Our visit to India ends tomorrow!

Tomorrow is our last day in India. The time has slipped by very quickly in terms of seeing different places and enhancing friendships. We have visited many of the seafarers that ask us to but by no means all.

At present we are with Captain Sanjay Bhatia and his family in Delhi. We have known him for several years. Four years ago Fay was able to take them to Sea World in San Diego. The kids have grown up so much since then. Neha is in her 3rd year of law school and Manish is in 7th grade. Sanjay’s wife, Geeta, is a wonderful cook so we’ve enjoyed her talent very much.

The Lord has used this time in India to impress upon me the importance of hospitality and how we express our love through it’s use. Chim says he's learnt the importance of love in action and is looking forward to returning home to put into practice what he's learnt. The next 10 days we will be in Thailand with Handclasp ministry and then home.

Visiting South India

Yesterday we arrived in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, India. We are visiting the chief Electrician, Ranjan, that we met from the Spar Lupus in Long Beach. We actually changed our travel plans because of this man's insistence that we visit him! He is most gracious and a wonderful host. We tried saying we wanted to stay at a hotel but he refused and I'm glad he did because he lives in a very peaceful, tree surrounded area that is beautiful. Plus this gives us time to meet his family, wife and 2 daughters. Last night he drove us around the city and we met his friend, Father Peter at St. Joesph's 100+ year old Catholic church and visited a 2,000 year old temple in the middle of town!

Since our last entry on this blog we visited Jaipur, the pink city in Gujarat. What a treat! It was so well planned out 300 years ago that cars can drive in even the oldest part of town. The bazaars are lively and colorful, unfortunately, our bags are full and the weight we can carry by plane has been lowered so Chim informed me there would be no shopping for me!

We traveled back to Punjab for Christmas. The day turned out to be just like all others as no one celebrates like we do unless they are in big cities! We had 2 speaking engagements without a Christmas tree in sight! Needless to say there were no gifts and their "Christmas carols" are regular worship songs. Nevertheless we remembered the birth and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We did cut our trip short in Punjab to increase our opportunities to visit our other friends around India. New Year's found us in the far north at Dehradun a city very near the Himalayas. We visited the Torchbearers' school with Satish John and his lovely wife. (Chim and I first met at the Torchbearers' school at Capernwray, Carnforth, England in 1966! Satish was a student there too.) We were invited to stayed with Captain Jayant Kumboli and family and were treated like royalty. His wife and daughter were so sweet to us we were sad to leave. They insisted we visit Missouri, a famous hill station during our stay. Amazing to see how they build a city on the edge of a mountain ridge!