Well we landed in Tulsa, made the bus trip to Van Buren, and Tiffany and I just got home a little bit ago in Ft. Smith.
Travels went relatively well, Kathy's bags got left in Dallas by American Airlines, but they will be delivering them to her tomorrow so that is good.
We are so glad to be home, but sad to have left India as well.
Let me just say though, I have never been more glad to see US Currency, Ground Beef, Drinkable Water, and Fresh Air in my life.
The trip was awesome and all too short. God did a great deal in us while we were there and it has really changed all of our lives for the better.
Over the next couple of days I will post some more photos and videos so you guys can see more of the details of our trip.
Again thanks for following us here on the Blog and for your prayers. We are glad to be home in the good old US of A!
11/5/09
11/3/09
Goodbyes and headed home
We left the hospital this morning at 4 something...ick...
It was sad, we have made some really good friends here, although we are all excited to be on our way homes to hamburgers, clean sheets, air conditioning, and our families!
We are in a hotel in Dubai right now and leave out tomorrow morning around 8ish from the airport.
The feeding program yesterday morning was really awesome and I can't wait to post some photos for you guys, although it will probably have to be after I get back, just worn out right now and need to get some rest.
Thanks for following us and for all your prayers, I will update you when we hit New York, and probably be posting Photos and videos for weeks still as I go through all the awesome stuff we got.
Take care and God Bless!
It was sad, we have made some really good friends here, although we are all excited to be on our way homes to hamburgers, clean sheets, air conditioning, and our families!
We are in a hotel in Dubai right now and leave out tomorrow morning around 8ish from the airport.
The feeding program yesterday morning was really awesome and I can't wait to post some photos for you guys, although it will probably have to be after I get back, just worn out right now and need to get some rest.
Thanks for following us and for all your prayers, I will update you when we hit New York, and probably be posting Photos and videos for weeks still as I go through all the awesome stuff we got.
Take care and God Bless!
11/1/09
Good Morning...evening...morning....
Well it is morning here for us, our time didn't change with the Fall forward as yours did.
We are about to go the Chapel, Michael Ray is preaching the devotion this morning.
We were up early early early, left on the bus at 5 something to go and feed hundreds of children and women in rural villages, sadly the two scoops of rice we gave them is the only meal they will most likely have today.
They were interested with all of us "fair skinned" people, but didn't seem to mind too much once we started scooping out the rice, they really flew through these 3 HUGE pots of it.
We are going to Mother Teresa's house today, it is where her actual tomb is. She is extremely important to the people here because of all that she did for them and this area.
I still have some photos from last night's church service I want to post, but they will have to wait, I want to put up a few photos from this morning.
Something I forgot to mention last night was that worship was in English and Hindi, and let me tell you...the language barrier was non-existent, I as well as the rest of the team enjoyed the music in Hindi just as much if not more than the English Praise and Worship, it was truly amazing!
...well time to leave...sorry photos later, but let me say they are awesome photos!
We are about to go the Chapel, Michael Ray is preaching the devotion this morning.
We were up early early early, left on the bus at 5 something to go and feed hundreds of children and women in rural villages, sadly the two scoops of rice we gave them is the only meal they will most likely have today.
They were interested with all of us "fair skinned" people, but didn't seem to mind too much once we started scooping out the rice, they really flew through these 3 HUGE pots of it.
We are going to Mother Teresa's house today, it is where her actual tomb is. She is extremely important to the people here because of all that she did for them and this area.
I still have some photos from last night's church service I want to post, but they will have to wait, I want to put up a few photos from this morning.
Something I forgot to mention last night was that worship was in English and Hindi, and let me tell you...the language barrier was non-existent, I as well as the rest of the team enjoyed the music in Hindi just as much if not more than the English Praise and Worship, it was truly amazing!
...well time to leave...sorry photos later, but let me say they are awesome photos!
Hey Church!
WELCOME TO THE BLOG to those of you who are visiting for the first time today please read the other posts below with videos, pictures, and of course my lovely commentary.
