SATELLITE

On Monday I went to the training center in the City of Seharampur. It is very much a grass roots kind of organization there. They basically offer one year of Bible and Christian education and the students earn a certificate. These students are between the ages of 17 and there was at least one who was in his early 40's.

Students from the Sehrampur Satellite school. Girls, as always, sit in the front and guys in the back.

Most of these students come from villages where there is extremely low income. They just want to know more about God and get something started in their home village. While they attend this school, most of the students live in the first floor of what really is a very big house. The basement of the house has space for their "dorm rooms" as well as a kitchen and common space. The second floor is the home for the pastor and his family.

The rooftop area is open and can be used for a variety of things from drying clothes to just hanging out and drinking tea.

The third floor is just the roof but it has space for hanging out clothes to dry. It is just an open space. The training is done in the church building itself. The students sit in the pews and the teacher, me for three days, stands at the front with a white board. They receive some basic teaching and training so that they can do ministry in their home villages among their own tribe.

There I am during one of the training sessions. My interpreter is standing next to me. He is actually a graduate of the school where I spent most of my time in Derhadun.

Some are here from the city and are just looking for a little extra knowledge to help them understand the Bible more. I feel so inadequate to be in front of these people. I am just a student teaching other students. I don’t even know for sure if what I am saying has any kind of help for these students or if things are getting lost in translation. I taught for almost four hours on Monday. I was expecting to teach for an hour or two each day, but now it seems that I will be going for four hours each day, or until I die, whichever comes first.

This is the view from the roof of the home where I stayed. You can see that just beyond the street in the lower part of the picture, is where there is a portion of dense jungle.

I really did enjoy the teaching but when sweat is dripping down your face and getting into your eye, and then they say ‘oh we need to stop for tea time’ your first reaction is ‘ sweet I could really use a break. Sitting down would be the best thing for me right now.’ Then they bring out the tea and you realize that they made the tea with boiling milk then put the teabag in a metal cup which conducts the heat directly to your fingertips, and you think to yourself, ‘who in their right mind drinks boiling hot tea in a time when the average temperature is in the 90’s with about 90% humidity. Then your brain starts working again and you think, oh yeah, I am in India, this is normal for them...

This is the library in the Satellite facility.

The Satellite school is doing a very difficult but a very valuable work in this part of India. The Church absorbs the cost of the students to go through this program and some after completing the one year program will go on the four year school in Derhadun. The pastor I mentioned in my previous post started here in 1993 and there were Christians present in only three or four villages. Today there are Christians in about 200 villages. This is largely due to the work he has been doing in and around Seharampur…

AJAY

His story begins something like this. Ajay was brought up in a Brahmin family. He was high caste. His family was poor but they knew they were set up well for their next life. Ajay, when he was just five or six years old heard about someone named Jesus whom he had never heard of before. What he heard about Jesus sent him on a long journey of discovery. One problem though; being from a high caste family few people were reluctant to share with him because of the potential consequences. Ajay had several friends over the years who knew about Jesus but not enough to satisfy his curiosity.

Ajay's two kids Appu (boy in blue) Kushi (girl in pink and white) and sister-in-law Kami in the dark blue.

In his early teen years, his mother became very ill. Ajay remembered a story from the Bible where Jesus had prayed for forty days. So Ajay committed to pray for forty days for his mother's recovery. On the fortieth day he went to his mother and asked how she felt. Turns out she felt good. They went to the doctors for a check up and there was no sign of the illness. Some time later, his father became ill, and again he prayed. The Doctors told his father he was dealing with kidney failure and did not have much chance to live more than 35 days. Again after Ajay prayed his father was healed and went on to live a very productive life.

At this point Ajay would say that Jesus was the god for him. As a Brahmin, they were very devoted to the Hindu form of worship. Many people pray to many gods. Jesus seemed to be the god who answered his prayer so Jesus was his god. Several years went by and Ajay continued his search for more understanding of who Jesus is at this point Ajay himself got very sick. It was the same sickness his father had. Ajay developed Jaundice, he had to quit his job and return home. His parents were so poor that there was one point where all they had for sustenance was the water that was left over from cooking rice at his uncle's restaurant.

