Going to Mussoorie

Yesterday (Thursday), half our team were struck down with diarrhoea and/or sickness and were unable to visit the slum. By the end of the day everyone was affected apart from Dave and Duncan. Dave's been hit today so Duncan's the only one to have survived! I was a lot better yesterday having taken some antibiotics provided by Asha.

The plan today was to set off at 7am to Mussoorie for a weekend break. This is about 290 km away or anywhere between 6 and 12 hours drive depending on conditions. We're expecting the roads to be busy because as well as being Easter, this weekend is also Holi - an important Hindu festival. At 6:15am though, we got a knock on our door from Paula (our team leader) to say she'd decided to cancel the trip as there didn't seem to be enough people well enough to travel. However, after breakfast and having gathered the troops we discovered that most people were making a fairly good recovery. As it currently stands, 10 of us will be heading off in about 20 minutes time. The other 4 (Dave, Paula, Liz and Hazel) will spend the weekend in Delhi, trying to keep out of the way of the Holi festivities!

Yesterday we went back into the slum and spent the morning doing some more painting. We've painted the walls of 3 of the rooms in the resource centre - a fairly basic but functional building used for a variety of purposes, e.g. as a meeting place for the women's and children's groups. On Wednesday, those who made it to the slum made a start on the murals we've been asked to create. In the room I'm working on we have a space theme. Yesterday I painted a giant multi-coloured space rocket which seems to have gone down very well with the children and the rest of the team!

In the afternoon we joined in an Asha prayer meeting. These are organised by Asha for anyone in the slum who wants to join in. There were maybe about 50 of us altogether including us and the women and children. To start with, Felix (our guide) strummed away on the guitar for a bit while the women and children were arriving. Jono (one of our team) banged away on a double ended bongo-thing which had appeared from somewhere. Then one of the girls got hold of the bongo and it suddenly came to life! The women and children worshipped God for a while in Hindi and we joined in as best we could, mostly by clapping! Then one by one, some of the women gave testimonies of the things God had done in their lives which mostly consisted of answered prayers in response to illnesses. Afterwards we discovered that most of those who come to the prayer meetings are not actually "Christians" - but they believe in Jesus and worship him alongside their Hindu gods. Asha is not directly involved in preaching the gospel to these women but Asha does have relationships with various missionaries who visit the slums from time to time in a more explicitly evangelistic capacity. We couldn't deny the work that God is doing in these women's lives, but it does seem a shame that at this time most of them are still hanging onto their Hindu gods.