New term

Happy new year sub ko!

We spent our new year’s eve being half suffocated by an indoor BBQ at the David’s apartment because of their concern for annoying the neighbors with smoke. The blackened kebabs were pretty good, but our clothes reeked!
New term at Anusaran started on 2nd January, so we were straight back into things. All our classes are going great at the moment, Becky recently did “pirate week” in her class, and Anna’s class wrote stories about a thief and went on to make wanted posters and TV reports for the dastardly incident they had written about.

Naomi’s girls class has faced a few changes since a new stitching class has been started at the city school at the same time, run by her prize pupil Sumetra Didi. The classes are supposed to be separate we think but they tend to merge together sometimes. Its all a bit confusing. The kids class I teach in has changed quite a bit too this new term- with new children and children moving up from group1, the class has swollen to about 30. The class dynamic has completely changed since almost all the kids new to the class have absolutely no English at all, so what I’ve been doing in class has had to change quite a bit to cater for them all. It just means I have an excuse to do more crafts and play more games with them really.

After a discussion we had with Abha at the start of term, I have begun to take the boys class at the City school every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so they can have a bit more guy influence. I’m supposed to be teaching them morals, and so far we have discussed family relationships, played carrom and done lots of handstands. It makes my day a bit longer but I always sneak to the sweetshop before I have to go to the village school straight after the boys class, so I can refuel with a 1/4 kg of deep fried sugary stuff. mmm.

David 

Curried Christmas

I just realised we haven’t said anything about Christmas day itself yet-sorry!

It was a great day, we were all far to busy having fun to be homesick. The day started with Christmas music blaring from I-pod speakers, a very scrummy fried breakfast and a very exciting opening of presents. We then all trooped down to the David’s apartment for the girls to get taught how to tie their new saris by Abha, and for me to eat the second breakfast they gave us.

The church service was very memorable- mainly because of Arnold’s fantastic bollywood style nativity he had spent weeks preparing with the church kids. There were synchronized dancing sheep, lots of make up and costumes, and even rapping wise men! After the service we went into the upper room (Becky’s classroom), which had been decked out in a very fancy manner, to have our mughlai Christmas lunch. It was delicious, and john explained to us this was because the chef was a Muslim- evidently they are the best cooks. I wasn’t about to argue.

We returned home very full for a lazy evening of bollywood films and phone calls home. We had all prepared ourselves for a different Christmas and it wasn’t a disappointing day in the slightest.

 David

Hot dogs, cake and dumplings

We hope you enjoyed Christmas and all its various shinnanigans.

I certainly did- i enjoyed a large Christmas eve dinner (a surprisingly good team effort) including stuffing, ample bread sauce and a quarter of a big chocolate cake- despite the fact that I came here to India unable to eat wheat because of coeliac disease. Meet the new and improved, able to eat anything David William Fleck!

After John praying for me (he couldn’t handle the fact i couldn’t eat chappati), and God speaking to me through…

1 timothy 4:3-5……..and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

…I decided to try eating normal stuff, and its been about 7 weeks now without any sore stomaches, illness, weight loss etc.

Ive been gorging on bread, cake, pakora, Indian sweet things, garlic bread, toast, farmers toast, tofu hot dogs, chicken hot dogs, chappati, roti, Pratha, dumplings, and even a particularly delicious Domino’s Pizza.

It’s the first time I’ve been eating Gluten without spending weeks feeling aweful since I was about 9, its so amazing. Maybe it was that with so many people praying for my healing when I had Dengue, that God just saw the whole of me and healed it all at once.

Exciting stuff-It will certainly be easier to cater for me on tour now!

David

The Mountains

After a bottom-numbing 10 hour journey through three states of North India we arrived in a very busy Shimla in time for a beautiful sunset. We climbed up the steep streets to our hotel and settled in a bit before going back down the hill for dinner with unlimited roti (thick oven cooked chapatti). Shimla has one main road from which you climb up or down to access the rest of the city. This means that all the goods that are sold have to be carried up and down to the shops. We often met men carrying packs on their backs that were over 3 times as large at the men and must have weighed a lot! We could hardly get ourselves up and down let alone a wardrobe!

We had two full days there. On the first day we drove higher into the mountains where we could see the huge snow covered peaks of the Himalayas stretching out forever. We got ponies to the top of a peak which was an interesting experience as it was a bit too steep and they often slipped trying to climb the slopes. The views from the top though were absolutely stunning. It’s incredible. We spent a long time just looking.