Ajay and his family. On the left in blue is his wife's sister, next to him his wife, and his two kids are in front. It is uncommon for a family to take care of the wife's family if there is a need. Usually the familial connection is to the husbands family. So inviting his sister-in-law into the home to provide her with an education is uncharacteristic of a Hindu, but very characteristic of a Christian.

Ajay had been so sick for so long that once again he turned to his god, Jesus and prayed for healing. The night he prayed, he had a dream. In the dream he was slapping Jesus in the face. Time after time right hand then left hand. Then he noticed a tear in Jesus’ eye. He stopped and asked Jesus why he was crying. Jesus said, you always come to me and ask me to bring healing. Ajay replied, “yes you are my god, you are the one for me you act when I pray so of course I pray to you.” Jesus said, “But, you only come to me when you need something, you also honor other gods. I want to be the only God for you. So while still dreaming Ajay figured he was going to die anyways so he might as well tell Jesus that he would live for him only until he died. Jesus accepted his word and when Ajay woke up in the morning he was completely healed.

What is so uncommon about Ajay's story is that it is not uncommon. Stories like this are actually quite common. Miraculous healings and visions of Jesus are thought of as normal by most of the people I have talked to over these last weeks. Why is it we do not experience these sorts of things in America, or hear them from Americans???

BHAGWANPUR

I went to another school in a town called Bhagwanpur. This is a very overcrowded school now and it has a short but impressive history. It started as just a three room school not too far from its current location with just twenty three students. Two rooms were classrooms and one was an office for the teachers. After just three years the school became packed with just over 60 students crammed into their two small rooms. With an increasing demand to take more students they needed to find a new facility.

Their current building became available to rent and so they took the opportunity to move into the new location which had ten or twelve rooms that could be used as class rooms as well as a few offices. The school currently is running around 500 students form K through 8th grade. Their current class size is about forty to fifty students per class.

The Indian people value education so much so that if there is a chance their student can attend classes in a non-government school they do anything they can to get their kids in. It just so happens that the schools that are run by Christian organizations have the best reputation for education so they are the most sought after schools. This one is so full that they are in need of moving again and they have only been in existence for six years.

They have purchased a plot of land that is about two acres in total. The plan is to build something similar to what was built in Pathrie. A large three story complex with classrooms and some offices. And then build some housing for teachers and administrators as well.

One thing that set this school apart from Pathrie however is that this school also has an orphanage as part of the ministry to the community. They only have room for 30 kids. They actually call it a children's home. Each group of six to ten kids has an adult couple that cares for them. The idea is that each couple acts like parents to these kids and each kid is like a sibling to the other in their "family". They try to create some semblance of a family for these little ones.

I walked into one of the rooms while the kids were in class as part of a tour I was getting of the facilities and started crying. (No one else was around me). I don't know who the kids are who slept in that room, I don't know their stories, I could not point them out in a crowd, or if they were standing in front of me, but I cried for them. No child should ever be thrown away. What does it do to a child and later on as an adult to know that some one cared just enough to not abort them but not enough to care for them personally. I know that this is not the case for many of the students but it for some. I have personally heard enough stories to imagine what some of the stories in this room might be like.

This is the land that was purchased for the new facility. It is a field today, but hopefully in another year or two they will have the money to build at least the first floor of their dream.

I walked out of the building not wanting to leave. I really wanted to see the kids when they got out of school and give them a hug, and tell them that even if no one else loved them, that Jesus loved them. But I the reality is that two minutes with me is not going to change things for them. It might make me feel better, but it does nothing for them. The heroes here are the couples who have dedicated themselves to bringing up kids who are not theirs to understand the love of God.

This is one of the bedrooms at the Children's home. It is right next to the school. You notice their beds are neatly made and on one of the beds, (it is hard to tell) there is a Bible sitting there. These kids have very few if any personal possessions. To have your own book is a big deal especially if it is a Bible.

No one else in their society is concerned about showing them this kind of love. Not even their own family members. At least the Muslims will care for extended family when they are in need; even the Sikhs, a Hindu reform group which started about 600 years ago will care for extended family who have fallen on hard times. But if you are a Hindu and you fall on hard times it is because you deserve it. And children sometimes pay a high price for this. I am so thankful for the people in these schools and homes who are dedicated to the next generation of Indians.

