day 7

As day 7 draws to a close, the end is most definately in sight for the st stephens delhi experience!

We started off after brekkie and the morning meeting touching up a few paint bits in the slum that hadnt been finished and painted some furniture but there wasnt that much to do really except enjoy the sun and chat! Nick has made friends with the general Asha handyman Simon and they were on the roof all morning, supposedly working but mostly chatting and drinking tea!Then once they were ready for us we salwar kameezed up and went off in two teams for a prayer walk round the slum. We can only speak from one teams experience but the others seemed to have a similar one. We went into the women's homes and they told us what they wanted prayer for, sometimes sickness or often for their kids to get an education or do well in their current one. they are not always Christian, mostly Hindu I believe, but it is very spiritual all round i think, there was a really sense of the Holy spirit going with us and before us. In one house we got accosted and stayed for half an hour drinking chai, and they gave us biscuits which we couldnt refuse but equally couldnt eat, and so all came up spontaneously with ingenious ways to hide them! among these were camera case, trousers, hiding it under a cup and sneaking it back onto the plate! the women are all so kind and eager to share what little they have, it is such a privelege to pray for them.

after lunch on the sunny and newly mint-green stairs we started on the kids! liz and ruth revealed how good at being teachers they are when they taught all of us and loads of Indian kids some english songs with few words but lots of actions! we were all a bit exhausted by the end of the hokey kokey but the kids loved it all. after that we sort of split off. the boys got a cricket game going which the girls could not join in with and so they took Hannah and Geni off dancing and wouldnt let us stop! they are all very good dancers and we looked so silly doing bangra with them but it was fun. other activities involved making bead bracelets and face-painting, and as the team sat on the mats they were absolutely mobbed! the children loved every second of it and barely let us stop at the end. It was a great time in the sun, so joyful and happy, and just for us to be touching these kids is breaking barriers of discrimination because rich people in India never would, so they grow up thinking they are inferior which is not a good start for trying to equip them to improve their standard of living.

after a couple of hours chilling at the hostel we have just been for a great meal and got back in auto rickshaws that were great fun with slightly emptier streets! like a roller coaster or bumper cars. and haggling the prices is fun too. Debbie and Jane, and Nick and Liz in two separate rickshaws both just got hijacked and abducted and taken off to the wrong place and eventually got back after about half an hour of visiting wrong places first! Their adventure involved going the wrong way round a roundabout (nothing special for India but they were all terrified!) and have just come into the internet cafe to tell us to stop worrying, they are back safely, when actually we were completely oblivious to their disappearance!

Libby is still very unwell, basically there is a virus sweeping Delhi that is getting everybody sick, the offices etc are all half empty, an epidemic type thing, and she has sadly got it and so hasnt been seen all day. Please pray for her speedy recovery, as she would love to go to the inaugration party tomorrow and definately needs to be a lot better to fly. The rest of us are all feeling a bit weird with various sniffles or ailments and I think everybody has what we have coined GBT, or general bodily turmoil. Tomorrow is the inaugration party where we unvail the clinic properly and it should be a great event, please pray for that.

Thank you so much for the support, this is quite likely to be the last blog post as we leave tomorrow evening, so if you have been faithfully reading them and praying, thank you SO MUCH, we cannot emphasise enough how much we appreciate it, without prayer support from home and knowing God is with us every step of the way we would all feel massively lost and insignificant in the face of so much need and the constant threat of sickness etc, but it has been an incredible, lifechanging experience and we have all been having a great time most of the time, and it has been a real privelege to come. So thank you so much for making it all possible!