We had church this morning at the Baptist church in town, we were invited by Orijeet, one of the Volunteer/Hospital Administrator's here. It is his home church, Robert told us that he has never invited anyone from one of the groups to his church before. We have gotten along really well with everyone here. Orijeet is such an awesome guy!
After church today we went to the nurses school which was a really neat experience, didn't get to see as much of it due to the fact that it is an all girls school and a lot of the floors and rooms are a "girls only" kind of thing, but from what I heard it was neat. The coolest thing is that they live there and go to school there and are bussed over to the hospital to work, it is a really cool program.
We did a little shopping during our down time this afternoon, really it was just a time to relax, eat some ice cream, and have some time to smile together.
Tonight we went to the local AG church, and it was simply amazing! They had awesome Praise and Worship, great preaching and the most wonderful people. After church we went out for some authentic Chinese food, it was excellent as well...I feel plump! I was so thirsty so I had: 1 Fresh Lime Soda, 1 Coca Cola in a glass bottle, and 1 ThumsUp in a glass bottle.... :-) Yum! I had the distinct honor of sitting with Orijeet at dinner tonight, I got to pick his brain for about 2 hours as we shared the similarities and differences in our cultures, we both came to the conclusion that we married above our status, our wives are brilliant, and that neither of them have the best sense of direction :-)
He is a really great guy and has a wonderful family, it will be tough leaving here in a couple of days. We have got to spend a good amount of time with the younger volunteers here; Danielle, Brook, Donny, and Joel. All four of them are under 30 so I see eye to eye with them which is nice. They have taken pretty good care of us on our times out in the city. We travel and groups and they direct us and keep track of us. Joel does mostly media work here with photography, filming, and video editing, Danielle does a great deal of administrative work both here and back home in the states, she will be moving soon to the "Home of Hope" for women in Calcutta which I am sure she is looking forward to, Brook does a lot of organizing with children programs and is producing and maintaining the profiles for the children at the blind school, Tiffany got to help her with that on our visit, Donny is a number cruncher spending his time here helping the hospital with what I can only guess is some financial management and some other systematic organization, as far as I can tell he has been very successful. Again I can't stress how nice it has been to have them around.
Here are some pictures from yesterday I didn't have the chance to post up. I hope that you guys enjoyed the video in church this morning. I will try and post some pictures from today in the late morning tomorrow, we start our day of tomorrow at 5 a.m. with a feeding event, we should be feeding roughly 25,000 people tomorrow morning, I hope to have some really good video and pictures for you from that.
Take care, God Bless, and enjoy the photos! The outside and inside of St. Paul's temple!
We had church this morning at the Baptist church in town, we were invited by Orijeet, one of the Volunteer/Hospital Administrator's here. It is his home church, Robert told us that he has never invited anyone from one of the groups to his church before. We have gotten along really well with everyone here. Orijeet is such an awesome guy!
After church today we went to the nurses school which was a really neat experience, didn't get to see as much of it due to the fact that it is an all girls school and a lot of the floors and rooms are a "girls only" kind of thing, but from what I heard it was neat. The coolest thing is that they live there and go to school there and are bussed over to the hospital to work, it is a really cool program.
We did a little shopping during our down time this afternoon, really it was just a time to relax, eat some ice cream, and have some time to smile together.