I don't remember his name, even if I did, I would not be able to pronounce it or spell it, but this man is a teacher in the school and he is one of the house parents as well. He and his wife have two kids, plus the children in the home. I don't know his name but he is a hero to me.

PATHRIE

On Sunday afternoon I traveled to a town called Pathrie. Actually we were just outside a small farming community which was just outside of Pathrie. The village is very poor, made up mostly of farmers.

The grounds owned by the school taken from the roof. The center of the picture is the faculty housing building. In the lower right you can see a couple hundred bikes which the kids ride to get to school.

It was a predominantly Muslim area until about twenty years ago or so. The government needed to supply more electricity to the area and so they planned to build a hydro electric plant on a river some twenty kilometers away. The result however was that many villagers from that area would be flooded out of their communities.

Students stand in rows every morning for their morning routine, which includes the pledge of allegiance, singing the national anthem, and reciting the Lord's prayer.

The government informed the people of their plans and told them that they were providing a space for them to move to and resettle. That area just happened to be right outside of Pathrie near this already existing Muslim community.

A student stands and reads during class time.

What resulted was a growing tension between the two communities. The Muslims had their own established community for years and years, and they did not appreciate being imposed on by the government. To them the Hindu’s are unclean (spiritually speaking). Fast forward about eighteen years, and this Christian school gets its start literally between the boundary lines of these two communities. The boundary line actually consists of Sugar Cane fields and wheat fields.

This was the first class in which I sang a song. I was drawing a blank with the guitar in my hand and ended up sing "Amazing Grace" / "Grace like Rain"

Classes for the school begin at 7:40am and conclude at 1pm. At that time the students are dismissed and the teachers get a break. A few of them live on the School grounds in housing that was built for faculty and staff. At 4pm an afternoon program begins which goes until 6pm. This program is sponsored by Compassion International.

At the end of a long day here the Compassion sponsored students get some food in the evening

Each of the students who attend this program do not have the money to attend the school so instead they attend the government schools. However the government school do not really provide much of an education. Each student progress from one grade to the next regardless of performance, and the class sizes are as small as 30 to 40 all the way up to as many as 80 per class. Sometimes the teachers don’t show up. Needless to say it is not an environment that is geared towards learning and education.

The school here actually has a class on personal heighten. It is an attempt to educate the younger generation on how to maintain clean living. Here a teacher inspects a students "First Aid" kit as part of their curriculum.

The after school program is designed to be a time of tutoring and helping with homework, and since these are the poorest of the poor they also get a meal as part of the sponsorship. Most of my time there the kids just wanted to hear about America, so I talked with them about what America was like. Some found out they I play guitar so I played and sang for all the classes I visited after word got out. I visited the little kids the next day and could not avoid singing and playing for them either. A lot of kids wanted my name and email address, I relented. The real story though is the principal and the assistant principal. Their dedication to the work here is commendable. They have seen this place go from Sugar Cane field to a one and a half level school.

Work progresses slowly on the building project where they are adding a second floor. This structure was designed to be a three story school. Though they have to take it a stage at a time as the get the funding.

Soon it will be a complete two level school. They have worked hard to make the School in Pathrie what it is and just as hard to maintain a solid reputation in the community. Along with that Matt and I stayed in Ajay’s home (the assistant principal).

Ajay, the assistant principal, and his family.

When we arrived they showed us to the guest room. It was small and the bed was basically a low table with blankets on it. It was not until the second morning when I got up a little early and happened to see the kids room and I saw Ajay sleeping on a blanket on the floor that I realized he and his wife gave us their bed, and they were sleeping on the floor in their kids’ room. These are the kind of people I stayed with. I will write a short post on Ajay later…

BIRTHDAY...

I was supposed to go to a school today but there was a mudslide that covered the road so I went instead to another school.
There is an orphanage as part of the ministry of the school. They only have room for 30 kids. Each group of six to ten kids has an adult couple that cares for them. They call them parents, and the place is called a children's "home". This is so that the kids can have something close to a family.
I walked into one of the rooms while the kids were in class as part of a tour I was getting of the facilities and started crying.

I don't know who the kids are,
I don't know their stories,
I could not point them out in a crowd,
or if they were standing in front of me,
but I cried for them.

