Updates from Southern India

Well, we recently finished our time in Southern India and have now arrived in the north. What an amazing time we had down there, I'm so blessed! As with many India towns, it had two names. I thought the English name was long (Trivandrum) however the local's called it Thiruvananthapuram. Ugh, there's no way I even tried pronouncing it properly. Our team was quite restricted on our actions because of the government in Kerala State, it was actually a bit confusing. Technically we were in a closed state that was not open to Christians preaching the Gospel however, there were so many churches and open Christians that we found in the area. I came to the conclussion that Christianity was allowed as long as you weren't trying to convert other people. So, we did a lot of praying under the guise of visiting tourist locations, tried to build local relationships with Christians and non-Christians, and preached in churches and Christian related events during most of our time there. We had a lot of fun and built some amazing friendships in just a few short weeks. Here's some of my favorite highlights from that time:

• Getting on the Sleeper Train for our 10 hour ride to Trivandrum and realizing that we only had 4 beds for the 7 of us (but then quickly being blessed by the conductor with the 3 extra beds that we were told weren't avaliable).


• Meeting Communism face to face. The Communist party is one of the major ruling political organizations in Kerala, their logo is everywhere. We even were stopped in traffic because a Communist parade was marching across the street!


• Hearing wild lions roaring from across a lake before speaking and singing at a youth rally.


• Teaching 30 teenagers from a church how to share the Gospel message with other people.


• Getting asked numerous times if I'm Muslim (and once an American Jew). Maybe my beard it getting too long now?


• Walking inside the first church that Thomas/Didymus built in India! It's now run by the Indian Orthodox Church, it was so amazing to see!


• Seeing 3 different oceans come together at Cape Comorin (the most southern tip of India).

In the last post I made about Coimbatore I mentioned food poisoning. In Trivandrum it was all about heat rashes (I counted 4 different rashes on my body at one time) and getting Giardia on the last day. The temperature in our new town is cooler and so the rashes are disappearing and I was able to get some medicine to counteract the Giardia so life is peachy again. Again, I had such an amazing time in Trivandrum but I think my favorite memories from the whole trip were those with one of our hosts and his family. He was such a blessing to our whole team and he laughed at all my jokes. I look forward to the day when we can meet again.

-----

And now, a request for help. Due to the cost of living being higher than we had expected in both Coimbatore and Trivandrum, my team is running low on finances. We have a small stop for 3 days in another town next week before embarking on a 5 day prayer trek through remote villages near Nepal. We have about half the money that we need for the prayer trek, and then we're broke (we also have 3 days in Delhi after the trek and before our flight back to South Africa that we need to have money for). I feel bad asking for money again, but the truth of the matter is that I don't have many options. All of the 7 people on the team each pulled their own weight on this trip and raise their percentage of the group finances that we needed. We haven't spent money on anything extravagant or run off for any trips to the day spa. There was no mismanagement of funds, lost or stolen money, or anything else along those lines, we just miscalculated and ran into things that cost more than had been originally planned on. Asking for money is always hard and never fun (some things are hard but fun, this is neither).

If you have a desire to help there's two different ways. The first is financially obviously. Every little bit helps and no donation is too small. The second is through prayer, James 5:16 says that the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective and I believe that. We need the money asap.

If you are able to use the Paypal link (it's safe, simple, and secure!) in the upper left corner then please do so. It's the fastest way to get money to us. Any help is appreciated, as always. Also, in roughly 1 month I will be landing in sunny San Francisco with many pictures, stories, and friends/family that need visiting (hopefully some of them have a couch I can sleep on for a few nights haha). I'm enjoying my time here immensly but I'm also looking forward to June 13th.