Tonight we went to the local AG church, and it was simply amazing! They had awesome Praise and Worship, great preaching and the most wonderful people. After church we went out for some authentic Chinese food, it was excellent as well...I feel plump! I was so thirsty so I had: 1 Fresh Lime Soda, 1 Coca Cola in a glass bottle, and 1 ThumsUp in a glass bottle.... :-) Yum! I had the distinct honor of sitting with Orijeet at dinner tonight, I got to pick his brain for about 2 hours as we shared the similarities and differences in our cultures, we both came to the conclusion that we married above our status, our wives are brilliant, and that neither of them have the best sense of direction :-)
He is a really great guy and has a wonderful family, it will be tough leaving here in a couple of days. We have got to spend a good amount of time with the younger volunteers here; Danielle, Brook, Donny, and Joel. All four of them are under 30 so I see eye to eye with them which is nice. They have taken pretty good care of us on our times out in the city. We travel and groups and they direct us and keep track of us. Joel does mostly media work here with photography, filming, and video editing, Danielle does a great deal of administrative work both here and back home in the states, she will be moving soon to the "Home of Hope" for women in Calcutta which I am sure she is looking forward to, Brook does a lot of organizing with children programs and is producing and maintaining the profiles for the children at the blind school, Tiffany got to help her with that on our visit, Donny is a number cruncher spending his time here helping the hospital with what I can only guess is some financial management and some other systematic organization, as far as I can tell he has been very successful. Again I can't stress how nice it has been to have them around.
Here are some pictures from yesterday I didn't have the chance to post up. I hope that you guys enjoyed the video in church this morning. I will try and post some pictures from today in the late morning tomorrow, we start our day of tomorrow at 5 a.m. with a feeding event, we should be feeding roughly 25,000 people tomorrow morning, I hope to have some really good video and pictures for you from that.
Take care, God Bless, and enjoy the photos! The outside and inside of St. Paul's temple!
10/31/09
What an Amazing DAY!!!
Happy 492 birthday! The birthday of Protestantism is October 31st, 1517, the Vigil of the Feast of All Saints. On that day Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses, as he called them, to the door of the castle of Wittenberg, Germany.Today was simply packed full!
We went to the "Dying and the Destitute" or Kahlighat as it is known to those here in Calcutta, Mother Teresa's first charitable organization. Sorry...no photos...not allowed....seriously if you try, the nuns pretty much assault you. I did get a picture of the street and the exterior of the building.
From there we went on to see Victoria Memorial Hall, it was built for a visit Queen Victoria was making to Calcutta...a magnificent structure. She never actually stayed in it, when she did come for her visit she stayed in the governor's mansion...what a waste.
From there we walked through scary traffic to see St. Paul's Temple, truly amazing architecture, we originally thought it was a Catholic church but it is actually part of the Anglican church of India, we have some pictures below of the inside and outside!
After that we headed back for lunch which was quickly followed by a trip to the Indian Market to shop for some gifts for mothers of the children in the Cleft Palate Pediatric Ward of the hospital. Shopping was exciting and we road on Rickshaws which was quite an experience.
After our shopping trip we came back to the dining hall and packed 30 boxes full of gifts such as shampoo, baby powder, candy, brushes, and many more useful items a mother could need. We found out that a lot of the items we bought for these mothers they had never been lucky enough to have due to being from a village and always being poor.
Following our packing of boxes I worked on some video uploads and a small group of our team went to the Red Light district of Calcutta to get a real look at how terrible the streets really are here....pre-teens already being sold and used in prostitution rings...truly horrible.
Once they returned we lugged the boxes over to the 2nd floor of the hospital and personally hand delivered each box to every mother in the Pediatric wing, I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
While at the hospital, Michael ran up to the 6th floor and checked in on our Norwegian friends. It turns out that late in the night after we prayed for her, the young girl's fever broke and she was feeling much much better today. The are still waiting for some lab results on what was wrong with her before they release her, but all signs point towards a miraculous healing!
After this long day of service we treated ourselves to a night on the town. We split into 2 groups, one went to a Chinese food restaraunt and my group went to McDonald's...which served no beef :-( but chicken nuggets, coke, and fries still tasted amazing! We met up for ice cream at Baskin and Robbins and made our long trek home to pack it in and call it a night!
Following that I have been working for a couple of hours with Kevin Fontaine back home, he is in my office downloading the video you guys are going to watch in service tomorrow morning from my server!
Video is downloaded and burned to DVD, checked, and ready to go for CHURCH!
I hope that you guys are blessed immensely by the footage in the video. The video cannot convey even 1% of what we have seen, felt, and experienced here, but I did my best to give you some of the most moving footage I had.
