A Weekend Retreat...

Last weekend we had the opportunity to spend two days with the wonderful national women we partner with as well as the wives of many of our partners. I went into the weekend feeling tired and a little stressed because we were in charge of leading this retreat for the women, and I wanted it to go well so badly. I had no idea how much fun we actually would have! The theme of the weekend was Masterpieces: Created by G.o.d. We wanted to give the women some good teaching from the word and encourage them to relax a little bit away from their busy home lives. 

I was really excited to see that my friend R., a Cousin friend had come along with her sister in law to join us. On Friday night we learned a story from the word using henna storying. During this type of storying the leader tells the story to the group and then shows them a henna design that corresponds to the story. Our story was the story of the lady with the alabaster jar of perfume. After telling the story, the leader asks questions about what the listener thought about the story like what it teaches about the Father and the Son, what it teaches about humanity, and how they can apply this story to their lives. R. has had followers from our team pouring into her life for about three years. I think she knows that she needs to believe, but reluctance from her husband and mother are a huge barrier for her. It's really difficult for a Cousin woman to defy the wishes of her husband, and following definitely does just that. R. was fascinated by the henna design and quickly picked up the story to retell it again. She and I had a good conversation about what it meant that the lady with the perfume would make such a sacrifice for the son. R. was also able to participate in a small group session and hear about what the father is doing in each lady's life as well as spend some time in prayer with us. Unfortunately, she had to leave early the next day to visit a sick relative in the hospital. I know the father is working in her life, she has a lot of questions and a lot of knowledge about the truth. Please lift her up.

On Saturday night, it was my turn to lead a session. My topic was creative arts. I'm not a particularly “creative” person, at least when it comes to leading people in being creative. I had no idea what to do for an hour and a half. But the Father really blessed it... I talked to ladies about how the Father is so creative, which we can see in the beautiful way he makes everything. He gave us that same creative personality, a desire to make things beautiful, imagine and invent. The ways we exercise our creativity can be an act of worship. One of the primary ways people here enjoy being creative is through song. It's one of my favorite things about this culture...people love to sing and they're not afraid to do it in public, during the middle of a meeting, walking down the street, or whenever. So first, I had the ladies share songs of praise to the Father that they had either written themselves or just wanted to share with us. Our language teacher, B., who became a follower just a couple of months ago shared a song she had written herself. Another sister, whose family is from a Cousin background, shared a beautiful song that she had helped to write in the zakir style, the traditional Cousin music style. She and some other cousin background followers had a music workshop at our office where they wrote ten of these songs. Each of these zakirs are each translated stories from the word, from creation to the return of the son, told in the musical style of the Cousin people!

After sharing songs and testimonies, I had a small surprise for the ladies. I let them know that one of my favorite ways to be creative (and to exercise) is to dance. We moved all the chairs and had them line up to learn two Zumba dance (an American aerobic dance style) styles. I will never forget watching thirty three women laugh hysterically, their faces full of joy as they danced to Shakira and Ricky Martin, even those who were dressed in sarees. One of my closest national friends told me afterward that it was amazing to her to see women just let go and enjoy themselves to such a degree. “I've never seen them do that. (Women here) just don't do that,” she said. After we finished our dinner, a large group of them informed me that they wanted to dance more. Exhausted, but thrilled, I agreed. One of my teammates and I taught the electric slide, the macarena and the hokey pokey on a rooftop terrace. We stayed up late into the night on both nights, talking, laughing and sharing. Barriers of language and culture seemed almost nonexistent. I particularly enjoyed a hilarious conversation in our local language with a young sister who was talking about wanting to find her "life partner." She was genuinely concerned that she would not be able to get married before the son comes again. I jokingly assured her that if she sees the son coming, she might ask him to wait a little bit!