We got back to Shimla in time to climb to the top of Shimla to the very British (we built it as our summer base) ridge at the top. It was slightly surreal but very cool to be surrounded by British architecture watching the sunset over the mountains with Indian Dance music being blasted out around us!

On the second day Anna and I got up at 6, climbed up to the top and watched the sunrise. Unfortunately due to a bit of mountain in the way we didn’t see the actual sun rise but the changing colour of the sky as dawn broke was amazing. It was good enough to make us go up the next morning with David too.

The rest of the day we spent looking around the market, visiting the British built church and climbing the bit of mountain that was in the way of the sunrise to a temple. It was a steep climb, especially after living in flat Delhi, but it was really great to get completely out of breath. On the way up David and I bought a monkey stick which came in handy when one of the many monkeys at the top decided to be scary and bare its teeth and growl at us! We had ice creams on the way back to cool us down. After each bringing all of the warm clothes we own/had bought in preparation, Shimla turned out to be pretty hot in the daytime. We did wear our balaclavas once or twice but more for fashion that necessity!

We had a really enjoyable, refreshing time.

Naomi

Our Crazy Christmas Week

A bit of a long post- but its really 4 rolled into one…

On Tuesday evening we were invited down to the David’s apartment for some nice pleasant carol singing with some of Johns colleagues. It turns out by colleagues they meant 30 or so Punjabi pastors, complete with Indian drums and tambourines. 30 pastors, a family and an action team don’t really fill well into a small Indian Apartment.

It was probably the most Indian experience we had had so far- each “carol” would begin with a passionate operatic warble from one of the men, and quickly build into a frenzy of dancing and air punching and head wobbling (oh how i love the head wobbling). The guy who was playing the drums was so fast I was pretty sure his hands were going to fall off, it was incredible. Many of there songs would last about 10 minute, and at some point would descend into cheering or shouts of halleluia or oi-oi-oi-oi….!

I was so embarrassed when they demanded a British carol. I tried to beef up Away in a Manger a bit on my guitar, and make it sound at least a bit exciting, but it was such a lame attempt it was hardly worth it. Our carols are just so boring in comparison to theirs.

Once all the pastors had left we waited for our dinner to be made (it was by then 10.30pm), and John asked me if I could preach a Christmas message to the 30 pastors the next day before they left. Could I really turn it down? It was one of those “its the only time this will ever happen” choices, so I took it. I had an almost sleepless night, and was ready with my scrawled noes at 9.30 the next morning to give my 45 minute address (with translation). David Fleck- 18yr old school boy up against 30 theologically trained pastors who coordinate all the churches in North India. Scary stuff. God really gave me words though, and it was a great experience- I even got a Christmas present from them at the end of it.

I think its definitely true that we can learn something from everyone we meet- and everyone gets something slightly different from bible passages. It was a weird feeling, being the youngest in the room and addressing so many people far older and wiser than me, but I learnt so much from it. Exciting stuff.

David

On Wednesday evening we ran a Christingle service at church. We bought 7kg of oranges (for about 2.50) and explained, between candlelit carols, what each bit of the Christingle means. The orange as the world, the red ribbon as Jesus’ blood, the fruit as Gods provision for us and the candle as Jesus, the light of the world. As we explained the different bits we each added that bit to our own Christingle until they were complete. They had never had a Christingle service before so it was great to share it with them.

Afterwards we had the church gift exchange (everyone in the church had the name of someone else and had to spend rs25 (30p) on them). We gave a bouncy ball, wooden flute, biscuits, nut brittle, sweets, socks and a decorated Christmas tree (formerly a weed!). We received hair ties, kit kats, a photo frame and a notebook with quotes about love on every page!

It was a fun evening, unfortunately Becky was ill so she couldn’t come but we took her home a Christingle and some cake!

Naomi

Well on Thursday we had the city school Party, where all the children from the small children to the 3 afternoon classes congregated in the church waiting to see what would happen.  When everyone was there we all started to sing songs together. It was a great sound to hear and an amazing sight to see 50 children or more praising God and doing the actions to the songs.  After we had all sung a few songs, Noami, I and the small children got up and at the front and started to sing the songs that we had been singing for the last month. It was great fun having all the other children watching us and also great to see all the small children singing the songs and remembering them.  Best of all was when we got everyone to do row row your boat.  You would never think that you could do that with so many children in such a small room but we did it.  Then my class started to sing some songs that they had done in song practice.  The children in my class really like singing.  Then after about an hour John came and spoke to them-then the party really started. Some of the children showed us how good they were at dancing and boy could they dance well better than me.  Then everyone else joined in with the moves showing what they could do.  After some cake and sweets we all went home.

