Elephants at Last!

Dear Friends, A lot has been happening, so we have posted lots of photos and stories below. We finally got to see a wild elephant when Jacob and Blessi brought us to Mudu Malai where there are lots of animals. We also rode a trained elephant through the jungle which was really crazy. He would move the sticks aside with his trunk to clear a path. Favorite photo is the one with Joseph and the baby elephants trunk. The baby is being taken care of at the reserve. There are more photos below...and a video. Hope you enjoy!
We are planning to take a 4 day train trip to Darjeeling in NE India for Christmas. (Hopefully we will find some snow there and maybe we will teach some people a couple carols on the train journey.)
We leave in a couple days. We will be thinking of you and pray that you have a beautiful time wherever you are for Christmas. Give Jesus a hug. :)
So much love to you and very Happy Holidays!
Love,
Joseph and Christy

Ooty!

Ooty is a wonderful hillstation in the Nilgiris mountain region, part of the Western Ghats. We spent the last little while there......getting to know the awesome people who we stayed with. William and his family are rad and they live out in the boondocks in a Eucalyptus tree forest. See the fellow in the flowery hat? That's William. He used to be a super intense hindu priest who carried around a 10 fool sword, had a big crazy moustache and everyone was afraid of him..until Jesus got a hold of him. Now he's a big softie and full of love and joy. We rode around with him on his motorcycle and explored. He took us to homes to visit people and showed us the beauty of the place they live. God is so good. The guy in green is another Joseph, a friend who traveled with us as well. We took a toy steam train down the mountain when we left! We are learning so much about people and cultures and especially ourselves. There are some more stories below of our time in Ooty with William and his family.

Fishing Fun?

Well, one of the days in Ooty our friends planned a day of rest for us. The day basically consisted of fishing, football, fire, and food. The fishing was....not like any fishing we'd done before. Our friend Thombas made 4 homemade fishing poles and we had small rolled up pieces of bread mixed with tumeric powder as bait. Earthworms as a backup. We walked about 1/2 mile to a lake that made my stomach sick as we approached. Ther water was thick green in many places and layers of garbage lined the shores...a natural beauty made into a dump site. None the less we threw in our tumeric baited lines and sat for some time praying that we woudn't catch any fish... After a while Thombas grew bored and took us to a smaller lake by their house that was relatively litter-free. They proceeded to catch 12 fish by putting a torn net across the lake and sending dogs, rocks and sticks on either side of the net to scare the fish into the trap. We ate those for dinner later.

We had a fire and got to hear some gorgeous songs in Tamil, and we sang some songs as well. This reminded us of beach fires in Alaska. We also put potatoes in the fire just as they were, then pealed the black off after half and hour and ate them.

Joseph played football (soccer) with a bunch of rambunctious Indians and made most of the goals. Christy was the cheerleader...

Some days we feel right at home and some days we just have to recognize that we are experiencing culture shock...it is all part of the fun.

Smiling,

J and C

India Imagery

You can come across some curious sights in India,

We love the unexpected beauties that we see, things are just done differently here.

These two coconut blokes are simply stylin'.

We drink the coconut juice from the green coconuts often, they just hack it open with a machete and it's refreshing as can be.

We helped with the cleaning of thousands of carrots...Joseph got barefoot with the fellas and moved the carrots through the washing process...we might not think to wash carrots with our feet, but it sure does get the job done.

The flowers you see here are actually not real. Our friends in Ooty took us to this place called the thread garden, where there are thousands of flowers and plants made by handtying thread around shapes....which took 12 years of work. It claims to be the most beautiful work of art ever known to mankind...we didn't agree with this assesment, but it was impressive in some strange way! :)

Todhas Villagers

Wow! What a blessing it was for us to be able to visit some dear brothers and sisters in the Niligris mountains...we had such a uniquely beautiful time with this tribe, the Todha people, an ancient tribe. They welcomed us with open arms and we had lovely fellowship with them!

They are so hungry for the love of Jesus and have been through so much persecution. Christ has become their strength and their song! There are some lovely traditions that we were able to experience, such as the way the woman do their hair, they did Christy's hair, which was really fun. They are also very skilled embroiderers as you can see by the shawls here. They also bless people by putting their feet on people's heads.

We felt immediate kinship with the people we met here...we sang and danced, prayed and laughed and wept. We shared traditional food and cocoa tea and lots of hugs...until it was long past time to go and our hearts were moved by our dear new friends. Abba, bless them deeply.

Scenes of India

Waiting for Elephants

Waiting for elephants is only one of the things we do differently in India than we do in Alaska....we have missed them by about an hour twice now...so we are getting excited...our friends chased them off with firecrackers like we chase off bears in Alaska...a funny similarity.

Other things we do differently:
We take bucket baths...cold, unless we boil water for a special day.

We wash our laundry by hand and hang it on the line...of course there are no dishwashers either.

We are happy when we realize the scurrying on the wall is a lizard, and not a massive spider.
We carry toilet paper with us every where we go
We take our shoes off to enter homes
We hear a man blowing a whistle every night outside the house...all night off and on.
We eat with our hands.
We are the minority.
We dodge motorcycles, rickshaws and cows on the road.

We have been spending most of our time with Jacob and Blessi and their daughter Sarah. Keep us all in your prayers that we will be full of the joy, peace, freedom and wisdom of our loving Jesus. We are so blessed to be here, learning so much and leaning on the Father's heart together ...He is so good.
Love,
Joseph and Christy

University of India

Heylo!
We are learning a lot in India.
Jesus has been giving us sweet times together...for instance... yesterday we were out on a walk together in the countryside. The sun was warm, the flowers exotic, and the butterflies romantic... Only to be disturbed by the loudest and scariest roar we've ever heard...most likely a leopard..., coming from about 10 yards away in the bushes. Joseph was saying, "oookaaay.... turn around...faster! faster!" While Christy was having a relaxed stroll singing, "trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding.. In all of your ways acknowledge him and He will make your paths straight...." Good times.. So we escaped alive...only to be met by a large herd of stampeding oxen with huge horns, running and leaping right at us! Thank the good Lord there was the best looking ox cart we've ever seen. Just barely escaping sure impalement, we were able to jump aboard just in the nick of time, while the oxen swarmed around us like African killer bees.... So the romantic stroll finished with us arm in arm, heart rates pounding, and laughing our faces off at the sheer fun of it all. Arriving back at the childrens home, it was time for a game of volleyball and a relay race with the kids. They didn't like the idea of taking turns so they just ran all at the same time, having a ball. Bless their hearts. Just another day in India. Thanks for your prayers. :)

We love and cherish each and every one of you.
Many Blessings,
J and C

1 week in India

Hi and Happy Thanksgiving!

India is so unique. It is warm, but not too warm right now.

We saw Bill from Montana here for the first few days, which was great. Here's us with him.

We have enjoyed seeing friends and also some wonderful hiking. (photo of mountains and of our villageman guide...he knows how to talk to elephants and about the plants etc.)

The land where we will be has a children's home with 120 children and a pastors school...It is so beautiful. Mountains surrounding, streams and a small village of about 100 people. There are also wild elephants there, and a natural waterslide that we had lots of fun on. Hopefully we will be learning how to cook Indian food on fires out there.

Jacob and Blessi are our friends here, (photo:pBlessi with Christy) and they have the cutest daughter, Sarah. (photo with Joseph). We have been drinking lots of chai, catching up with people here and trying to learn names and some language. We have been praying for Abba's will to happen here...

Please pray with us..

Love,

Joseph and Christy