11/5/09

Home Home Home!!!

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!

11/3/09

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!

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!

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!