Our Christmas Card!

Below are some pictures from the recent days. Thank you for your concern. We feel your support and hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating the birth of the King!

GOOD NEWS!

This is a new friend of our family. We'll call him A.B. We recently got to tell him the story and he remarked as he sat in amazement, "I think these things are true". This was the most incredible encounter I have ever been a part of!

Is it Christmas?

We brought a 3ft tree and some Christmas music from home, but making it feel like Christmas is tough. To all of the people around us these days have no significance. For the first time in our lives, we put up more lights than our neighbors. As we embrace our situation, we are reminded that this light in the darkness is what the celebration is all about!

Our Home!

We live on the 2nd floor of this building. The owner of the house lives below us and is a devout follower of Shiva. Each morning He visits the Ganges to worship and bathe. It was very difficult to find a place to call home, but now we see clearly how this fits into the perfect plan!

Thanksgiving Visit to the Ganges

I took this picture at around 7am from the bank of the sacred Hindu river. These worshipers have come to bathe, believing this water can remove sin. Trash and partly cremated bodies float by as many even drink the polluted water.

Online for Christmas!!!

For those of you who may have been wondering, YES, we are still alive!!! It took around 50 days to get internet access in our new city, but (to God be the glory) we are once again able to communicate with everyone. To put things in perspective, we were given special treatment to get the connection so quickly!! We have found this to be the reality of the culture we live in. We are so excited to be able to update you on life here. The boys birthdays and Thanksgiving have passed since our last update and it was surely different, but by all means GOOD! We now have a place to call home and are making new friends daily. Language learning is tough, but every day our vocabulary grows and sentences are even beginning to form. We have been receiving everyone's packages. I can't tell you the joy it brings to our house when the mailman arrives! THANK YOU!! Well, I have plenty of stories to tell, but I better not try to do it all in one update. Here are some pictures from the recent days!! They are of the boys opening one of the packages you sent and a guru that the owner of our flat took me to meet. Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

Unplugged?

I'm writing this from a corner in a new friend's home. This is the only place I have found internet access in our new city. We have been here almost two weeks and it has been an incredible roller coaster ride. Just before leaving the decision was made for us to begin in a smaller city (ONLY 1.5 million) for the purpose of language and cultural acquisition before getting to our final location. It will prove a very wise decision in the long term, but has made life interesting in the now. We apologize for our lack of contact. Our lines of communication have been cut off. Progress is being made though and soon we will have a home of our own. We will hopefully move in by the end of this week. We'll send pictures in the next update!! We are all doing well! The last few days have brought a little stomach trouble. Please ask that it would not become an obstacle! Thanks for all your concern! We feel your support!! The pictures were taken with a camera phone (I apologize for the clarity). The first is in the sleeper train we rode to our new city, then pure joy of ice cream, new friends, and a shot of us riding a 3 wheel bicycle rickshaw (our main mode of transport). I'll get a better picture of this in the future!!! We can get all the way across town for 25 cents!!!