I think I cried because my time in youth ministry grew a conviction in me that no child or teen should ever be thrown away, figuratively and literally and there are places in the world where both happen.
What does it do to a child or teen to always have in the back of their mind to know that some one cared just enough to not abort them, but not enough to care for them personally.
I know this is not the case for many or even most of the students. But at the same time I have heard enough stories to be able to piece together what their stories could be.
No one should ever have to wonder whether or not they are loved.
To never know the soft caring touch of a loving mother,
to never hear the words I love you, or I am proud of you from a father

Today was my birthday...
No one here knew...
I turned 35 years old...
There was no cake
There was no Ice cream
There were no cards
There was no song
There were no candles
There was nothing wrapped

Only a group of people I have met from different places around the world who happen to be in the same place at the same time.
Nothing that resembled a birthday party.

This time around that is okay.
Some kids smiled today because I said hi,
Some kids giggled when I shook their hand,
Some kids felt smart when teaching me Hindi
They took their picture with me and fought over who could see it on my camera
Their dirty faces beamed with delight today
I looked at dirty faces today, I saw something beautiful
That was my birthday present...

Just a Meandering Thought...

FRESHERS

The evening started off with a great sunset and clouds rising between the mountain peaks. They seem to hint at the rising future these students have. As the sun met the horizon it shot hues of yellow and orange back towards us reminding us that whatever we thought we were giving to India, India is giving back much more. The first year student were a reminder of this...

So Freshers are not India’s top choice for refreshing minty flavored gum. Nor is it a brand of breath mint. Freshers are India’s name for Freshmen. I know, right!! The Americans here have had lot of fun with that name. It is tradition here at the school for the Freshers to put on a presentation at the beginning of the school year and this past weekend was the time for this year’s freshers to do their thing. It was basically like a talent show / Saturday Night Live / Late Night. It had elements of each of these. There was a host who spoke between each of the acts and tried to be a little witty, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not so much. All in all it was a fun time and a chance for the Freshers to bond a little. It is actually the most interaction that the guys will have with the girls pretty much all year.

The Fresher's class is 90 strong, though you can't see all of them in this picture.

Our hosts for the evening are Glory, the young lady in the red sari, and Gerin, the guy in the suit with the mic. Gerin and I have become buddies.

This is Abigail who sung and played the guitar surprisingly well. I am told that her sari is a very expensive one. I rely heavily on other people for these kinds of details...

This was the final act of the night. The guy playing the violin was phenomenal. The group did a compilation of songs that was so good. I have a video of the whole thing but it is too big to post here. If you live close by me in South Hamilton you will ask to hear it.

Great job to all the Freshers who participated. Probably none of you will ever read this but you did great and I am proud of you.

ROUTINE

Last week was my first full week in India. I have been able to feel out the rhythm of the college and the students and become more comfortable knowing what is coming next on a given day. Here is roughly how it goes...

Each day I get up between 5:30 and 6am. I figure since I'm dealing with jet lag I might as well make it work for me. Our host will make a pot of coffee for whoever wants it, which is a nice way to wake up. When I go out to the more rural villages I won’t have that. With coffee I will usually spend some time in conversation with my host (by the way his name is George Chavanakamanil or something pretty close to that) or reading either the Bible or the Gita (trying to understand the Hindu mindset) or writing in my journal, or reading a little C.S. Lewis.

Breakfast is at 7:15, followed by morning chapel at 8am. After chapel classes begin at 9am. There are two morning classes before morning tea which is at 10:30am. You heard me… morning tea. There are some things that remain to this day from when the British ruled India. One of them is Tea time once in the morning and then again in the afternoon. After morning tea there are three more class hours. The class hours are actually 50 minutes each, and the give students 10 minutes between each class. Actually the time between classes is for the professors. Each student selects an educational track to be on. There are several tracks to choose from. Each track has a different focus; it is kind of like selecting a major. Each track stays in one room, with a few exceptions, for the duration of class time. Tea time is the one time that everyone gets a break. The teachers are the ones that move from class to class teaching the subject of their specialty. Yeah… it did take some getting used to for me. During this time I am usually attending a class or occasionally teaching a class. Usually at some point if I am not teaching and there is nothing offered that I am particularly interested in I will go back to my room in the guest house, and prepare for a chapel message, or journal or blog, or read.