Of course my computer was on the fritz while I was editing so the quality of my editing is not at its best and special FX are nill, but please look at the footage for what it is....India at its worst....and best.
Air quality also at its worst...had my third nose bleed this morning right after chapel and my fourth one about 2 hours ago...ick....this air is killing me....
We went to the "Dying and the Destitute" or Kahlighat as it is known to those here in Calcutta, Mother Teresa's first charitable organization. Sorry...no photos...not allowed....seriously if you try, the nuns pretty much assault you. I did get a picture of the street and the exterior of the building.
From there we went on to see Victoria Memorial Hall, it was built for a visit Queen Victoria was making to Calcutta...a magnificent structure. She never actually stayed in it, when she did come for her visit she stayed in the governor's mansion...what a waste.
From there we walked through scary traffic to see St. Paul's Temple, truly amazing architecture, we originally thought it was a Catholic church but it is actually part of the Anglican church of India, we have some pictures below of the inside and outside!
After that we headed back for lunch which was quickly followed by a trip to the Indian Market to shop for some gifts for mothers of the children in the Cleft Palate Pediatric Ward of the hospital. Shopping was exciting and we road on Rickshaws which was quite an experience.
After our shopping trip we came back to the dining hall and packed 30 boxes full of gifts such as shampoo, baby powder, candy, brushes, and many more useful items a mother could need. We found out that a lot of the items we bought for these mothers they had never been lucky enough to have due to being from a village and always being poor.
Following our packing of boxes I worked on some video uploads and a small group of our team went to the Red Light district of Calcutta to get a real look at how terrible the streets really are here....pre-teens already being sold and used in prostitution rings...truly horrible.
Once they returned we lugged the boxes over to the 2nd floor of the hospital and personally hand delivered each box to every mother in the Pediatric wing, I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
While at the hospital, Michael ran up to the 6th floor and checked in on our Norwegian friends. It turns out that late in the night after we prayed for her, the young girl's fever broke and she was feeling much much better today. The are still waiting for some lab results on what was wrong with her before they release her, but all signs point towards a miraculous healing!
After this long day of service we treated ourselves to a night on the town. We split into 2 groups, one went to a Chinese food restaraunt and my group went to McDonald's...which served no beef :-( but chicken nuggets, coke, and fries still tasted amazing! We met up for ice cream at Baskin and Robbins and made our long trek home to pack it in and call it a night!
Following that I have been working for a couple of hours with Kevin Fontaine back home, he is in my office downloading the video you guys are going to watch in service tomorrow morning from my server!
Video is downloaded and burned to DVD, checked, and ready to go for CHURCH!
I hope that you guys are blessed immensely by the footage in the video. The video cannot convey even 1% of what we have seen, felt, and experienced here, but I did my best to give you some of the most moving footage I had.
Of course my computer was on the fritz while I was editing so the quality of my editing is not at its best and special FX are nill, but please look at the footage for what it is....India at its worst....and best.
Air quality also at its worst...had my third nose bleed this morning right after chapel and my fourth one about 2 hours ago...ick....this air is killing me....
10/30/09
The dying and the destitute....
Today will be a very different day for us...
Instead of spending time with children we will be spending the majority of our day at Mother Teresa's first Charitable organization, "The Dying and the Destitute" My facts may be a little off on this, but pretty much...everybody there...dies....
Once you go in...you don't come out, no humor intended.
All they do for them is make them comfortable, that's all that they can do.
We are also going to do some shopping this afternoon, we are going to buy some very nice things for the mothers of the Cleft Palate children in the Pediatrics Ward at the hospital, we are thinking body wash, soaps, etc. Very pleasant smelling things and things they are not used to having.
Air quality continues to be terrible....I had my 3rd nose bleed in 2 days...this one was pretty serious and started right after chapel service got out....got blood all over their nice hardwood floor :-(
Mom...don't worry I am ok!
But I wanted to share that to depict how rough the air quality has been on all of us.
We have to leave in just a few moments....sorry no pictures.... :-(
But I did finish my video I should put it on the blog soon!
