India: Our Hearts…an Update

So I have been meaning to write this for awhile.  We kind of got cut off at the end of the trip and wasn’t able to post because the internet got a little fishy the last several days we were there. But we had some great opportunities to meet people that we didn’t even think we would get to meet. 

We have been back in Kansas City now for two months; although, India seems like decades ago.  Lil’ babes has cut two teeth, started eating food(on Friday; He loves his sweet taters), and talking like nobody’s business in that amount of time. We have also done too much processing.  If you know anything about me, I want to know immediately how I feel about everything. So for the first two weeks, I did not stop asking “what was that trip about?” It took longer than two weeks to hear these things from God and even put them into words. But hear is what we learned in a nut shell. 

• India is for us. Its hard, we felt taken advantage of, out of place and seriously at home in all the same moments. Here, we feel the roads don’t have enough cars on them, not enough people standing, sitting, walking everywhere. We miss it.

• that being said it feels like a time that we wait for God to place something in our laps. Both of us feel a complete peace and pursuing what He has put in front of us(like looking around a bit at Cerner) but don’t feel like we should go scrounging for something. To make space for the Mighty One’s hand if you will.

 

• it’s lonely out there…we need a better sense of how to make friends where we go. Will it be mostly through Babe’s job? I originally thought I would maybe have a job but it’s seeming harder and harder even in the states to leave little babes. Some of this is just trusting God but we feel like this is the biggest thing that God showed us while we were there and perhaps aren’t just supposed to know that it’s going to be hard.  Seriously, we don’t want to die emotionally and spiritually while we are over there.  We are either praying for someone to go with us or for God to even just to show us a place to live that is known for its community. Also, what it would look like to have spiritual community with people of like minds for contextualized ministry. Anyone interested in this??

 

• we also seriously miss our family and desire for our parents to watch the lil’ babes grow up… This is hard and probably will be. Makes me sad but we want to be obedient to where He leads us.

Will you pray patient discipline for us while we wait?

-jen

India: Mumbai, a great city in December

The last time I was in Mumbai, it was in June of 2009. The rains were late, as I stepped off the plane it was like walking into a brick of humidity and hot, unbearably hot. This time I was pleasantly surprised; it was a hot day but not anything worse than those hot spring days in Oklahoma. We stayed right on the beach to the Arabian Sea with our friend, Nishant’s dad (his mom is in the States with Nishant).  Uncle took us on a long tour of Mumbai seeing the beautiful peninsula/island. Here are a few pics of our tour and stay at our friend’s place.

The view from our room

The view from the living room at Uncle and Auntie’s

Row and I hanging out in our room for the night.

Mosque, Haji Ali Dargah, is on a peninsula jutting out into the water. Beautiful!

Marine Drive Area from a viewpoint on Malbar Hil… when its dark the lights make an arch that they call “the Queen’s necklace”, referring to the Queen of England. The main downtown area has a lot of the buildings from when the Brits ruled and they look very European.

our selfie at the Malbar Hil Park

Marine Drive

Uncle!

We sure enjoyed our stay and tour! It was fun to see how much Nishant was like his dad .

-jen

India: A Dear Friend’s Wedding

We absolutely love that we got to see our friend, Aditya’s wedding. Aditya lived next to me for about 3 years in college and now lives in Lincoln. We met his beautiful bride, Madhur! So this last weekend, we trekked to Mumbai and enjoyed a less traditional Maharashtran wedding.

giving their kids away

The ring ceremony…In India, the woman gets a gold necklace instead of a ring.

The guy gets a ring, only on the right hand.

Row made friends…a lot of them.

The puja part. The priest leads this and the bride and groom offer different things into the fire as they pray for blessings on their marriage. The crowd participates in praying as well.  They show it by throwing rice after each prayer.

We met our friends from college, Vishal and Abhishek and had the pleasure of meeting Vishal’s wife, Vidya

A flattering picture with the groom

We pray that God would bless your marriage! That He would bring all the happiness and babies! and that when things get rough that you would look at each other and feel that ole magic spell (“We Already Got it”, Song by our favorite group, Waterdeep)

-garett and jen

India: Old Friends

Tuesday night, we were able to eat dinner one of our good friend’s sister, Neha.  Last time that I was in India, my friend, Becki, and I stayed almost a week with her here in Bangalore.  Neha is now Becki’s sister-in-law . Anyway, Neha is so fun and spunky; we had a blast together when I stayed with her almost 5 years ago! She is now a Manager of Operations at an international hospital on the out-skirts of Bangalore. Below are a few pics from that night!  Hopefully, we will get to hang out again before we leave.

Row and I have been busy shopping lately and writing my winter newsletter(click here if you want in on that). Here is a pic of the traffic; we have been riding in autos since Babes works so far away and feel bad for making his driver drive back to take me someplace that is a 5 minute car ride. Here is Commercial street where we went shopping last night.

