Christmas shopping in India

Hello again!
I think this is just going to be a quick update as I don’t think I have all that much to say because we’re getting into a routine now.

School is going well. I’m really eanjoying teaching one of the girls, Pinky, one – to-one. She’s about 19, and knows the least English out of all the girls so at the moment we’re learning the alphabet. Being one-to-one means we can take things at her pace and hopefully form a good relationship with her. Teaching the children is going well too. I’m learning names (slowly!) and getting to their charcters better – they’re fantastic children. This week I’ve most enjoyed just having fun and playing with them – skipping, kho-kho, teaching them hand clap games and dancing with the girls. This week we’ve also enjoyed a couple of games of cricket with the women, and one of them, Shushi, is now engaged (by arranged marriage). The wedding is going to be in February, so hopefully we’ll get to go to an Indian Wedding! But prayers for Shushi as during the lead up to the wedding would be good as I imagine it’s hard getting married to someone you’ve only ever met for 15 minutes and her own family and her husband and his family are all Hindu’s, whilst Shushi is a Christian.

Church is good. I’m enjoying the Sunday morning services, even if they do last nearly 4 hours! Bible Study and Bible Talk are going well. We’re getting to grips with singing in Hindi and all the Church members are so lovely and welcoming. It’s so great to hear how God’s working in everyone’s lives so much.

My team are continuing to work well together, no major arguments – just about who left the light on or who didn’t do the washing up properly! This week we’ve been dicussing ways that we can make the most of our time here and how we can reach more people with God’s love. Oh, and thank you to all of you who have been praying for our health – it’s amazing that none of us have got ill yet! (The only Delhi belly we’ll be getting is a bigger tumm from eating so much food!) God’s really looking after us.

On the food front – rice and dal are beginning to get boring when you have it for lunch and tea everyday. But breakfast is pretty exciting, we’ve had everything ranging from jam on toast, to breadcrumbs with onion, to omlette sandwiches! We’ve all fallen in love with ‘Jalebi’, which is basically deep dried sugar – but it’s so good! Why hasn’t it reached England yet?!

And finally Christmas shopping… On Saturday we went into Rajiv Chowk to buy our families at home Christmas presents. There’s no sign of Christmas here, and I don’t feel at all Christmassey but it had to be done in the hope they’d reach home before Christmas, or before we do (post is taking so so long to get from India to England). We had lots of fun in the underground market using our haggling skills!

That’s it for now, thanls for reading. Please feel free to let me know what you’re up to or anything I can pray for.

Love, Hannah xx