Classes finish at 1:30 which is lunch time. Today was the most amazing lunch we have had so far. We had naan, which is an Indian flat-bread, and this chicken… ooooohhhhh… Tandoori Chicken will be what I order the next time I go to an Indian restaurant. It literally mean oven chicken. There is a special clay where the cook will put the bread dough on the side of the oven and put the chicken on skewers inside the oven. Soooo gooood. Anyway…

After lunch I teach English, most of the time, until around 4pm. After 4pm I can relax a bit, and I would, except from 5pm til 6:30ish the students play sports. Cricket is the big one but there are a lot that play badminton and Volleyball. I will try Cricket at some point, but there is a lot of standing around. So I usually play Volleyball.

After that is dinner and a shower, (a cold shower) usually followed by some time of conversation about cultural differences which is carried over from the dinner conversation. There are some occasional night time events happening but usually we just chill until we go to bed.

That is basically how last week went and how this week will continue to go. My travel-mate Matt Ogden has had some great opportunities to teach on the subjects that he really seems to enjoy teaching about so I am definitely happy for him.

We have finally settled into a routine and it feels good, settling. But of course next week I will be going out into the more rural areas to visit some schools and teach there as well as visiting some orphanages to do what I can with the kids there. I will do my best to take some pictures and post some of them here for you who are following.

It has been a full and fulfilling two weeks so far and I am just one third of the way through my time here…

CAMPUS

I took a walk around the campus here today (Friday) and took some pictures. The first half of the day was sunny for the most part so I took the opportunity to walk around the campus before the rains came. I took some pictures of the campus here so you can have an idea of where I am living.

This is the guest house where I am living for the next five and a half weeks. My room is on the upper right hand side. The school has many supporters in the states so it was built so people from the U.S. could come and not feel too far out of their comfort zone. It is home base for me. I will be going to more rural locations for a few days at a time from here.

This building is called Magdala. It is almost directly across the roadway from where the guest house is. It is the women's dorm.

This building is the academic building. There are maybe twelve or fifteen classrooms in this building. Students stay in their classrooms for five classes (there is a break for tea time) and the professors move from class to class.

This building is the chapel and mess hall. The chapel is on the upper level and is glass all the way around. The Mess, as they call it, (many words are carry-overs from the British days) is on the lower level. It is pretty big. Roughly 250 students are present for chapel services and they take up about a third of the floor space.

This building will house the new linguistics center that is being developed. The official language of India is English, in fact India is the largest English speaking nation in the world. Aside from that there are 4 major families of languages; within these four families there are just over distinct languages, from there there are over 4,000 dialects.

The mountains to the north east are often cloud covered which gives the place a bit of a mystical feel. It is easy to see why this region surrounding us was given the nickname “land of the gods”.

More campus vistas to come in a later post...

COMMISSION

Yesterday morning Gordon Conwell held a commissioning service for all the students who will be going overseas this summer. It was in some ways a typical chapel service but there were some elements that distinguished it from others. There was a guy on a guitar who led the songs and a girl on a piano, along with a back up singer to harmonize with the guy on the guitar. There was a podium where people stood to say important words; there were students and faculty in the pews, though with it being at the end of the semester there were not as many as there are at the beginning of the semester.

One member of each team headed overseas got up to briefly share about where they will be going and what they will be doing. Afterward a faculty member came to the platform and put a hand on the shoulder of the team members and prayed. This is the commissioning. It seemed like a symbolic event with little consequence until I began to think about why we even have a commissioning service. The answer lies in the word COMMISSION.

The "CO" in COmmission suggests that I am not alone. There is someone with me as I go. In the commissioning service a faculty member stood next to me, demonstrating symbolically that I am not alone. For all those who are supporting me whether in prayer or financially you are standing with me as I go. Matthew 28:19-20 is the passage of scripture that is usually called the great commission. The last sentence in that passage says, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." That sentence is why we call it the Great COmmission. Jesus said that he is with us.

The "MISSION" in comMISSION tells us that there is something that we need to do. There is a task to accomplish, a goal to work towards, a road to travel. My mission this summer is to teach and mentor students at New Theological College and their satellite schools, to serve in the orphanages in the nearby cities, and to perhaps speak at a local Indian church or two. I have been told that the best thing I can offer the people is myself. This is my mission.

