Day 9

India Time: 12:31 AM (July 4, 2013)

CST: 2:01 PM (July 3, 2013)

What a day!  While we didn't make it to the beach, we had plenty of other great things happen today!  First, Brother Nathan and I hung out with the gang (Brother Solomon, Brother Prem Kumar, Pastor Jyothi and one other) while they fixed the car.  The coolant hose has been leaking and the battery has been dying in Scorpio, so they swapped batteries between the SUV and the car that would be more easily push started and fixed the hose.  When we first got down there, Brother Solomon came out from under the car with a huge smile on his face.  He's always so happy to see us (mostly Nathan).  :-)  We got to help push start the car and from there the work was pretty much done.

Most of our morning was spent assembling the rest of the crafts as well as the pages of the booklets that we got back from the printers.  After a big lunch we finished those up and had some time to goof around to pump us up for teaching.  This included a lot of laughing over silly voices, and a hat that was pretty much just the wrapper for the paper put on my head.

We headed to the Machavaram village tonight.  The children were very sweet--They took a little more warming up than the last few nights, but they were still very happy to see us.  We also got to meet Brother Prem Kumar's baby son (8 months old and very cute)!  He's a big blessing to them, as we found out after the service.  Pastor Jyothi told us they waited seven years for him.

The children came out and introduced themselves in English and asked how we were doing.  They sang a few songs for us and we got started.  We've been having a bit more trouble with the power lately; Pastor Jyothi said that it's on restricted supply.  We taught by camping lantern and I can't help but chuckle to myself when I think that in the US we sometimes do that for fun.  Tonight, when we were singing Father Abraham, the camping lantern died too, so we were all singing in the dark!  It's very entertaining to sing the song twice as Pastor Jyothi is having us do now.  The kids often mimic our actions as we sing it for them the first time and are hilarious when we get to "right leg" since they're all sitting down.  It usually results in an adorable wiggle.

After the program, Pastor Jyothi pointed out a snake that had made it's way onto the dias outside.  It was dead by this time (courtesy of Brother Solomon), but Pastor explained that this one was deadly.  It was a viper!  Pastor Jyothi held it up so we could see the size.  It was about three and a half feet long and had a relatively narrow body.  Tonight when we got back to the hotel, we made a banner out of the wrappings for our papers for Brother Super Solomon the Snake Slayer!  We're very excited to give it to him tomorrow.  We find ourselves driven more and more to find ways to make the gang laugh.

Tomorrow morning we are headed to the beach (for real this time!).  We will also have our last night of teaching in Batalpa before we head to Tenali.  It's hard to believe we're in the final days of our teaching and with every passing day I find myself wishing there was another tacked on the end of our trip.  

~Becky Haddad