It was one of those times that you know you're never going to forget. Living here has not been perfect or easy by any means, but there are those moments that make everything so worth it. Being with dear sisters here who feel like family, crying with them, bearing one another's burdens is so worth it. I hope I have encouraged these dear women even a fraction as much as they have encouraged me! With graduation just two weeks away, the question I inevitably hear from national friends and others is, "What next?" I'm learning to be okay with saying, "I don't know. The Father knows." Living here has helped me to trust the father with my future because I have been living such an uncertain life out here. Nothing ever goes according to plan in South Asia. It's our way of life. Yet uncertainty requires us to place radical trust in the father for his provision, comfort and safeguarding. 

I'll be among you again soon, dear friends and family. Please be patient with me as readjust and occasionally answer you in a language other than English! It will be interesting to see what sort of reverse culture shock occurs. I'm trusting the father!

With some of our close friends at the Ladies' Retreat!

The group on the last morning...it's a closeup because I like the babies.

The view from my national partner's house...at a Thanksgiving party for her newborn niece.

A Tale of Three Villages...

A Saturday Teacher Workshop...
"Only three of you? Well, that will have to do." This was the response we heard from a slightly bewildered elderly headmaster, clad in a traditional white kurta. He frowned from behind his spectacles. They had been somehow told that eight teachers from America would be leading the teacher workshop. I laughed to myself, since these kinds of miscommunications are really frequent. We entered the small room with dirt floor and bamboo walls to begin our teacher workshop with about 25 men and women who teach kindgergarten through tenth grade. It's been good for us to see a variety of school settings, from those who are very well established with teachers who all have a bachelor's degree to those where teachers may not have gone past tenth grade. When we do workshops, Melissa and I trade off lecturing along with our national partner M. and our expat coworker. Our purpose is to facilitate dialogue among teachers about challenges they face and how those problems can be solved as well as introduce new topics like learning styles.  M. became really sick before the training, so for the first time, we went alone... It was so different than being at a training in our homestay village where we were well known, and people hardly bother that we're foreigners anymore. When you're going into a village for the first time...people are more than a little excited. Melissa and I took dozens of cell phone pictures with almost every teacher at their insistence. The training itself went well. This particular school was once run by believers, but is now a government school. When we came to the character education part of our lesson, we gave an example of how a character lesson can be taught using the story of the Good S.maritan from the Word. We instructed the teachers to listen to the story and then divide into two groups to act it out. Whoever could tell the story most accurately would be the winner. They became so excited, and immediately decided that the contest would be men vs. women. The men hurried outside and within minutes were acting out the scene of the robbers accosting the man on the road (their favorite part, because they got to hit each other I think) and the women went to a separate room to make sure none of the men stole their strategy. (For video of these short skits, ask me when I get back.) We gave the men the award for being most entertaining and the ladies the award for being most accurate (They even had someone act as the Son sitting under a tree telling the story as the action happened, I was impressed.) We hope that this is a good way to share the truth indirectly with those who may have no chance of hearing it otherwise. As far as we know, there are no believers in that village anymore... Our purpose in every village we visit is to make connections so that our national partners can continue to build good relationships there in the future. We do have something to provide in the form of teacher workshops...but we want people to know the Truth above all.
A Sunday Visit to our People Group....
Early the next Sunday morning we set out to the village of G. to visit the people from our high cast.e Neighbor people group. We were quietly recieved by Dr. S., who is one of the most respected astrologers in our state. He enthusiastically answered our questions about his people in broken English. We spent over an hour learning about the various remedies he prescribes to people who come to him with problems. Everything from difficulty finding a spouse to family problems to illnesses can be "solved" by the provision of a certain stone. Rubies, for instance, correspond to Jupiter, which is good for marriage difficulties. A stone can be worn in a ring or tied around the forearm. Other remedies might be prescribed, but wearing a stone is considered the "easiest," and thus is the most common remedy to any problem.

