Time to update

It's been quite some time since I wrote on here, and it's definitely time to update. We were just settling into the Kolk flat when I last left, and I'm just about to head back there to start settling in again:-) Although I'm not sure that you could ever be fully 'settled' in India as there is always something different / unusual going on!

For our first village trip we'd planned to leave on Monday morning, but there was a strike, and it continued for two days. In the end we decided to go anyway, so caught a Taxi at some unearthly hour on Wed morning to Howrah station. The train was going, so we boarded, and after an hour it stopped... and we waited...and waited,... and then heard that there were some demonstrators on the tracks, who really didn't want the trains running, but Dad went to view, and saw nothing so we're still not sure if it was a fallacy or not. One district we passed through there was lots of shouting, and we were thankful that the train didn't stop for long, and we reached West Midnipur safely and were greeted by a massive shout from our brother Akash Kumar. The three hour trip took us 4.5 hours.

We had lunch with a group of brothers and then retired for some much needed rest. In the afternoon Akash brought his wife Rita Rani plus other contacts for a study which Dad conducted in his hotel room.

In the evening we walked to their house and meet the family and neighbours and all in sundry who had seen the white people and wanted to be introduced. There was a Telegu speaking family there which was nice, because I'd felt very strange being in India and not in AP where I can generally understand the subject of a conversation. But by this time, my Telegu was very rusty, and my head was confused as to whether the words I was thinking were Telegu or Bengali. Strange predicament I know. Very frustrating.

One elderly contact and his wife forced us to sit down and wanted to hear about Jesus. It was lovely to see him so interested, and we thought it was strange that he didn't follow up with the studies the next day at the hotel.

I rode a bike back to the hotel which was very refreshing in the cool evening air. Some guy with Akash leant it to me, so I rode in circles around the group the whole way home. By the time we got back to the hotel it was so late, and we were so tired, so we just opted for a room service dinner before collapsing into bed.