Currently, I am
sitting at an internet café in Patna, Bihar. We have had a crazy journey while
being here and have been able to see a lot of Bihar so far. Within the 3 weeks
of us being here in Patna, we have been moving around a lot to different guest
houses, apartments and ministry houses. For example, when we arrived in Patna
last week, we stayed at a ministry house for a few days and went to a youth
fellowship in which I talked about in my last blog. After a few days, we all
piled into a taxi with one small backpack each and drove to another apartment
about 45 minutes away. We have been working with a YWAm couple, Levine and
Esther and staying in their home. Earlier this week, we remodeled their DTS
room which is actually a few apartments. They are the leaders of a DTS which
will be starting on June 9th. We completely cleaned the apartments
scrubbed the bathrooms, the floors, the bedrooms and worked two days on
remodeling and cleaning the rooms up. The boys put together bunk beds for th e
incoming DTS students and inserted fans in the ceilings. The girls and I washed and scrubbed all the dishes and
appliance before I organized the kitchen. We then dusted, put up curtains and
decorated the walls with Bible verses, encouraging quotes, a construction paper
cross and decorative words to add color. Now, the DTS apartment is ready for
their DTS to start! It was good to see the apartments in the beginning and to
see how much work they all needed and by the end of the second day, all the
rooms, the kitchens, the classrooms, bathrooms and bedrooms are all ready.
Wednesday, we did
house visits all day. As a team, we
walked in 115-116 degree weather to six different houses in the morning. At
each house, we either prayed for the families, shared encouragement from the Bible, shared
testimonies or shared a Bible story. At many of the houses the families were
very hospitable and offered us soda, mango juice, snacks, fresh fruit and at one place, ice
cream with a special pastry. At one of the houses, the mother humbled herself
to get down on her hands and knees and wash each of our feet after we had
walked a few miles to get to her house. Her hospitality reminded me of Jesus
about how he came to the earth to serve. She was so sweet and offered us fresh
bananas, watermelon, mango juice, ice cream and a fresh donut pastry. IT was
such a blessing and I was amazed by her servant heart.
On Thursday, we woke
up early and put some clothes and supplies in our carry-on back packs. Our team then walked with Esther to a place
where we all loaded into a motorized rick shaw.
There was 11 of us in one rickshaw along with the driver and all our
backpacks and supplies for the next few days.
We then were dropped off at a temple in which Rafael, a Brazilian man
who works with YWAM as well, picked us up in a truck with a covered back. Four
of us loaded in the back of the truck and the rest of us in the front. Rafael
then drove us 3 1/2 hours to a city called Bodagyha. We then visited many
temples in the city which is a tourist city for visiting temples. I was amazed because many countries have
built Buddhist temples in this city. This city is known to be the birthplace of
Buddhism. As we traveled to the different temples, buildings and monuments, we
prayer walked over the areas and interceded admist the spiritual warfare. These
temples were huge and hundreds of people visit these temples every day to
worship, burn incense, and pray to Buddha. We stayed at a guest house Thursday
evening which was actually more of a hotel/hostel. But it was such a blessing
because the rooms had air conditioning and there were two of us per room. On
Friday, we visited more temples and in the morning, we drove out in the middle
of nowhere to where there was a temple on the top of a mountain. This temple is
known to be the place to where apparently Buddha fasted for 6 years in a cave
to achieve ‘”enlightenment.” We walked up to this cave and saw the place to
where Buddha apparently stayed. As we hiked up the mountain, there were monkeys
that roamed the mountainside. It was quite entertaining to see how close we
could get to them and take pictures of them. They were good sized monkeys and
some of the mothers had little baby monkeys latched onto them. From the top of
the mountain, it was a beautiful view onto the landscape below which consisted
of flat desert land and some greenery. We then visited more temples before
beginning the treck back to Patna. Despite the traffic, it took us 4 ½ hours to
drive back to Patna. The driving was crazy as our driver basically played chicken
with the other busses, rick shaws, bikes and cars. Watching everything from the
back of the covered truck was quite breathtaking as we drove through acres of
farm land. In this way, Patna is much different then Kolkata because it is definitely
more country side and farm land. IT is more desert but Patna is more of a busy
city.
Anyway, this next
week we will be helping lead a teen VBS and probably doing more house
visits. The following week we will be
working with the Assemblies of God church and helping the pastor with different
ministries. Hopefully, I will be able to blog sometime next week if I can find
an internet café near our other house which we are going back to tomorrow. Thank
you for your prayers . They are greatly appreciated. Please continue to pray
for our safety, health and that we will be staying hydrated in this insane hot
weather. Every day is quite an adventure and I am excited to see what else God
will do in this state. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying yourselves. I
can’t wait to see friends and family on June 23rd when I fly home.
IT has been a challenging but awesome journey here in India!
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