Neener's Travel Blog

Sunday, May 25, 2014 An overview of our outreach time in India - it's a bit of a long one.  India ended up being a very mixed experience for me.  Darjeeling really was beautiful and we were able to be involved in several different ministries.  It was such great experience to see such a variety of ministries. I went to a children's slum ministry, where the kids ranged in age from around 1 to 12, mostly falling into the 5ish area.  There were about 40 kids packed into a room slightly bigger than my living room (which is not big enough for 10 people sitting, let alone 40 brawling children).  Despite the utter chaos, we were still able to act out Daniel and the Lions' Den (I was one of the bad advisors.  It was a real big hit when I was eaten.), play some games (still not entirely sure how that was accomplished), do a lion mask craft (lions are now green, purple, blue and covered in flower patterns) and hand out snack.  It was over so quickly and all ...

I am getting exhausted. I've gotten tired and worn out several times on this trip. Exhausted in every way - physically, spiritually, emotionally. And every time I think this is it, that I can't go on anymore, God leads me back to Psalm 23. It seemed cliche, until I realized that, despite being one of those overused/not fully understood verses, it is still God's word. He can use it to speak to me and encourage me. And there is so much solid truth and encouragement in these six verses. I wrote my own version of the Psalm (using NIV) today during my quiet time, when God led me to this passage yet again. My 23rd Psalm The Lord is my shepherd. I am a part of his flock and I am valuable to him. He watches over me and sees everything that is going on around me. He provides shelter and food and water and everything that I need. He protects me from dangerous terrain and from predators lying in wait to attack me. With him I lack nothing. When I am with him, there is nothing th...

Saturday, May 3, 2014 We left on the night of April 29th to catch our flight from Bangkok to Kolkata, India.  Pretty short and uneventful as far as airports and flights go.  Also I was half asleep, so I don't remember much of it... I do know that when we got off the plane there were two women from Mega Cities (Kolkata is currently the focus of the Mega Cities initiative - sending as many outreach teams to that city as possible to really hammer them with Jesus) waiting for us.  They got us on a bus that took our Music DTS people to their accommodations and continued on with us Children at Risk DTS people for about another hour to where we were going to stay.  Oh, this is all at, like, 4 am.  I slept through most of it.  We got to our hostel at some point and just crashed.  Two of our leaders went out to figure out our transportation to Darjeeling, and this is where things started getting complicated.  We were trying to get tickets on a sleeper t...