Sunday, January 28, 2007

Good Samaritan

We have been having strong winds most of the day, and snow. Wonderful snow. About eight inches of lake effect powder. Being Sunday morning and daft to how bad the weather really was I tried to go to church. Anna has a runny nose and Nancy is not feeling well, the leftovers of a cold or such from this past week … so they stayed home.
I shoveled my way out to the car and turned it on to warm up. Like it says in the drivers manual “in order for the car to properly warm up it must be in drive not park” (OK so that is a summary but with this seven year old car I know it is true.) So after five min of letting the car slightly warm up I was on my way. I hop in and the windshield frosts over… heat and wipers and driving slow in the long drive all is tolerable. Wind blows snow off hood onto windshield, stop car until can see again. Glad that Larry plowed the complexes drive so there was only 4 inches of snow. Out at the road I see the county plows have not been by. Ah I can do it, the car may not, but I can. The windshield is almost always staying clear now. Drive about a mile at 20 miles and hour, even at this speed snow would come up over the hood and white out the windshield. I get almost to the top of the hill and see the plow coming the other way. Make sure I am on the road but over far enough he won’t clip me. Plow goes by, I wait until the white out is over and continue on my way. Now I could have driven in the newly plowed lane… thought about it but if a car or truck came by I would be in trouble. Another half mile and I see a car on the side of the road spun out. There was a truck there and people outside. I was going to stop and help but I saw a person up a couple yards walking to town, figure I will drive them up to the stores and then turn around and go home. The lady is walking from her house to Cracker Barrel to work, I take her the last half mile. Then heading home I am glad I can now use the plows path. I see the car is still there, the people are in it and the truck is gone.

I stop my car and go and start digging the snow out from under the car. Three ladies get out and tell me it is a rental they are from Chicago going to Detroit, they slept last night in the McDonalds parking lot. (Why they were going on this road I have no idea) I was cheery talked about the snow. Continue to pull the snow out from the passenger side then driver’s side. Then I ask like a little kid if I can drive! Rock the car forward, back, forward, back forward, back and gun it as I feel it going back onto the now plowed road. Park it and tell them to stay at the Cracker Barrel for a couple hours then drive to Detroit, it wont be as bad after the world wakes up on this Sunday morning.
I stop back at the Chalet see Nancy and Anna looking for naps so I go back out with the camera to take pictures.

Tamil Basics


This past Thursday we had a couple very helpful meetings about going to India. One was personal encouragement from Gene and Karen. The second was a group meeting at Granger about their involvement with India. I wanted to give a couple facts about India based on what I learned from Jack at the meeting.

Did you know?
The gypsy people group originated from southern India.
These people still travel.
These people are by nature outgoing and sharing.
In the caste system of India Americans are second from gods and everyone is lower.
Most Christians are first converted from lower castes.
Lower castes can’t talk to upper castes.
A lot of respect is given to a Guru.
If an American went to Tamil Nadu (Southern India) and followed around a Guru the rest of the village would also want to hear from him regardless of caste.
Tamil Nadu is actually very diverse, there are representatives from most of the “unreached people groups” in this region of India. Look at the Joshua Project website: http://www.joshuaproject.net/
In current culture if you asked a village what they needed they would say they need a temple to the local deity to make the crops grow. Ask a church planter and they would say they need a well to water the crops. It may not be as simple as building the well though for the village to have good crops, they may not use it.