All Alone, and Back In... SHILLONG!!!???

Sorry for the long silence from here... the last week and a half have been busy, busy, busy. Going to houses for meals, entertaining kids almost every waking minute that we were at TCS, add into that a sporadic internet connection... I think you get the picture. I just didn't have time to write.

I am writing this blog from no other place than Shillong... you know that place that we were supposed to be at once during the trip, and this is my third time! More on that later.

As for the all alone part... my brother, Marv, along with the two friends that were traveling with us on this trip all left India a few days ago... Marv should be arriving in the United States as I am writing and the other two are in Thailand, where they will be spending a few more weeks.

Let me start where I left off the last time, and once again give you a rundown of our activities each day...

Saturday morning... that would have been December 27, I took all of the 2009 ICC leaders to the local restaurant, Fat James, for lunch. We had a great time getting to know each other a little better and talking about some of our dreams for the 2009 ICC tour. We spent some time that afternoon back at TCS, and then had dinner at Jasper's (ICC 2007) house. Jasper's family, especially her mother, was one of the families that bent over backwards to make our stay in Seilmat enjoyable, and her house was one of our frequent late-night tea stops.

Sunday morning, we made the twenty minute walk back over to Rengkai where we had breakfast back at Romila's (ICC 2006) house, and then went to the church service there in Rengkai. We spent the whole day there in Rengkai, and then went to Calvin's (ICC 2007) house for dinner. We arrived back in Seilmat just after dark, and spent the evening entertaining our many "little" friends.

A few weeks ago, we visited the little village of Tingcham, about an hour ride by auto-rickshaw, a three-wheeled motor bike designed to carry two or three passengers. Immanuel Lalsanhim (ICC 2007) lives in this village, one of the poorer villages in Churachandpur. When we visited there, the family invited us back for a meal, and so on Monday, we made the trip back there again and ate lunch with them. The family is extremely poor, but they went all out for us. It was quite humbling to see this family most likely sacrifice just to have us there for a meal.

We arrived back at TCS around 2:00 and spent a few hours there. The evening meal was at the house of Mary and Esther (ICC 2005). I sponsor both of the girls.

Tuesday morning, we went to the village of Khawmoi... about fifteen minutes by auto-rickshaw... to Mesak's (ICC 2008) house for lunch. His sister, Dorothy, will be in the 2009 choir. We ate there, and then walked down to the nearby river, where we met Hallelujah, who was a member of the 2005 choir. We went back to TCS, spent a few hours, and then it was back to Khawmoi again, and Rita's (ICC 2006) house for dinner. Priscilla (ICC 2006) joined us for the meal. We arrived back in Seilmat just after dark and spent the evening at TCS.

On Wednesday morning, we went to Rachel's (ICC leader) house for lunch. Rachel has traveled with a number of choirs, the most recent being 2006. She got married in early 2008, and has a baby that is only a little over a month old. Rachel and I were very close during her time in the states and it was really good to see my "sister" again, along with her new family. From Rachel's house, we went to the market and did a little bit of shopping and then returned to TCS for a little while. We ate the evening meal at Joseph's (ICC 2007) house. His sister, Abigail, is a member of the 2009 ICC.

We had tea at Esther K.'s (ICC 2008) house and then went back up to the church to join the midnight service, a service put on by the local youth group. There was a lot of singing, and then the new year was welcomed by the singing of the "Hallelujah Chorus." It was really neat. We went back to Esther's house around 1:00 AM for some food, and then finally got to bed around 3:00 AM.

On New Year's day, we went to a little tiny village just about a thirty minute drive from Seilmat call Tingkangpai. I had been asked to preach the sermon at the New Year service at the small church there. It is a Meitei church, and a lot of the people are new Christians. They fed us a big meal before the service.

From there, we went to Rengkai, where we had been invited to join the New Year celebrations. They played a lot of games, and we had a lot of fun joining them for some of them. We also joined them for their New Year feast.

We returned to Seilmat a little later that evening and had tea at Mary's (ICC 2006) house.

Now, here is a story that those of you who are college football fans will appreciate. All of us (those in my group) being from Pennsylvania, and all being huge Penn State fans, naturally, we wanted to see the Rose Bowl. We checked the local listings, and there it was... Penn State vs. USC... live at 3:30 AM on January 2nd! We were thrilled. We started making plans to go to Joseph's (ICC 2009 leader) to watch the game. Fat James came in and cooked food for us, even though it was New Year's day, and he was closed. He had even turned down a request from one of the local government big shots to cook that day. But he opened up and cooked up ten orders of spring rolls and a bunch of hamburgers just for us.

Next step was to make sure that the cable would be on. You see, in this part of the world, the power is only on for a few hours a day, and it is usually shut off during the night and with it goes the cable TV. Joseph knew the guy who owned the cable company, and we stopped at his house to see if he could run his generator to keep the cable system on during the night. He said that was not an option, because his generator was too big and the neighbors would complain if he ran it at that time of the night. But he and Joseph came up with another plan.

Here's where it gets good... around 11:00 PM... remember, this is New Year's day... this guys and his team of three technicians, pulled one of the satelite dishes that receives the signals for the cable, brought it over to Joseph's house, and set it up there. Here's the kicker... when they pulled that dish, it left a good part of the town without cable... and they did it just for us! Only in India!

We all sacked out at Joseph's house till 3:30 AM. We got up only to discover that game was not even on the channel that it was listed to be on. So we all fell back to sleep and slept there until around 7:30 AM. We were all a little bummed that we didn't get to see the game, but we sure did all that we could to try and see it. And Penn State lost anyway :(. Oh, well. It's just a game.

I am going to stop with that... for now. I am very tired. I will try to post again tomorrow, and then I'll fill you in on the rest of the details of our time here and tell you the about why I am back in Shillong.