November 2006

November was a busy month. I went to Thailand, Singapore, India, and then back to China for the 4th time this year. Erin met me in India where we stayed at the Hilton Trident Resort in New Delhi for about 3 days and then flew down to the Mumbai for several days. Erin has wanted to see India for years. We stayed at a hotel that can really only be described with pictures. Yesterday we went to the Taj Mahal...10 hours in the car round trip...dodging cows and water buffalo the entire way. I've never seen worse poverty...China, Guyana, etc...nothing holds a candle to what you see here in India. Early this morning we flew into Bombay (Southern India.) We found a church meeting that was meeting in a tiny little house in South Bombay. It was an absolute miracle that we found the church...we arrived 3 minutes before the meeting began...we thought we'd be arriving just as church was concluding (our flight was delayed and it was then an hour long drive to the address we got off the church's website,) but it turned out that church was starting at 11:30.  The branch president, shown in the picture on the right, asked Erin and me to speak just after having arrived...several of them then shared their conversion stories with us. Their faith and dedication was moving. We then spent the remainder of the day eating dinner with a member of the branch who is going to be Erin's shopping escort tomorrow while I'm working with Baxter Health Care India.


Here are some additional pics from the trip:

A group of school kids outside the Taj Mahal...they went crazy over Erin.

This is a family of three on a motorcycle stuck next to us in traffic.

We took a boatride off the coast of Mumbai to "Elephanta Island" one day. Incredible ruins, monkeys all over the place..and women wearing pots.

This old man was painting his wall...somewhere between New Delhi and Agra

Erin loved the taxis in India...came back w/ more pictures of taxis than the Taj Majal

This man almost beat us up when we didn't pay him $20 U.S. for a picture w/ his monkey.

It's difficult to appreciate the incline this woman is walking up in this picture. She passed me as I was waiting for Erin to come out of a restroom that was planted on the side of a hill on the island of Elephanta. She and the other women with her were flattered that I would want to take her picture.