Friday, December 21, 2007

Parties and Malai

A lot has been going on this past week. Here it is Thursday and we have been to 5 Christmas parties, let alone more to come:

Tabitha College: IMED where we volunteer as Quality Control for clothes they export to England. This is a school where high school dropouts are educated in tailoring, secretarial work, nursing, computers and life skills.

GOF: Our company party with 109 adults and one Anna.

Saidapet GOF Branch: The closest branch to us, two doors down. They are like aunts and uncles to Anna. We celebrated with over 1500 of their clients.

Alpha Group: My bible study with 15 moms and 7 kids. We shared the story of Christ’s birth, carols, snacks and games.

Jkpet GOF Branch: Another one of our branches which is our family. We went there without Anna and they missed her. Our clients amaze me in their kindness and openness; I was hugged so many times. There were 250 women there and at least 30 kids.

All of these parties are a celebration, not of presents and Santa but of Christ. We have to keep Him the center of these celebrations. It’s a great opportunity to share with many Hindus and Muslims the gospel. This is what we believe and we can be there for you. We will pray and we are growing relationships. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it takes time.

It is still Monsoon season here. We had rain for 2 days straight and last night a tree fell on our home. Thank God it was at night so there were no kids hurt. Our upstairs neighbor had just moved his car 30 minutes before it fell. Everyone was safe and nothing was destroyed including people. We watched 8 men spend a day sawing by hand and cutting with machetes this 35-year-old tree, no one has a chainsaw here. Later children came and took the wood home for their mom’s kitchen fires. Little 5 year olds were so proud of their piles as they carried them away and they are better at wielding a machete than I am.

The rains (malai in Tamil) are still coming. Our friends, Sebastian, Mary Gloria, her parents and all the kids have been evacuated to the near by school until the waters succeed. Good news is they are back home the next day. Some things they can take to the school with them or store somewhere else. It’s just hard not to be home, especially with kids even if it is only for one night.

We have attached a couple pictures here, and will post more at ryanandnancy.blogspot.com Also If you are on our mailing list there is a picture of Sebastion in our quarterly update. It should be coming to your mailboxes soon if you haven’t seen it yet. Many thanks for the DeVries’ for the finishing touches and sending out the letter this past Saturday. Email us if you want a copy and are not on our mailing list.