tea of soul

we are surrounded by mountains wrapped in misty fog, a fine white covering that lends ethereal sense of beauty to this peculiar mountain town we are embracing...every day we relish indian and nepali simple foods, and earnestly practice simple nepali phrases. cold hands and toes, warmed occasionally by mugs of warm, rich coffee or happy hot water bottles at night...the other day we worshiped standing together on our simple balcony in the view of majestic himalayas, and hills of this mountain people's dwellings - our hearts rejoicing in the grandeur and faithfulness of our God in this place. though we struggle, it is little compared to the stories already we hear of God working in this place, the certainty of our meaning to be here...though we are cold, we are warmed by brisk walks, words of God and encouraging interactions with friends and nepali people....yes, we are in darjeeling!!!

after long and arduous train and jeep trip up harrowing mountain roads, we have been ensconced in our frosty darjeeling chateau for a week today! have embraced a week of intense-but-good language training with our nepali teacher deepok, and have met backpackers, nepali friends and various people from two ch**ches here! (we have to be careful of writing, so read between lines and stars)

the colourful windows above: first, a view from the balcony of our chateau! this is katengunga (sp!), the third highest mtn in world! everest is just out of view and soon we will mount to tiger hill for spectacular view! other pictures: a typical calcutta street (typical shacks along roads, old buildings and yellow taxis that traversed us around the city), and some friends we met at city central of calcutta (more developed and touristy area - these teens loved hearing the worship songs hanna played and we sang, we will hopefully meet up with them again when we return in march!)

our whole team is doing well, we are thankful for your p***er and support. this monday we start intense two weeks with youth from two ch**ches around here, with a couple days of teaching and three days at villages! (we are split up, and each have at least an hour hike to get to villages, my group probably a few hours hike! yay!!) many of the villages are apparently tea estates, relying on growing tea to support village (and now tea industry not doing well. but we hear God is doing cool things in many villages!).

we have learned about bhuddism, hinduism, visited a bhuddist monastery and hindu temple...here are bhuddist prayer flags at hindu temple, and our p***erful leader gen!

we really enjoyed working at mother teresa home in calcutta, especially after seeing the pain and struggle of calcutta streets, to see God doing something about it. truly, 'blessed is he who is generous to the poor' (prov 14.21). we struggle to understand and deal with all the beggars and poor, but it is good that we struggle. probably for a lot of us, our favorite day in calcutta was last thurs, we had a "fa1th" day of asking God what to do. gen and dina took coffee to a shop owner, who asked them why they would give to him, with tears in his eyes, and they had long and good interaction with that family. janneka and hanna and i (callie) fed milk formula to a baby on the street and talked with the sister and mother, and then when we entered calcutta hospital/university complex downtown, felt extreme need to p*** just pouring from our lips, could not stop p***ing!! (for the first time in my life, it was like we couldn't NOT p***)...a few minutes later a well-dressed guy came up to us (standing there) and said, "you foreigners? come with me!" he turned out to be the (hindu) head of entire hospital and we had long good conversation with him and got to pray for him!!

okay quirky internet cafe is closing. lastly - a picture of our beautiful tanja with a little orphan girl at mother teresa home!

arrival in colourful craziness!

we have arrived calcutta (kolkata)!
thank you for your prayers, calls and emails

we left brisbane base friday arvo after being prayed for by pretty much everyone, and had a happy flight to thailand, where gen's and tanja's and my (callie's) taxi cab got lost for first time..eventually we arrived at a clean hotel (with yummy breakfast) and slept and enjoyed a few thai massages and market places of bangkok...bangkok was more developed than some of us were expecting, quite western with developed road systems, but not an abundance of english speakers so we quickly adopted our 'pidgin' form we have even begun speaking to each other sometimes (we eat now? you go where?)...haha.

sat night we flew safely into kolkata, where it doesn't smell right now (lucky us) i think because not so hot as summer..quite cool in mornings and evenings. we have a little hotel where the manager speaks english and we are lullaby'ed to sleep every night by boisterous traffic, cars blaring...and woken to active fish market which flourishes downstairs below our windows! we are learning how to deal with taxi drivers, and love the crazy driving here. (a few of us have even gotten to travel a bit traditional indian style - rickshaw two-wheel buggy carried by guy in front. hm. kolkata is a poverty-striken, problem-ridden city..they say it's cleaned up in the last few years, still it is always sobering for us to see the hurt and the pain and the hopeless lifestyles...(while also not wanting to imagine that western lifestyles themselves hold the answers!)...this is a spiritually dark place. shrines on every street, incense and prayers to idols everywhere...mysticism and superstition we find everywhere.

