The View from the Hump

Nine months—the hump—we’re halfway through our mission. It’s hard to believe, but then again last October seems like a long time ago.

The monsoons have started so the temperatures have come down and the humidity has gone way up. What does 95 degrees feel like with 50 or 60% humidity? A sauna! Here is the forecast for the next few days:

This last week was a great week for our mission! Though we sent two very good missionaries home, we got three back from the Philippians with renewed visas, four new ones from south India and one from the US.  In about three weeks two more senior missionary couples will be joining us! Yeah! Here we are sending Elder Muthyam home. He was one of the Assistants to the President when we first arrived and was so helpful and patient with us as we learned the Indian ways. He finished his mission working in Noida, so was very instrumental in helping to raise its Sunday attendance from 20 to 40+. He will be missed.

We are beginning to see some baptisms of students from the English classes we started last March. Here is the Chauhan family in Dwarka whose three kids are now all members. The Elders are still teaching the Mom and Dad.

On Father’s Day, we invited the single first counselor in the District Presidency over for dinner following a District Self Reliance Committee Meeting. President Pandey is a good friend and we both enjoy our time with him.

I splurged on a kitchen cutter/dicer recently. One of the sisters we visit regularly has one and says it saves a ton of time. Since cooking here is so time/labor intensive, and Amazon.india sells them for about $6.50, I thought how wrong could I go? I love it! I learned the hard way, though, that the blades are extremely sharp and you should not try to pick out any little pieces of food with your fingers. Once that was learned, I’ve been enjoying the speed at which I can prepare vegetables for cooking.

I learned something new from my seminary students a couple of weeks ago. I had taken some black pepper for an object lesson during class. I had also taken some cut up watermelon as a treat following class. They all grabbed the pepper and liberally sprinkled it on their watermelon before eating it up! I knew Indians like spicy food—but spicy watermelon? I guess so!

Here are a couple of street shots: Here is Elder on our way to an appointment 

                  … down a narrow road with scaffolding from construction making the road even narrower. And here is a view of all the wires overhead.

And this last one is on the way to church in Noida last Sunday. This fellow was riding on a motorcycle standing up! What a daredevil!

We had some really satisfying meetings just yesterday with some less actives that we have been working with a long time—and they told us they are ready to recommit! Yeah! And tonight we meet with the District Presidency, Branch Presidents, and District Council in the next step of implementing the Branch Development Plan, simplifying the handbook for the members here. The work moves forward!