We leave this morning: Tim, Kent Jordan and I depart Seattle at 1 PM, and via Seoul, Korea, arrive in Mumbai, India about 23 hours later. From there, travel is in the hands of our first Inidan host, Jaideep.
I do have a little apprehension; I'm not an expert on India but I have read some. The Indian's are warm and friendly and are capable of tremendous passion. Like the rest of humanity some take their religious beliefs pretty seriously and this in a country where less than 3% of the population is Christian, they don't issue "missionary" visas and it is illegal for foreigners to prosyletize. For the most part, none of that is a very big deal but Tim has had at least one situation where the authorites have cancelled a planned gathering for Indian Christian pastors. Hinduism, I believe, accepts Christianity as one of the potential paths of enlightenment on might take (my understanding on this may be incorrect but I find Hinduism kind of difficult to get my Western mind around anyway). Islam, however, of which India has a large minority, is pretty clear on the subject; Christianity falls short of total, final truth. And, India is a country where statues of their gods, temples and shrines are very evident. Possibly to an Indian our proliferation of church buildings is similar; don't know. But it's weird for this American boy, taught the 10 Commandments in Sunday School, to look upon "idols" without a sense of unease. Statues of Ganesh, the elephant god and Hanuman, the monkey god, are popular in Andra Pradesh, the state of India where we will be for the majority of the time we are there. Three years ago, when we travelled pretty late at night to a church in what Pastor Victor Samuel told us was in the "tribal area" we passed a statue of Hanuman that seemed to be make of sparkling white concrete, that must have been 100 feet tall. We drove past pretty quickly and I never did get to see anything from the waist up from my seat in the car. As an American, you want to take pictures of these things and get a good look at them, just for curiosity sake, and Tim told me the Indian Christians understand this; but I'm not sure if we offend them or not by our interest.
Okay, enough for now. I'm going to spend a little time with Rosie before getting ready to leave.

Prior to leaving . . .

I'm heading to India with my pastor, Tim Wilbur, of New Song Community Church, East Wenatchee WA. Tim and I, as well as our buddies Kent Getzin and Kent's son Jordan, will leave Sunday Feb. 28. We'll be there 3 weeks and I thought this time, my second trip, I'll blog my way through.
This will be Pastor Tim's 10th trip. His primary ministry there has been to train Indian pastors, seeing as how there is little or no available leadership development for Indian Christian leaders in a country where less the 3 % of the population is Christian. Due to Tim's work, they name every new church after New Song. When I went with Tim 3 years ago, there were 70 of these churches. I'm told, and Tim confirms that he has been given this number as well, that there are now 1,500 churches named after New Song in the region of Andra Pradesh, where we'll be going. Pretty incredible.
My plan is to support Tim, help him where he needs it whether he likes it or not (>: and give this blog daily updates. We'll so how it goes . . .