We went to a little village none of us know the name of yesterday morning - we left at about 10:30 AM and seemed to drive in circles, getting there in about an hour. I recognized the village tho' once we arrived - it's a village where New Song church provided a well after my visit there 3 years ago. There's a communal "pond" there where the village was getting it's water and the wish for the church was that they'd have a well on the church property and today, there it was! Pretty cool. We participated in a rather long service, Tim gave a message from Luke 15 about God's joy over finding the lost, and he then cemented together 9 bricks as the cornerstone for their hopes for a new church building. We then drove to another area (I'm not sure why - possibly because the pond adjacent to the church was the village's drinking water supply) where Tim baptized 8 people. We found out later the government had to allow the water to be pumped into this area becasue they are in the middle of a pretty bad drought. Jaideep mentioned this: his mango trees aren't yielding and the water level for his irrigation well has dropped so low he needs to re-bore it and expand the casing (we're talking about $2,000). He has some fields he'd cultivate for food for his campus and for income but - not enough water. The Pithapuraum area is the same, water levels are very low. Victor Samuel has even had to remove the well at his house for the same reason - the water table has dropped considerably.
After getting back Kent and I drove into Kakinada with Victor for some errands. While waiting for Victor at one point we got a glimpse of Kakinada "night life": two apparently amourous representatives of the "sacred cow" population giving some thought to the propogation of the species. Nothing actually occurred but the mood was evidently there.
Later yesterday evening we drove to Pastor Anil's village where an outdoor meeting was in progress - they covered one of the village streets with rice (and other) bags sewn together and we met right in the street of the village. I'd guess there were 300 or so people there. There was lots of music, actually very good music (they had a professional recording couple and their band there - the electronic drummer and keyboardist were awesome!). Jordan and I gave brief introductions and Kent and Tim gave messages. About 16 people came forward at the end to indicate their being ready to commit to being baptized. It appears that due to the desire of the pastors to be sure people are ready for the consequences of their choice to become Christians they postpone baptism for a little bit after folks decide to accept Jesus (He was there too, by the way - He says hi!) to give them time to prepare for their public committment of baptism. The kids got a big kick out of throwing flower petals at us, I mean on us, and it was difficult for us to drive out to leave due to the people wanting to say good bye and shake hands, etc.
Right now it's about 8 AM our time - everyone else is sleeping as we got in after midnight. I don't know what the plan for today is but as Pratibha just got a new clothes washing machine, I hope it's laundry. I'm sure you'll appreciate my sparing you a description of the clean (or lack thereof) undergarment situation.
Love ya!!