Keep us in your prayers!
Instead of spending time with children we will be spending the majority of our day at Mother Teresa's first Charitable organization, "The Dying and the Destitute" My facts may be a little off on this, but pretty much...everybody there...dies....
Once you go in...you don't come out, no humor intended.
All they do for them is make them comfortable, that's all that they can do.
We are also going to do some shopping this afternoon, we are going to buy some very nice things for the mothers of the Cleft Palate children in the Pediatrics Ward at the hospital, we are thinking body wash, soaps, etc. Very pleasant smelling things and things they are not used to having.
Air quality continues to be terrible....I had my 3rd nose bleed in 2 days...this one was pretty serious and started right after chapel service got out....got blood all over their nice hardwood floor :-(
Mom...don't worry I am ok!
But I wanted to share that to depict how rough the air quality has been on all of us.
We have to leave in just a few moments....sorry no pictures.... :-(
But I did finish my video I should put it on the blog soon!
Keep us in your prayers!
Selfish Blog....
I call this my selfish blog...because...it....is....about.....
ME!!!!
ok...soo anyways, I am converting and compressing some video footage right now and had about 15 minutes to spare and I figured I would spend them with you all.
I am up late tonight down stairs in the basement/Mess Hall working on a video that will hopefully be used in Sunday morning's service back home...hint hint, cough cough, wink wink. A couple of the missionaries here are watching a movie up late just taking it easy...of course I was on duty tonight...their DVD player was on the fritz...so...I fixed it! :-)
*dusts off shoulders proudly*
We had a pretty amazing thing take place tonight, after we got back from the blind school we took about a 2 hour break and then went to the hospital to serve meals to all of the patients. It was really neat, we split up into 4 or 5 teams covering all floors with patients, their are 8 floors in total. My team was the top floor. Michael Ray, Kathy Wright, and myself. We served several different rooms which consisted of Indian Citizens, Canadians, South Koreans, and a pair of very sweet Norwegian women.
What was so neat was when we walked into the room with the 2 Norwegian gals, they looked very down and somber, yet extremely surprised to see the happy smiling faces of 3 very white people walking into the room with their food. The one girl that was the patient was very sick running a fever that was rapidly fluctuating....when it was up...she was miserable...when it was down she felt fine...while we were there she felt miserable....
We talked with them for just a minute or so and then Michael bluntly asked what I was already wondering: "Would you two girls mind me asking you if you are Christians?"
the non-sick Norwegian girl placed her hand over her mouth and looked to be fighting back tears and responded with a head nod and a wimper of yes. She asked us how we knew, and Michael simply replied we didn't know, but can we pray with you?
They were thrilled to have us pray for them, we let her know we were going to lay hands on her and pray as the Bible instructs us to do, we prayed for her that the fever would disappear and that her health would be restored. We plan on checking in on them tomorrow and see how they are doing!
They let us know how appreciative they were and that this was the biggest blessing they had received all day. It was great for us to have that feeling of knowing that we helped somebody, and that it simply came out of just taking them their evening meal.
What is even more moving to me is when I place myself in their shoes....2 very young foreigners stuck in an Indian hospital with no friends or family around, one with a sickness/illness that the doctors can't figure out and is making her miserable...really no hope at the very moment...most likely praying that God would help them and reveal himself to them...then 3 Christians walk into their hospital room asking if they can pray for them.
All I can say is that it was awesome for us, but if I was in their shoes that would be such a confirmation of God caring and letting them know that he is never going to leave them or forsake them.
on a lighter note....I have been dying to show you guys two photos...
The piles of cow pies....
and the Bull that tried to maim me...
ME!!!!
ok...soo anyways, I am converting and compressing some video footage right now and had about 15 minutes to spare and I figured I would spend them with you all.