We took lunch in Dr. S.'s home with his very excited family members. We were happily accompanied by two of our national partners, wonderful older brothers in the Father who have been an indispensable source of love and encouragement for us as we navigate the extremely complicated high c.ste Neighbor culture. V. and his wife R. are a young couple from a neighboring country who have a vision to reach their high c.ste brothers and sisters with the Good News. B. is an older man who manages our office in the city and also and partners with V., R. and others to reach out to dozens of neighbor communities. Many have come to know the father because of these men, and we are honored to participate in the Kingdom's work with them. Please lift them up as they are often traveling and are busy with so many projects, they are often away from their families and are in need of more time to rest than they have!

After lunch, some community leaders led us on a tour of G. village. There are literally dozens of tiny mundirs or small temples dedicated to various gods around this community. At our final stop, we visted a large nom ghor (name house) where large groups of devotees gather to recite mantras (worship verses that are sung or chanted) to the gods. As we turned to leave the nom ghor, we were suddenly accosted by over fifty community members of every imaginable age, from tiny babies in their mothers' arms to a a sweet, very aged woman with very little hair and no teeth. They watched us at a distance, as if a little bit afraid as we waved and greeted them all. This tiny, stooped elderly woman was the only one who dared to approach us, as she stroked our white skin and chatted to us about where we were from. We are becoming very accustomed to such large crowds gathering to watch us, because foreigners simply do not travel to the interior villages in this region. We are not in a tourist area by any means and it is not uncommon for people to stop their work or stop in the middle of the street simply to stare at us. While the staring is a bit unnerving, and never ceases to be so, we understand that in this culture, staring is not rude, but simply an acceptable means of learning about a person. We were thrilled to be so warmly received and gain so much information about our people from Dr. S.
A Thursday Seminar...
 The next day, my expat coworker L. and I learned that we had been invited back to another village community nearby where we had held the teacher workshop the previous week to teach a session at a seminar about the importance of technology and the importance of learning English in the South Asian context. They sent a car for us and paid for all of our meals, and we decided to go in order to further the relationships our national partners have in that community. All we were told was that we would teach for about 30 minutes each on these two subjects. We had no idea what to expect (which is the usual thing living here). We arrived a little bit late, to find over 70 students of this technology school waiting for us. We were given a seat a table at the head of the room and served tea and snacks, and given the traditional gamosa, a red and white towel that is a symbol of honor for any respected guest. Our co-lecturer was an older Asian man who is a professor at a nearby college. The seminar was mostly conducted in our local language, so it was pretty awkward when we began to teach in English and realized that 99 percent of our audience did not understand what we were saying at all! The seminar had something to do with developing one's "soft skills." Everyone seemed to understand what these were, but no one ever gave any definition of what "soft skills" actually were. We tried to relate what we were speaking about to "soft skills," but that was nearly impossible since we have no idea what that term means.

I was then literally begged and half forced by our program's emcee to sing a song. Since L. refused to sing, I was required to sing "just two lines, please madam!" The only song I could think of to sing was "Your Love is Strong" a believer's song by artist Jon Foreman. I was highly embarassed, as I absolutely never perform anything, especially a song alone in public, but being asked to sing or give a speech without warning is a really common part of our culture, and it is always impossible to say 'no.' Yet later, when we were taking lunch with some of the school's staff at a local restaurant, one of the men asked me whether or not I was a 'professional singer.' That is by far the funniest question I have been asked while living in South Asia...and there have been some good ones ("Are poor people available in America? Are you friends with Justin Bieber? Is Barack Obama your father?) I am reminded as we are rushed off from town to village, seemingly all over the state we live in, that every single relationship we build is significant. We are bringing the presence of the H.S. into these people's communities in an area where the enemy rules people's lives. Even if we are not able to speak a single word of Truth, we know that the people we meet, from small children to old men and women were created to worship the One who lives inside of us. Who else will battle in pr.yer for these people and their families? We constantly intercede for them and ask that the father will send many more in our place when we have gone in just a few short weeks.

I love the people of this nation. So many of them have become members of my second family. They have cared for me in illness and great difficulty, they have helped me to navigate a totally unfamiliar place and helped that unfamiliar place to become a home for me. It is going to be unimaginably difficult to leave them behind.