Revolution In World Missions

I cannot believe that we (husband & I) have had a heart for India for 3 years now!  Time sure does pass quickly.  I can remember back to the day he told me about this "call from God", like it was yesterday.  What an amazing adventure we've had, just in learning about this precious sub-continent.  The culture, history, people, food, and so many other things.  And to think, we actually made a trip there!  But thinking back, I remember using a lot of resources in our quest for knowledge of anything Indian.  One particular book comes to mind, that was titled Revolution in World Missions.  I think my husband signed up for the free book from www.gfa.org. This book was very influential to us, since we knew God had placed India on our hearts.  It was such a powerful book about the Gospel For Asia organization.  How it started, how it continued, the struggles and victories.  I remember just being stirred further in regards to the mission field.  How often my prayers were laced with concern for those in need and in poverty, and those who were ministering to them.  The book also showed the different opinions and attitudes that people here in America have towards missions and missionaries. Both good and bad.  I remember times of sadness for the lack of interest in supporting missionary works, compared to the exorbitant materialistic mindsets.  But there were also moments of awareness of the needs that needed to be met.  This book was very eye-opening to the needs, and challenged me to personally support overseas & missionary works, both financially and prayerfully.  Even now, we faithfully contribute to works in Africa and India.  If you want the eyes of your heart to be opened up to God's desire to see other nations & peoples being reached, I highly recommend you read this book!

I also recently received No Longer a Slumdog (also from GFA), and am in the process of reading it.  Looking forward to more of the Holy Spirit's challenging my heart for the nations!

English and Spanish

Yesterday we had the privilege of picking up an international pastor from the airport.  He is from Panama, which is mostly Spanish speaking.  As we met up with him at the baggage claim (which took DIA a VERY LONG time to get the baggage delivered), we had quite a bit of time to try a small amount of Spanish on him, and his small amount of English on us.  Needless to say, it was quite interesting indeed.  Just standing there with a person from another country reminded me of our own adventure in another country.  I will never forget standing at the baggage claim in Mumbai International Airport.  A very nice Indian girl helped direct us a little, since she is from there, but lives in the US and knew English very well.  Later on, I regretfully realized that I wished I had gotten her name and number.  But alas, hindsight is 20/20.

So, once we finally retrieved our pastor friend's luggage, we headed home, into the sunset (literally!).  Since I knew we needed to have dinner ready for his arrival, I decided on Frito pie as the dinner of choice.  Something that can easily be made ahead of time, and thrown in the crockpot for awhile to simmer and wait for us.  Needless to say, he was very satisfied, and even asked for the recipe. You can find the recipe at my food blog: http://heathersmanyrecipes.blogspot.com/.

Now if only we can take another trip to India, and have someone waiting there for us! :)

Indian Food!

So, as many of you may know, one of my most favorite past-times is cooking Indian food!  And I must say, I've gotten pretty good at it.  I love the accomplishment of setting out to find a perfect recipe for a particular dish, and finally having the satisfaction of making it mine!  Samosas are just one of the many recipes I have tried and if you check out my other blog, you'll find a great recipe for them!  Hope you like! :)
http://heathersmanyrecipes.blogspot.com/2011/08/summer-samosas.html

It's amazing what can happen when you get in contact with an old friend.  Recently, I got wind that a friend of mine had been sent to pastor a church in Bangkok, Thailand.  Of course, human nature stepped-in with the curiosity factor and so I emailed that friend an inquiry.  Lo-and-behold, she and her family truly were in Bangkok!  I could hardly believe it!  She responded with how fast it happened and all that was going on.  Being someone who also feels the "call of God on our lives", I began to really take this all to heart.  What am I personally doing, or not doing, to prepare for that myself?  Am I bogged down with "other stuff" that is not necessarily bad, but takes my eyes off of "a heart for India AND BEYOND"?  (The beyond part can be anywhere...including my own city of Denver/Lakewood, by the way.)  I began to realize that some of my daily pursuits (online social networking, product reviews, giveaways, etc.) were not bad at all.  But are they contributing to the overall higher calling of leading people to Jesus?  Another moment of reckoning came last night, while I was in bed reading one of my favorite book series, "Anne of Green Gables".  In this volume, Anne has come home from college, to discover that a dear school chum of hers is deathly sick.  Anne has a realization that I will type out here, hopefully with the author's acceptance:  "The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth."  I realized that the one true thing that matters in this life is to strive for a better and closer relationship with our Savior and Heavenly Father, and to develop as many relationships with people as we can.  Anne realized this and my friend Socorro is living it.  Now, it's my turn. No more product reviews or giveaways (even though I only truly did one).  No more silly social media stuff (although I'll stay "linked" for others to contact me occassionally).  It's time to live the life of heaven here on earth. 