Today, Row and I are planning to go get some sarees for friends and go to the grocery for the makings of cookies that I am going to bake for my “friends”, aka people that are serving us at the hotel. Maybe I’ll make some real friends if I can figure out how to use this oven…

This weekend, we are headed to Bombay for our friend, Aditya’s wedding! We will be staying with our friend, Nishant’s family. Don’t worry, we will post lots of pics when we get back!

The “man store”

-jen

India: A Directing

This past weekend, we went to Chennai to see a family that is working and living intentionally there. We took a 5 hour train ride on Friday night.  It was a really great time just seeing what it would realistically look like for us, ie. what the apartment might look like, showers, toilets , cooking, etc.

We were able to finally catch up on some of the sleep that we hadn’t had for the past 8 days because Lil’ Babes was having trouble with jet lag.  They also have a three month old that was born four days after Row, so really that was great to have solidarity in being a mom of a three month old in a foreign country. Saturday morning, we all took a walk around this nature area which was a botanists dream.  Unfortunately, we forgot the camera The coolest thing we saw while there was a Banyan tree.  Basically they get really huge because every time the send out a branch they also drop roots from that branch.  Amazing. After going on the nature walk, we got some breakfast at this veg restaurant called Sangeetha. Seriously amazing.

We basically laid around all day and talked about everything under the sun. We asked lots of questions. What their struggles have been, what does it look like to actually contextualize the Truth, what have their relationships looked like, what does community look like for them; just to name a few. Jesus used this weekend hugely in directing in our hearts.  We aren’t sure what all of it means but its starting to feel okay to be open handed with our life. I just was so homesick, I think I had closed my heart.  However, I want to want to be like Mary that when she found out that she was going to bear the Living God; her response was “Let it be so”. And Jesus, when He was in the garden of Gethsamine, He said if this is the only way, then let it be so. O God, I wish to have a pure heart when saying that “Let it be so” whatever you have for us.

The train station in Bangalore.

-jen

India: Purpose

It seems things are a bit different here then what I imagined they would be.  My role has shifted a lot since the beginning of all of this.  At first I was heavily involved with all the Indians and now it seems especially after having lil’ babes that my role in all of this is shifting much more than I imagined it would.  I am not certain of what that all means but I do know that it feels freeing to not have guilt hanging over my head.  Because really the fact is, God has called me to be a mom and wife and those come before all of this.  These days that is a little bit more demanding. This quote from Jim Elliot has guided me in many transitions in my life. “Wherever you are, be all there.  Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”  But its funny how the things that can challenge you can also become a thing that throws guilt on you, which clearly is not from God. So Jesus, help me to know what it means to “be all here” right now, here in India, on this trip.

Needless to say, yesterday was a normal day as just a mom. It was mostly about trying to get Rowen to nap at normal times, so we could sleep at night(which worked!!). All we did was go out to exchange money and hang out by the pool a bit. Rowen rolled over for the first time!, which I thought was a fluke, but he did it about 4 times in his 10 minute tummy time this morning! What a pro This morning we also got to Skype in to our Missional Family’s white elephant party which was such a blessing.  We couldn’t imagine life without them.  Lil’ Babes and I also got to skype my Mom, which was just really fun to see Rowen really excited about seeing her.

This weekend we are going to Chennai, a 5 hour train ride from Bangalore, to see a family that are like-minded.  We are really really excited to get to hear their hearts and share ours/get wisdom. Please pray that this would bring clarity to our lives, and that we would mutually encourage each other.

We are so thankful for all of you who are praying for us and following our trip.

-jen

India: Adjusting

It’s an early Wednesday morning here in Bangalore.  We got up at a grand ole time of about 2:30 am once again. Can you say jet lag? Yikes.  Here is a recap of all that has happened this week.

Monday:

We slept in till about noon cause we didn’t get to the hotel till 6am… and then went outside of the hotel to get some lunch and head to get some groceries.  We are staying in a part of town called UB City, which is apparently India’s first luxury mall.  It has stores like Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry.  I remember coming to UB City when I was in Bangalore almost 5 years ago.  This was seriously the fanciest place we visited in India and now here I am staying in the hotel there. I feel a little weird about that.

Tuesday:

Yesterday was Babe’s first day of work, and it went great! He met several guys and went to lunch with them. He found out that he will be doing 4 or 5 trainings over an area that he sort of specializes in at Cerner.  It seems that almost all of Cernerworks India is signed up for one of these classes (almost 50 people). My husband is a rockstar .

