The time draws nigh, actually the nigh already came and now its gone. I'm back in the US, but I wanted to tell you all about my adventures during my last week in India.
A week from last saturday I got on a train and headed down to Tamil Nadu to visit my friend Noah who is an evangelist down there. In case I haven't mentionned this before, I met Noah through our India prayer group at Biola last fall, and he stayed at my apartment for a week. It was probably the most intense week yet, simply because every day was pretty unique and different. Village that he lives in is much smaller than the others I had visited (only about 300,000) and they don't get too many white people there. As a result, I was given almost celebrity status. Everywhere we went I got introduced to the most important people there. Not only that but I was also given the opportunity/had to speak everywhere we went. Some of those places included house churches, universities, street preaching, orphanages, sunday schools and regular churches.
Let me give you one example of how this looked. On friday we drove about 40 minutes to a smaller, more rural community outside Noah's village to do some gospel outreach. Normally what we would do is drive to the center of the village, set up a pa system, and start talking/playing with the kids and singing until a crowd gathered. Then we would share the gospel. In this village, however, there was a hindu celebration going on in the town center when we arrived. So went to the town's school and found a worship service going on. We gathered all the believers from inside, and proceeded to walk through the streets of the town singing until we had found a lighted street and had enough people gathered. Then Noah talked for a bit, and handed the mic to me saying, "share the gospel." Most places we went it looked something like that.
After a week with Noah, I traveled by train back up north to catch my plane in Hyderabad. I had some difficulty getting home, but it worked out pretty well in the end. I had to catch a connecting flight in Mumbai, but that flight was cancelled on August 10th. The next flight didn't leave for two days on August 12th. Originally I was pretty frustrated, but then I found out that they were putting up in a 5 star hotel and paying for all my meals. So instead of leaving exhausted for the US, I was able rest up a bit first. Not only that, but I was able to visit the guys I lived with for 5 weeks that saturday and say goodbye one last time. Just another small example of the goodness of our Shepherd's leading.
I am planning on sending out one last update after this one kind of recapping the summer. So you can start preparing yourselves now for the sadness that will come when you no longer have a new message from Kyle popping up in you inbox on a regular basis.
Kyle