I am up late tonight down stairs in the basement/Mess Hall working on a video that will hopefully be used in Sunday morning's service back home...hint hint, cough cough, wink wink. A couple of the missionaries here are watching a movie up late just taking it easy...of course I was on duty tonight...their DVD player was on the fritz...so...I fixed it! :-)
*dusts off shoulders proudly*
We had a pretty amazing thing take place tonight, after we got back from the blind school we took about a 2 hour break and then went to the hospital to serve meals to all of the patients. It was really neat, we split up into 4 or 5 teams covering all floors with patients, their are 8 floors in total. My team was the top floor. Michael Ray, Kathy Wright, and myself. We served several different rooms which consisted of Indian Citizens, Canadians, South Koreans, and a pair of very sweet Norwegian women.
What was so neat was when we walked into the room with the 2 Norwegian gals, they looked very down and somber, yet extremely surprised to see the happy smiling faces of 3 very white people walking into the room with their food. The one girl that was the patient was very sick running a fever that was rapidly fluctuating....when it was up...she was miserable...when it was down she felt fine...while we were there she felt miserable....
We talked with them for just a minute or so and then Michael bluntly asked what I was already wondering: "Would you two girls mind me asking you if you are Christians?"
the non-sick Norwegian girl placed her hand over her mouth and looked to be fighting back tears and responded with a head nod and a wimper of yes. She asked us how we knew, and Michael simply replied we didn't know, but can we pray with you?
They were thrilled to have us pray for them, we let her know we were going to lay hands on her and pray as the Bible instructs us to do, we prayed for her that the fever would disappear and that her health would be restored. We plan on checking in on them tomorrow and see how they are doing!
They let us know how appreciative they were and that this was the biggest blessing they had received all day. It was great for us to have that feeling of knowing that we helped somebody, and that it simply came out of just taking them their evening meal.
What is even more moving to me is when I place myself in their shoes....2 very young foreigners stuck in an Indian hospital with no friends or family around, one with a sickness/illness that the doctors can't figure out and is making her miserable...really no hope at the very moment...most likely praying that God would help them and reveal himself to them...then 3 Christians walk into their hospital room asking if they can pray for them.
All I can say is that it was awesome for us, but if I was in their shoes that would be such a confirmation of God caring and letting them know that he is never going to leave them or forsake them.
on a lighter note....I have been dying to show you guys two photos...
The piles of cow pies....
*UPDATED* Hello those at home....PHOTOS PHOTOS PHOTOS!!!
Hey Mom and Dad, love you!
We are doing well, today was a very good day!
We worked with children at the Blind School, OH MY GOODNESS they are the most amazing people, precious, beautiful and so very talented!
I don't want to say too much I will let Laura explain in her video, but I will post some photos...along with one photo I have been wanting to post for a while.
Health is pretty good here, off and on one or two of us will feel sick, tired, or both...but we think it is mostly due to lack of sleep, different diet, and lots and lots of continuous travel and hard work, not to mention dehydration and heat exhaustion. We are all always looking after one another so no worries!
We are on a little break before feeding children in the children's ward at the hospital tonight.
Here is Laura.....
Take it away gal....
This sweet little girl singing was born blind, but that wasn't good enough for her parents...they decided in order for her to be a proper begger and more efficient that they would stick her feet in flower pots for an extended amount of time in order to make her handicapped when she walks as well....
Here is a photo of her feet
We are doing well, today was a very good day!
We worked with children at the Blind School, OH MY GOODNESS they are the most amazing people, precious, beautiful and so very talented!
I don't want to say too much I will let Laura explain in her video, but I will post some photos...along with one photo I have been wanting to post for a while.
Health is pretty good here, off and on one or two of us will feel sick, tired, or both...but we think it is mostly due to lack of sleep, different diet, and lots and lots of continuous travel and hard work, not to mention dehydration and heat exhaustion. We are all always looking after one another so no worries!
We are on a little break before feeding children in the children's ward at the hospital tonight.
Here is Laura.....
Take it away gal....
This sweet little girl singing was born blind, but that wasn't good enough for her parents...they decided in order for her to be a proper begger and more efficient that they would stick her feet in flower pots for an extended amount of time in order to make her handicapped when she walks as well....
Here is a photo of her feet
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