is coming along. Ciera is already pro though. I guess she and her friends did henna on each other at home. She is talented like that. 

On Saturday we went on a bike ride to the junction. Katie and I accidently lost Ciera and Berlyn but eventually we realized that the people on bikes behind us were Indian, not Caucasian. Seriously, it is hard to tell sometimes. Haaahahaha. As the bicycle caught up with us, they told us that our friends were back by the school (not our Rising Star school) and that there was an accident. We both started freaking out a little, until I got them to tell us what kind of accident, to which they put their hands below their mouth and mimicked puking. Thank all that is holy that puking qualifies as an accident here. That's good to know. We made it back to them, and called a motorcycle from campus to come get Ciera, who was being such a good sport about sitting on the side of the hot road-sick-in the middle of no where India and having local teenage boys come over and ask her to take a picture with them.

Once Ceira was safely on her way back to the medical clinis, Katie, Berlyn and I continued on to the junction so we could get her some sprite and crackers for her stomach. But just because this is India and we were having this kind of a day, a huge rainstorm came causing us to be held hostage in the junction for quiet a bit. It wasn’t necessarily bad we just chilled with the locals, watched the tailor sew me some sari tops, watched the storm, etc., it was just one of those times where we were like, “of course a huge rainstorm would pop up out of no where today”.

Ends up the rainstorm was the last of our worries, as we found out shortly after getting to campus that political riots had started around the entire state of Tamil Nadu. Apparently the chief justice (I believe that is what she is called, either way she is more or less the governor for Tamil Nadu) made some mistakes a few years ago—as in 18 years ago—and the Indian Justice System just finished up the court hearing for the incident. She was found guilty of corruption and was dismissed from her post, and it turns out that her people didn’t like that very much. It was interesting to hear some of the different perspectives on it. From what I gather, the people understand she made a mistake. However, they feel that she has admitted to the wrong doing, has proved her change of heart, dedication to her state and office for 18 years now. In their eyes the mistake is history, so punishing her for something that happened so long ago, and for what many people see as something she has already made right and has “repented” of, ignited 18 years of frustration with the Indian Justice System/loyalty to their beloved chief justice.

Because of the riots, we were not able to travel to church—or stop at Hard Rock Café and get an American Hamburger (yes the word Hamburger deserves to be capitalized here).  So for church this week, we had to get a little creative. We ended up doing a few different things. First, we watched some of the General Women’s Meeting—which I need to finish because I got called in to help Dr. Susan with something—but I have loved what I saw so far. There seemed to be a lot of talk about the temple, and I have to admit-I’m really missing the temple in my life. The closest one is Hong Kong, and something tells me (mainly my bank account tells me) that I won’t be making that trip while I’m here. In the afternoon we spent a little time with the remaining littles. There were a few kids left on campus, children that were not going home until Monday morning—who we gathered together and attempted to watch Veggie Tales Bible Stories with. Rebecca made them popcorn, I didn’t make it through the whole thing because I needed my Sunday nap-but it was cute while I lasted. The “cutest”(inserts Benji’s use of the word cute here) part was when the campus goats (P.S. we found out Carl is actually a girl and has a girl name, but I can’t remember it so I think I am still always going to call “him” Carl) wandered into the elephant house because they were so lonely with campus being so quiet. They followed us across campus to get the kids for the movie, then followed us all the way back, they lingered around the school when we wouldn’t let them in to watch the movie, etc. It was precious.

The other highlight of my week was that I was able to talk to a lot of people from home. It is always nice to feel connected and catch up. My friends rock. I have been blessed with good friends in my life. It is hard to be away from them when big things are happening, such as pregnancies, births, first house buying, etc. however I take solace in the fact that even if I am on the other side of the world, we can still pick up right where we left off through email or text message or facetime or facebook. I was possibly going to meet up with one of them, since they happen to be in this part of the world as well, but then the terrorist threat level changed to high for the area we would have met up in so that got shut down real quick. Stupid. Freaking. Terrorists.