So as I share myself with the people I meet; as I walk the road of mission I do not do it alone. I have been CO-MISSIONED. There are faculty, family and friends, who stand with me in prayer and who contribute to get me there. Most importantly Jesus is with me always. I do not accomplish a single task that He is not a part of or the driving force behind.

Incidentally, Jesus was commissioned too. John the Baptist performed a symbolic ceremony which inaugurated Jesus into his official ministry. Jesus was not alone; besides the twelve disciples he had regular conversation with his "sending institution" - God the Father. Stands to reason that if Jesus did that way it is probably not a bad way to do it. Seems like "CO" anything is a better way.

Just a meandering thought...

INDIA

To all of my family, friends and acquaintances,

This summer I have the opportunity to travel to Northern India for about six weeks as part of my Master’s program. I will be helping in schools churches and orphanages doing things like teaching English, tutoring in Greek, sharing about American culture, and experiencing the culture of Northern India for myself.

In the next week or so I will be sending out letters to many of you to give you some more details about the trip as well as to ask for your support. Many of you are the church going type and if all you can do to support me is to pray for me I gratefully accept your prayers on my behalf. Many of you are not church goers so you should know that I also accept happy thoughts and positive energy. For those who have the means to contribute financially the total cost of the trip is $3,200 so obviously money is important too. Your tax deductible gift will be handled by the school and they will issue you a receipt.

If you received a Christmas card from us this year, then I have your address, if not then there is a good chance that I do not have it. So if I likely don’t have your address and you would like more info on how to help me get to India you can send me your mailing address through facebook or email or twitter. You are probably reading this through one of those mediums. Also, I will be utilizing social media a lot to keep my supporters up to date on how the prep for my trip is going as well as updates of my experiences while in India, (as often as internet is available).


You can keep up with me on:

• Twitter: CDGiguere
• friend me on facebook
• check out my blog updates: vagabondragamuffin.blogspot.com
• email: caleb.giguere@gmail.com

Fragrance

I am fascinated by the affect that smells can have on us; where they can bring us. Have you ever walked into your parents home on Christmas Eve and been taken back to your childhood by the smells of the home when you walked in? One of my college roommates still remembers the smell of a particular girl at school whenever he smells the scent of vanilla perfume, or vanilla anything really. There is the smell of fresh cut grass that reminds me of summer. The smell of the road right after a mid-summer rain storm is another. The smell of a fire in the fireplace or at a campsite makes me think of comfort and warmth after being cold. Each of these and countless others brings us all back to a place in our lives, perhaps good perhaps bad, but the scent... sends us somewhere.

These last couple of mornings I have left my apartment a little earlier than usual for school orientation. When I walked outside I was greeted by some familiar smells. I smelled the morning dew. I smells the fresh crisp morning air. I smelled the smell that I remember smelling on those early days of September when I would be going back to school. It reminds me of the nervousness of seeing students and friends I had not seen all summer long. It reminds me of cutting up paper grocery bags to make book covers for them. It reminds me of heavy backpacks. It reminds me of football practice, classes, lunchrooms, fire drills, homework... it reminds me of the first day of school. What a coincidence I am in orientation for my first day of school... post grad to be exact.

It has been many years since I rode my bike to school, I may be doing that again (out of choice) The backpack is now a shoulder bag, there is no gym class or study halls, some classes have like fifty people in them, some possibly more, there are a ton of things that are different. The one thing that is the same is the early morning September smell from years ago. I am thirty three years old, I am pursuing a Master's degree but this morning, for a brief moment, I was eight years old on the first day of school.

I wonder sometimes, when smells remind Jesus of the cross. I wonder what smells remind Jesus of a fire side denial. What was going through Peter's mind (as a fisherman) when he set foot out of the boat. When Jesus taught in the temple courts during the week before his crucifixion was he reminded about the time he was left there by his parents? When he was teaching there at twelve years old was he thinking of the time he would turn over tables? Are there smells that make Jesus think of me? The smell of denial, of compassion, of forgiveness. If Jesus were to "smell" my life, where would that take him? Can we say, "our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God..." as 2Corinthians talks about? What do "smell like to God? What does God think of when he catches a whiff of your life??

Just a thought...