Wednesday(today):

After much crying, praying and asking people to pray, I had enough guts to actually get out by myself (and Rowen).  For some reason I thought this would be easy when I was planning everything; however, I didn’t realize until we got here that the last time I was in India, I had people with me 24/7. I now realize that I am completely naïve and scared because of it! But this morning, I had Babe’s driver drop lil’ Babes and I off at the money exchange place when he took Babes to work.  Apparently everything in India, or at least the shops and whatnot don’t open until later, like 10. So they dropped me off only for me to find my way back to the hotel without getting run over .  Later in the morning, Row and I went to a chain coffee shop, Café Coffee Day, here pretty close to the hotel.  He slept a little while I studied some Hindi and drank some coffee. I wasn’t crazy about the environment.  I wanted to do this every day so that I could meet some people but I don’t think that is the place.  In Luke 10, Jesus talks about finding peace in a person/place, and it just wasn’t there. So I will “dust off my feet” and move to a different place next time.

Jesus in our days:

It seems Jesus requires obedience from us; however, you have to actually listen to what he is saying now. I had set all these goals for this time(not that goal setting is a bad idea because I know those were prayerfully considered). However, my piece of obedience for yesterday was to sit with him and to sleep. Today, my obedience piece took a little more courage but I am thankful that he provides that.

“My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness”. 2 Corinthians 12:9

Thank you Jesus

-jen

India Trip: Extended Stay

Tonight/Today whatever day it is we are stuck in the Park Inn in Frankfurt, Germany.  Babes is sleeping cause he didn’t sleep much at all on the Frankfurt flight, probably because I was sleeping and somebody had to watch lil’ Babes. Really I was trying to do him a favor so that he would be sleeping during the right time that way he would adjust faster…

Here are our ups for the day:

• Lil’ Babes did amazing on the flights.  He slept through almost all of the long one and loved the extra eating time on the way up and down . He is quite the World Traveler, I must say so myself.
• We got to stop in Germany.  I was a little bit nervous about only having an hour between our long flights. But since we had a delay from getting off and on the plane while they fixed it, here we are sitting in Germany, catching up on sleep, on the dime of United Airlines.
• We got to try some German sausages and kaut

Some downs:

• a little homesick on my end. Maybe it’s missing normalcy cause this is exactly how I felt when lil’ Babes was born
• tired

Jesus in our day:

• Grace for Babes and I for each other even in stressful times!
• A flawless baby- I was soo nervous about his ears and just kept asking Jesus to protect his ears. I feel like He kept saying every time I uttered that prayer, “Do you trust me to take care of this?”  Why do I worry.

Tomorrow we fly out at 12:55pm or 5:55 am cst.

We can feel you praying!

Thank you!!

-jen

Annual Campout- Abilene, KS

Last year was our first annual campout with our friends from Kansas City.  This year, we decided to go to one of my friend’s cabins out in Abilene, Kansas, a little town out in the middle of the Flint Hills.  The night started out with a little “hobo stew”, which is where everyone brings a can of some to throw into this large cauldron over the open fire.  I’m not really a stew girl but this was pretty good.  It was the 125th anniversary for her church, so we had a large group out there for the stew, marshmallows and hay ride.

I love camping.  I miss the country and camping is a perfect way to get back out to the country where I can look at stars, see the sunset(without a highway in the way), and just enjoy the wide openness. God is so good to us to provide all of these things for us to enjoy (of course its probably not all just for us) Ps. Oklahoma has “the best” sunsets and I have traveled the world my friends.

Anyway, here are some pictures from our trip 🙂

-jenny

A Trip to kaw point

So if you’re not from around here (Kansas City) or even if you are from around here, there is a special historic place about 8 minutes from where we live.  Lewis and Clark were the first Americans (unless you count the Indians) to come upon this point in the Missouri river that they were traveling.  This little tiny peninsula is where the Missouri river and the Kansas (Kaw) River flow together.  It just so happens to be right across from where downtown KC, MO is.  Beautiful!

Anyway, in English class for the past 3 weeks we have been studying geography of the U.S. and the World.  For the summer, we have been studying vocab, phrases, sentences, etc. about a specific subject and then taking a field trip to go talk about these things that we have learned. So we decided to take the students to Kaw Point.  They really enjoyed it.

If it wasn’t so close to the hood and the water where it would be perfect to dump a body, then I would probably be down there sitting everyday.  maybe even fishing.

Talking about the significance of Lewis and Clark

The guys hanging out.  Do you see that crazy current in the upper-left of the picture…

A stinking awesome view of KC, MO

Hasta washing her face in the “Big Muddy”.  Not sure I would have suggested that but o well.

Chuda

Dhan and Garett pretending to be Lewis and Clark

Amy and Hasta pretending to be Lewis and Clark as well. I wonder if someone told that Lewis and Clark were men….

If you want more info about this place go here.  And if you want to visit, I would love to take you. 🙂

-jenny