On Friday it was the turn of the village school. David and Anna showed us their classes and what they had done with their classes. They both played number of games with the children and once again did lots of singing.  Then Father Christmas came to see them all-not everyone was happy to see him. It took a minute or so of unsure staring, but once one small child had cracked into tears there was no stopping the rest. After everyone had calmed down and Santa revealed he was actually Anand Uncle, they all got presents and  some cakes and off they went.

After the party was over for the kids, the older girls were dancing in their room and got Anna and Noami up too. They were very good and even Santa joined in.  After sharing some food and having a chat we wished everyone a happy Christmas and when home.  it was a great 2 days of having fun with the children and sharing a part of Christmas with them.

Becky

 

On Thursday and Friday evenings we went carol singing with a group from church, which turned out to be somewhat different to carol singing in the UK. We must have looked pretty odd in our ‘uniform’ of white baseball caps, with the scariest-looking Santa you’ve ever seen in-tow – he reduced quite a few children to tears.

Alongside our traditional English hymns we sang the contrasting extremely lively Hindi Christmas songs, and at each house we went to we took turns in sharing a short message from the bible. On Thursday we were based mainly in a fairly well-off area where there was a small Catholic community and on Friday we went outside Dwarka to the area where John’s sister’s family lives. This was definitely the best night; we started singing outside on the street, and as we sang more and more people emerged from the surrounding houses to come and listen. When we switched to Hindi songs everyone went a bit crazy; drums appeared from somewhere and suddenly there was a huge crowd of people jumping around and dancing. We went to a few more houses in the area; trying to cram 15 of us plus a number of random tag-alongs into the very small Indian houses added to the fun.

We finished the evening at John’s sister’s house, where they provided us all with a lot of very good, very spicy food; an excellent way to finish the evening, even if it did make us all cry.*

 *Anna wrote this, it was actually only her that cried.

Anna

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Photos

Due to some weirdo beardo new regulations at our friendly internet cafe, we cant load up photos any more. The search is underway for another place we can use but it might be no more photos. Sad stuff.

David’s Kings

My class despite the fact that they are only about 10 years old, all have exams at the moment- so its only been the really hardcore kids that have been coming to my class recently. For the past couple of weeks there has been about 15 kids, which has actually been really nice- I’m getting to know them really well and I’m able to do better crafts with the smaller group. Today a few kids filtered back in, some of their exams are all over now, so we made up a dance we like to call “Exams are over, YAY”. Its pretty classy, although most of them end up falling over from jumping and spinning too much.

We have been reading part of the Christmas story every day in class for the past week or so. Ive been reading the passage in English (as dramatically as possible for all the kids that have no idea whats going on), and then one of the older girls reads the same bit out from a Hindi bible. Its been so cool, they all drink it up and are asking for us to have a bible story everyday from now on. Hopefully God will really work in them through what they hear and what I share about my faith.

Today we got to the bit with the three kings, since we were adding the kings to the big advent nativity scene I made (they get to add a new character everyday). After telling the story we all made paper crowns together for the Christmas party we’re having on Friday. Its amazing to see the kids getting more confidence in crafts and things- it used to be that all their work would be a carbon copy of my example, only far scruffier from using a rubber about a million times, which was a bit frustrating. I’ve been encouraging to be creative though, and although it takes time they come out with such awesome pieces of work.

Becky’s Snowmen

lessons at school have been very different recently, what with the children all having exams up to Christmas.  We are all having fun lessons at the moment, and most of mine have  involved making something Christmassy with the kids (which I’m finding great fun!).

The best lesson so far would probably be when we made snow men from paper mashé.  When the children walked into the room and saw the piles of news paper and a big bowl on the floor full of boiled flour glue, they had absolutely no idea what they were going to do.  When I explained what they were doing they all started slowly, all trying not to get their hands really messy, until I told them it much easer to get messy and give it a shot. They all dived straight in.  After that there was no stopping them, they really enjoyed it so much that when they had all made about 4 snowmen each and all the paper mashé had gone they all were asking if they could do it again the next day.