today our second day volunteering at mother theresa home! dina and tim are at dana bavan (spelling?), they got to play cricket outside yesterday and then are working with handicapped children (mostly boys) to feed them, change them, do exercises, etc. the rest of us are in shintu bavan house...gen, mel and janneka are working with handicapped children upstairs (exercises, eating, cleaning up), and hanna and tanja and i are helping downstairs with boisterous toddlers and young children who might be adopted (they have crazy amounts of energy and are love hungry of us). we are praying much through what we see here, wanting to be sensitive to understand and feel people's pain, without being overwhelmed though!

we love some of the indian food (butter non, yum!!) but also having some trouble adjusting stomachs! enjoying the happiness of squatty potties (wry smile) and starting out each day with worship and prayer together, we want to see God in this place and walk boldly in any way we can be His hands and feet. friday night (at midnight!) we'll be leaving for darjeeling (via 15hr train + 6hr jeep) and i think we're looking forward to going somewhere we can settle in a little, and learn more of the language. language barrier here is hard so we work much through smiles, gestures, simple english and some "God bless you"s where receptive..much prayer...

some prayer requests for you! compiled from our team to you....
+ unity on team
+ boldness
+ good health
+ wisdom...to deal with what we see, and not be overwhelmed...yes.
+ teaching...how to embrace and relate to the culture
+ safety in travel
+ signs and wonders of God, not for sensationalism but because we don't want to limit God!
+ Holy Spirit to work in and through us!
+ protection over our leaders, wisdom to lead
+ patience
+ humor in the hard situations (soo good!)
+ communication in the team and with contacts
+ building friendships with indians and nepali..this more when we arrive darjeeling.

pictures to come when we arrive in mountain city!
keep us in your prayers,
and walk boldly, humbly with our God.

almost leaving!

we have only five days left on our brisbane base before leaving for india!!

a few logistics for you to pray for: next friday, 3pm (brisbane time) we fly out to bangkok, thailand! we have a layover there (most of our saturday) and that evening fly out to calcutta! we'll be in calcutta for about a week, working in the mother theresea homes, before laboriously traversing north to darjeeling. here is a gorgeous picture of darjeeling!


we just returned from busy ministry weeks up at airlie beach (north of brisbane, close to the great barrier reef on the coast) and our final week we have a speaker on "Lordship," promising to be an intense week of lectures, finishing workbooks and packing and preparing for our departure! We have raised almost all of our finances needed, thank you for your support!

i (callie) will be writing updates for you in these coming weeks. we're so grateful for your prayer...i reckon our team is excited, but also praying hard. following is a general (tentative!) idea of our first few weeks for you!

• week o - preparation! "Lordship week" of submitting to God :] pray for wisdom, peace in frantic preparations! also God's voice as we prepare sermons and teachings for outreach
• week 1 - calcutta, mother theresea home, travel =P pray for health in travel, peace of heart in midst of poverty and pain of calcutta, that we'd be able to bring help and encouragement to those working in calcutta, that we
• week 2 - orientation, joining with ywamers there, intense language study of nepali!! yes!! pray for quickness of mind, patience, motivation, and people we can start having conversations with! also settling in, that we would acclimate to culture quickly!
  
• week 3 - mini-dts (discipleship training school): we will be doing a two-week version of our school for nepali teens in darjeeling. the first week we'll lead lectures and teachings on what we've learned (Fear of God, Biblical Worldview, Character and Nature of God, Hearing the Voice of God, Holy Spirit, Spiritual Warfare, Father Heart of God, etc!),
  
• week 4 - mini-dts outreach! the second week we'll take the teens with us to villages for outreach! i'm excited about this, i reckon they will be more effective than we could be with their own people, God will use us together! we'll be going into some villages where they have never heard the gospel...i hear we do TONS of WALKING in the HIMALAYAS!
• week 5-6 - we'll come back to darjeeling and run another mini-dts
• week 7-9 - well, you'll have to come back to our blog site!! ;)

we'll be sending email updates as well so if you are not on the list, send an email to ywam.india.2oo7@gmail.com (those are oh's, not zeros, in the address) and i'll add you to the list! it'll probably be only once a week or so.

if you would like to respond to our blog just click on the 'responses' at the end of the posting and you can let us know how you are praying or if you have words, verses, or thoughts for us!!

in Christ we are stretching to the future,
callie (for the group)