Arrival in Guntur

Tuesday, January 29

We arrived in Guntur yesterday morning at 5am by train from Chennai. It was a long but good day. After breakfast Bob, Aaron, Jim, Bruce (Eric Whitehead’s dad), and Eric traveled to Rompurchurla to visit a congregation there. Notice my name was omitted from the list. My body began to rebel against me after a great deal of fatigue from traveling and I got sick after breakfast. I was in no shape to travel an hour and a half to the village and meet with the church there. I stayed in bed, took a nap and woke later in the afternoon refreshed and feeling much better.

The church visit for the rest of the crew was inspiring. They were welcomed by nearly 70 people from the congregation and given garlands of flowers as honored guests. The number of people who gathered there was surprising because the visit was only set up early that morning by phone with Pastor Daniel. Word travels fast. Within five hours, the news that Christians from America were to visit the congregation traveled throughout the congregation’s members and people came out to welcome our group. Each one of our group shared for five minutes and following the service, as is the custom, people came forward for blessing and prayer. Eric mentioned that a great deal of people approached Bob for blessing and prayer. Bob shared with us over dinner how inspiring it was to pray in those moments for those people and how equipped he felt for the task. Equipped…did he prepare for the moment? No. God showed up and when he needed the equipping, God gave to the people through Bob.

Overall, we’ve been blessed by the generosity of the people here and are enjoying our time. We’re all staying at the seminary in the dorms because Karuna Dasari, our normal host is in the hospital. Normally we would stay at the Moriah Home, Karuna’s residence, but since she is ill, we chose to stay at the seminary. It was worked out quite well. Please keep Karuna in your prayers though. She was seriously ill this past weekend and while she is doing better, she’s not fully well.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Bob and I don’t have luggage yet. Somewhere between Chicago and Chennai, India our luggage sits. The problem was we had a difficult time getting to Chennai from Chicago. We weren’t surprised that our luggage was lost, but we’re not happy either. Overall, we’re fine, but it would be nice to have more clean clothes!

Our flight from Chicago to London was delayed by four hours in Chicago for a number of reasons. Because our original itinerary gave us only a three hour layover in London, our late departure from Chicago meant that we missed our connection to India in London. We were rebooked on a flight from London to New Delhi on Air India and then flew from New Delhi to Chennai also on Air India. Because of the changes and the tight connection in London, our baggage probably never got on the Air India flight. We’ll find out more today.

On Sunday when we arrived, on a very hot and humid day in Chennai, we visited St. Thomas Mount. According to tradition, Thomas, one of Jesus’ disciples was stabbed at the bottom of the hill in 72 a.d. and then crawled to the top to die. At the top of the hill is a Catholic church, a statue in commemoration of Thomas, and a beautiful view of the city. It was a nice moment for us to stand in such an historic place where many other pilgrims across the centuries have stood to remember Thomas’ work. Marco Polo, the explorer visited the site back in the 14th or 15th century.

More later. Thanks for reading.

Pastor Mike