Giveaways & Product Reviews

I follow quite a few blogs!  Besides my love of anything Indian, I also follow blogs about homeschooling, cooking and other topics of (my) interest.  Two of my favorites are The Traveling Sisterhood and Meet Virginia.  Recently I participated in a giveaway on Traveling Sisterhood and won a whole box (24ct.) of PopChips!  That definitely made me a hero in my family's eyes!  Then I saw some reviews on Meet Virginia, and contacted her about it.  So, since I joined a website that provides blogger reviws, one new thing I'm going to add to future posts are product reviews, and possible giveaways!  If you're like me, you LOVE to get stuff in the mail, especially surprises!  With that said, I get to review my first item that "suprised" me from today's mail.

Funky Monkey T-Shirt

So, I was a little hesitant about selecting this review item, because although I think monkeys are cute, I wasn't sure if there was some "hidden meaning" with this monkey themed shirt.  But, it's actually quite a cute logo!  It's bascilly a screenprint of a fuschia monkey head, colored yellow on the face, with a aqua outline.  The quality appears to be very well both of the screenprint and even the material used for this shirt.  GILDAN Heavy Cotton (90% cotton/10% polyester) was used, and even though the name wouldn't sound familiar, the actual tag is.  I selected a size Large, which is probably a man's size, since this would actually be considered a XL for women.  Oh and the color of the shirt I received was a heathered gray.  Overall, I would be willing to pay $15-$30 for this shirt, probably depending on what logo (or famous band name) was on it. The cute and playful Funky Monkey logo may actually become a conversation starter. 

You can purchase one for yourself at http://www.tshirtprinting.net/printed-t-shirts/

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Morning Musings

Some things stay with you forever.  Even places you have been to that seem as though they were only a dream!  But then something happens, which triggers your rememberance of that destination...a smell, a sound, etc.  A couple weeks ago, I was out running errands and happened upon a cawing crow, which reminded me of the myriad of crows in Mumbai.  After Sunday morning church service, we passed by the smoke shop next to our church, and I smelled incense.  Immediately I was reminded of our hotel in India, where every morning, the owner would light inscense in the reception area and say a quick prayer to his Ganesh shrine.  This morning, as I drove my husband to work, we were sitting at a traffic signal, and a couple blocks away I heard a car honking that induced another trip down the Mumbai-memory-lane!  After he got out of the car, I decided to pop-in one of our Bollywood soundtracks in the tape-player (yes, you heard that right, lol), and proceeded home, escorted by a longing in my heart for the country that only God could place there.  And to top it all off, I received an email this morning with new "mini-episodes" of Chris from Mission India, having gone back to India at the same time we were there!  To see the videos just got my silly heart-strings being plucked again!  I guess I was foolish and naive to think that one trip to India would "get it out of my system".  Yes, it was a trip of mixed feelings and experiences, but now just battle the "I'm a little exerienced now, and would love to try to do it better the next time" mentality.  But for now, I will just have to keep on savoring these little reminders as a reminder from God, that He has given me "a heart for India and beyond"! :)

Review & Realization

Book Review: Last night I finished a really good book called Secret Daughter, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.  First of all, I enjoyed it being a clean book (no sexually explicit situations or swearing).  But it was a great read about two mothers and a daughter, and the things they face separately but together.  It was based in San Francisco, CA and Mumbai, India.  And if you know me, you know I'm interested in almost anything Indian!  It also includes a glossary of Hindi terms in the back, in case you are unsure of what those words mean.  I won't say much else, other than it was very well written, had a great ending, and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good story to enjoy!
http://shilpigowda.com/

Realization: So, this book has led me to a great realization.  Both joyful and sad.  The joyful part is that once I found the Hindi glossary in Secret Daughter, I skimmed through it, and realized that I didn't need it.  I knew almost all of the Hindi words that were used in the story.  Which led me to see that I have truly learned a lot of Hindi, more than I previously thought.  Then I started to cry.  Why you ask?  Because I spent a lot of money and time going to Mumbai, India last month, and didn't even get to put any of it to use. I fell into an insecure American tourist mindset, and forgot that God has helped me learn so much more than I realized.  So, before we take another trip there, I plan to make some serious contacts (friends/families) in Mumbai, and to learn Hindi better.  I have even contacted an Indian lady here in Denver who teaches Hindi, so I look forward to that when she returns from India.

