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....
