Here's what's happened since we last spoke...

Hey everyone, we're back in Darjeeling for a day before we head out to another village. Just thouight we would let you know we are all doing great. We had such a great time in this first village (I'm sorry I can't remember the name of it, I mentioned it in a previous post though.) It was called the small village; there was no electricity except for some injenious water powered genorators that they build, and even those were rare. Anyway we took the '3 hour jeep ride' (more like 5 hours, India time) out to the village and from there it was another 20 minute hike to the church where we were staying. The next day we were in charge of a kids program that we had organised. It went wonderfuly. We sang some songs, Tim had a lesson on Jonah and talked about Gods love and Emma and Amanda had a paper/visual presentation to go with it. Abishek, who's village we were visiting translated for us. He did a great job too despite never translating before. He was a little nervous at first but I think he had a great time and we really enjoyed our time with him. We had a craft with beads which all the kids loved and even most of the adults were happy to participate when we offered to them. We also did a skit, which had everyone laughing. It's hard to explain how we did it, but it was about getting caught in the trap of sin. We all got quite animated, especially the boys. After lunch we split the boys and girls up. The guys played soccer (and succeded in breaking a window, which we paid for. A whole $4 with the excange rate!) while the girls went inside the church to play jump rope and paint their nails. I couldn't believe how fast that nail polish went. I had 10 different colors in my hands and just kinda held them up and all the older women grabbed them out of my hands. The girls and I were expecting to be painting little girls' nails for hours, but the older women were more excited to do their own and to be involved. So as they all painted eachothers nails we went around with our cameras and took their pictures. They get equally as excited. Aunty, aunty; take my picture please! They all laugh when they see themselves on the tiny digital screens.
I should explain a few things here... They call us Aunty or Uncle as a sign of respect. The little girls here love it when we call them 'Biney' which means little sister. We were told we were the first 'white people' to come to this village, and our program was the first ever for them as well.
After the program we did some house visits. The next day was Sunday so we went to church and sang a few songs and did another skit for them, which they loved. Quite a few of them asked for more beads to make more braclets. (I realize now I didn't tell you what our craft was. Braclets with the colors green, black, red, white, blue and gold to tell the gospel story.) We handed out more beads, and the boys played soccer some more. And succeded in breaking yet another window! We weren't sure if we should leave the balls there or not, who would keep paying for the windows? Also the people were in awe of Matt's size, mostly because when he first got there he hit his head on the door frame. They spent some time asking him how tall he was and how much he weighed and standing next to him comparing their smaller frames.
Every night we had fellowship time with the family we were staying with. We would pray and sing and the last night we even had some Nepali dancing. Another thing I have to mention is the food. It's quite good... but the proportions are amazing! The first day we all struggled through a few meals under the impression we had to finish everything on our plate. Imagine for a second the amount of food you eat Christmas day; ok, pile it ALL on one plate. Now eat that amount in rice and spicey beef 4 or 5 times a day! No I am not exagerating one bit! We each had a plate like that. After a few meals we couldn't hardly look at rice. We did eventually talk to Abishek and ask him if they could feed us less and our host just laughed and said we didn't have to finish, aparently it wasn't all that offensive to leave food on the plate. We all thought that information would have been fantastic earlier!
So after our goodbye's (and more food than we could eat) we hiked out to the main village at 5:00 this morning to meet our jeep to go back to Darjeeling. That's an experience; hiking through jungle in the dark. So we are here for the day before we head out again to go to MIM. We will be fixing up the tea estate daycare untill Monday then we return to Darjeeling, then back to Canada.
I'm sorry to write you a novel but there is no internet conection where we are going. (Nor was there one where we just came back from) Thank you for your prayers so far. We ask that you pray for our health as a few of us are still a little queasy feeling from all the rice. Also for saftey as we drive out to the estate and we will be doing some roof repairs.
Jimasee
Beth