It's Thursday evening, about 10:00. So many details to see to, so many things to cross off the list, so much work I still need to get done for my job. Oh, and pack my bags, too. But I have a rather strange sense of calm about it all. Is that faith, or is it foolishness?
To the world, it probably seems foolish to invest the time, effort, and expense to travel halfway around the world to work our tails off- and take vacation days to do so. To the world, it is foolish to leave behind my wife, my home, and my little Abbie dog to go serve people in a dangerous uncomfortable place. To the world... well, I don't really care about what the world thinks. I place my faith in things other than the world. But I still have bags to pack, details to check, and a list to check off.
I will kiss Lynne goodbye and pat Abbie on the head, and leave Paso Robles Saturday morning at 8:00 with Josh and Glen to head up to San Francisco, where we will meet up with 4 other members of our team - John, Gary, Dana, and Todd. The seven of us, and our senders, will gather at Trinity Lutheran Church in Burlingame, where we are being hosted for lunch, commissioning, and communion. We'll be stuffing our bags with books called "Changeless Christ", 80 lbs worth, for the Christian Media Centre, toys and goodies for the kids, and gifts for our hosts.
We'll fly out of SFO at 4:45 pm, flying for 16 hours solid to our connecting flight in Dubai, then another 4 hours across the Arabian Sea and southern India to Chennai, on the SE coast of India. We arrive at 3:00 am local time on Monday. We'll be joined later that morning by Kathryn, who will be with us for a week and a half while on leave from her teaching job in Korea. The following Saturday morning the remaining three team members, Steve, Dan, and Drew arrive.
We'll be working with Indian nationals to help refurbish the 50 year-old Christian Media Centre, and also be visiting and learning more about the Indian culure, and the difficulty of spreading the Gospel in India. We hope you'll join us on this mission journey; we'll be blogging quite a bit about our experiences and impressions, posting pictures and video, and asking for your support and prayers. There will be ways for you to send comments and questions back to us, from the comfort of your home or office. It'll be a hoot.
On our return, we will be bringing back catachisms and Bible study materials in Hindi and Tamil, to be sent to a Lutheran pastor, from the state of Tamil Nadu no less, who serves as a missionary in New York. I get more than a little awestruck at how God connects us to others.
Watch this space for more posts in the days to come.
Wow! We are only a few days away from heading to India!
The first group leaves three weeks from today!
The rest of us leave a few days later!
All the team members have been spending today in a training session--learning about the Christian Media Centre and about cultural differences. We've also discussed individual responsibilities and ways to grow our relationships with each other.
It is pretty cool that I can be included in this training even though I am sitting in my home office in Idaho. What an amazing thing technology is...as long as it works! Beyond technology, what an amazing thing to know that the same God who we worship here is the God served and loved by our brothers and sisters in India!
It might be hard to concentrate on the "regular" things that need to get taken care of over the next three weeks!
As Chuck is fonding of declaring--"We're going to India! Can you believe it! We're going to India!"
Wow!