It was really great to see their faces, doing what I’m sure was something different for them.  They all really enjoyed it and they are all really enjoying the activities we are doing for Christmas.  All you can see is big smiles across their faces and after every lesson they are asking what they are going to do tomorrow.  Knowing that the children are happy with the class makes me even happier since I know I’m doing a good job and they are all learning something new.  The children are also really enjoying the christmas story and every day are asking to learn more- its so amazing to see.

Becky 

Morning Routine

We begin every day with devotions; this takes place at John and Abha’s apartment and everyone involved in teaching and the running of Anusaran meets to pray and read the bible together. We’re all on the rota to lead this now and it’s been a really good way to start the day (it’s not too early either!)

From there Naomi and Becky walk to the city school which is 15 minutes or so from our apartment, to be in time for their boys class at 10.30. They have only been doing this class recently, and are finding it challenging but in a good way. The boys are about our age, which must be hard for them. Recently when set the task of writing a story in groups, one boy retold the story of titanic- with him as the main character, he didn’t even change the name of the ship!

David and I have about an hour before leaving for the village school so we usually go back to our apartment to tidy and prepare our lessons, unless we stay and help Arnold revise for his exams.

Anand Uncle then drives us to school at about 11.30. The drive is always fun; the roads are really good where we live, but as we get closer to the village the holes in the road start to get deeper and wider, and there doesn’t really seem to be a rule about which side of the road vehicles (or cows) pass each other. There are always lots of strange things to see as well, like goats climbing trees, people selling fish out of holes in the ground, and what we thought was a river that just smelt a bit funny, but is actually a massive, open sewer.

We teach the girls for an hour at 12.30, it feels a bit strange teaching them as nearly all of them are older than us, especially as they ask our permission to enter the classroom, even at lunchtime. They are all really lovely though, and recently we have divided into two groups so I can teach really basic English to new comers (A, B, Cs) while David teaches the rest conversational English and scenarios. We all eat lunch together which is nice, but the girls all tend to share their food, and when we join them we usually end up with something insanely spicy in return!

Anna 

Evenings

In the evenings we do lots of church activities; the church here is quite small-around 30 (although at least half are children), which has meant that everyone is really close, and without wanting to sound to cheesy it really is like a family!

On Wednesdays we have ‘bible talk’; usually around half the congregation meet at church for an interactive talk, some worship and games. We have all had a chance to lead it now, which I found a little scary, as the talk is basically a sermon. I was extremely grateful for the fact that everything has to be translated, as this means you have thinking time after each sentence!

We have ‘song practice’ on Fridays; this was started by John and Abha’s son Arnold, who is only 15, but is really involved with the church – he frequently translates for Sunday services. Around 8 children and some of the youth from church go, and we practice songs for the Sunday service (usually half Hindi, half English). This is always good fun, even if the singing isn’t particularly tuneful – the general rule seems to be ‘pick a starting note and tune and just go for it!’ At the moment we’re preparing some Christmas songs for carol singing, which we’ll be doing for two full days just before Christmas (they take it quite seriously). Their version of carol singing seems to be a lot more worthwhile than the English version – every house you go to you get given a full meal!

After singing for half an hour we have instrumental lessons – David teaches half of the children guitar and I teach the other half piano. This is a bit of a challenge as we only have one keyboard and one and a half guitars, but the children seem to be really enjoying it, particularly Sandeep (see the post on morning devotions) who looks forward to the guitar lessons all week and talks about barely anything else!

Thursday evenings are set aside for ‘family time’; this is when the whole church is meant to spend some proper time with their families. We have spent quite a few of these evenings with the David family (John, Abha, Arnold and Christy); as they have practically adopted us anyway! Last Thursday we went to see a bollywood film called ‘Om Shanti Om’ which was completely mad, but extremely good. Abha says that Indians like their films as they like their food – with lots of spices. This means most bollywood films include horror, romance, comedy, tragedy, music, dance, action and anything else you could possibly want in a film. The result is a little overwhelming, but very entertaining!

Every last Tuesday in the month we have ‘Roshni (hindi for light) group’, which is for the women and young girls in the church. This really is as stereotypically ‘girly’ as it could be – we sit in the church, decorated with fake flowers and perfumed with incense for the occasion and talk about our feelings over tea and samosas!

Until recently there were church activities every evening, except Saturday, with most of the responsibility falling directly on John and Abha. They were getting burnt out though, and this new timetable has given them (and us!) time for relaxing and time to concentrate on preparing things well and really concentrating on taking the work of Anusaran forwards.

Anna