So, finally my thoughts about our trip to Mumbai.  First of all, we attended one of our fellowship churches in Thane, where we met a very nice Pastor & his wife. Their church was technically sent out of one of our US churches, and then eventually handed over to him, since he's Indian.  That was truly our highlight in our trip.  The rest had its ups and downs.  Nothing could truly prepare a person for Mumbai.  Although I was probably more prepared than most, you can't do much about sickness.  I was stomach sick for a good portion of our time there, which made it miserable at times, and just the sheer MASS of people unnerved me at times.  I couldn't imagine so many people coming and going, but more than that was the people that either had shops or living quarters set up on the sidewalks.  And even more, the people loitering!  I kept thinking, how can so many people just be hanging out on the sidewalks, streets & alleys.  I'm used to Americans that just go. LOL.  We ended up staying at Hotel Traveller's Inn, in Ballard Estate, right behind Cafe Universal, and about ten min. walk from CST/VT, on Shabat Singh Road.  It was like staying in an American Super 8/Motel 6.  Definitely not the greatest, but it was clean, quiet and safe, so that was good. Only saw 2 bugs, one roach (we were right next to kitchen) and something else that bit David in the hall lobby computer area.  He's fine :).  A lot of backpackers stay there.  Probably not the greatest place for a longer stay like ours, but the staff were decent, and so it worked for us.  It was also a bit unnerving to arrive at night, where it seemed as though Mumbai doesn't believe in too many street lights, because I just remember it being so very dark, but LOTS of people out.  Then we pulled into Ballard Estate (driver not exactly knowing where our hotel was) and it was like a ghost-town!  Thankfully one friendly soul was hanging out and directed our driver, and we got there safe.  Next day we decided to go out and find something for breakfast, but that was a bit futile, because we had not thought about breakfast food restaurants.  We walked to VT and that was what unnerved me the most. SO MANY PEOPLE!!!  We were probably there around 7-8am.  Probably not the smartest time to go, lol.  I couldn't take it well, and so we went back to hotel and just ordered something in.  I had a break-down, lol.  We stayed in most of the rest of the day, until we decided to venture down to Cafe Universal for an early dinner/late lunch.  I calmed down a bit.  Next day, we tried to go to Colaba Causeway, but I said Market instead, and we ended up somewhere else, nearby, but we didn't really realized that till later.  I think we also hit up the McD's for lunch at some point, and checked out VT while we were at it.  Still a little unnerving.  We also checked out Gateway & Taj Hotel, but then I got a little freaked out by all the haggling from camera guys and such (where we ended up getting some pics by one of them).  Finally on Saturday we were gonna head to Chowpatty & Juhu areas, but I got major stomach cramps again, and that day was wasted, sadly because of me. :(  Sunday was great though, because we took the cab ride to Thane West for church, and then had lunch at a very nice hotel buffet with the Pastor, his wife and a brother from their church.  We had a rickshaw ride in Thane, and David was thrilled.  Then we took cab back to hotel and just hung around there.  Monday we took the same Mehru cabbie for a day-trip, and he showed us Gateway, Nariman Point, Chowpatty, Bandra/Worli Seaface bridge, Juhu, etc.  We saw SRK & Salman Khan's house (at least that's what he said, on the seafront), saw Hanging Gardens and the one across street with animal bushes, then up to Bandra and had biryani at Lucky's.  We had him come in too, I think he liked it. :)  Then I really wanted to shop and he took us to a mall in Bandra, but didn't find anything cheap, so back to our room where we got directions online for Colaba Causeway, which we finally found!  Here is where I realized your recommendation for more money came in.  Yes, things could be cheap, but it was easy to blow money quick here. Got some nice souvenirs and such.  That was also a nice day, although I just felt drained by the end of it.  So much to see.  So many people.  Such mixed conditions.  It was definitely an adventure.  I can agree with people who say you can hate it at times and love it at times.  And, despite the hard times I did face, I think I've decompressed enough, and am ready to go back.  This time I'll know what to expect, at least a little bit, lol!  Oh, and we did also go to Marine Drive at night, although I got freaked out again (LOL) because there was a cricket game going on, and I just imagined it letting out, and ALL THOSE PEOPLE filling into where we were.  I realized my insecurities a lot.  But, I'm a bit stronger from it now, I think.  I definitely realize why Indians love to come to America.  But as for me, I will go where God leads.