Update 10!

it had to happen sometime....that is, me falling behind on updating this thing. dont tell me yur surprised that i have done! hopefully some of you are still reading, and havent forgotten about me after taking so long to get updates up now.

but dont fear! all the backlog of emails that built up over the 3 weeks i was away have been sorted, and it is back to being just us three lads back in monsoon hit chennai. yes, i know, i spent all my time complaining about hot hot it is here.....and now i tell you its raining. constantly! a few nights ago, when we had thought the rains had passed after 3 days non stop rain, steve and i were walking back from the internet cafe, when we felt a few drops of rain. we thought nothing of it. seconds -yes seconds- later the biggest downpour weve had so far hit! within moments the roads were flooding as we ran back to the flat before we got soaked. we got soaked anyway however....and i got a few blisters from my new indian sandals -my previous blue fila ones, of trips to america and thailand, had snapped days before navigating a huge puddle by jumping from stone to stone, and resulting in me becomign very indian and walking about barefoot for 4 days. the story doesnt end there though.....got back to find we had been locked out! we lost our set of keys weeks back, and have been using the cook's who puts them back in the nearby jacobs well office (the old oasis office). usually we can get at them by using our jacobs well key to get the flat keys. however....the cook was in the flat when we left, took the keys with her and locked them in JW, and our JW keys in the flat. if you didnt understand that....it means we have no key to get the key to get the key which is the key which locks our door, behind which is the key to open jacobs well. lol

we got back in eventually, after a few hours waiting for ranjith to turn up with his key, and one very deep and meaningful discussion, we were back inside the dryness of the flat. luke has bought a brilliant red carpet (the patterned posh kind, you know?) after we had seen a huuuge one in bangalore, and now that makes our main room much more welcoming and more of a place to sit and read etc.

the girls from bangalore left on monday morning, after our halfway retreat last weekend. catriona from Oasis uk came to visit us for it, which took place at a really nice beach resort. we left on the saturday morning, under the impression we would be going to the SU camp. this ha out me in quite a bad mood as becky had told us we would be ating where we did for the football camp. this is bad, because the food there was pretty poor, and he dinning hall was swarming with flies, attracted by the days old food swept onto the floor from indian's plates. guys in england.....if you think the london tube is dirty, or our streets in general.......check out india! youll learn england is pretty clean!

so when we turned up at this very fancy resort, it was a pretty good surprise! i was amazed that becky had though of leading us into thinking we were going to the SU camp, then taking us somewhere better, very impressed with her sense of humour! she is a very very nice person, and is very helpful and good to us. we had a few talks led by becky catriona, and leena from mumbai, who had also come down. the rest of the time we spent chilling out in the pool or just around the resort, where there was GRASS! there isnt much of it in chennai you see....

in the evening, there was live music, where a really good singer played loads of classic osngs, and did them really well. (apart from some hilarious pronunciation errors indians are prone to eg "i got too much life, running through my wiews....." robbie williams. they cant pronounce the 'v' sound). we requested loads of cheesy songs for each other, and finally all got up (except steve!) and danced in front of the whole restaurant to a westlife song. then we left and sat down very quickly! or should i say....wery quickly.

arriving back in chennai early on monday, found that swimming in the pool had made myself, lydia and rox ill, lydia especially so and myself pretty badly. for all those i tricked into thinking i had malaria....dont worry....i dont! hehe am now recovered completely, after 2 early nights and osme of the best sleep i have had in india so far. i woke up this morning thinking "it must b past 9, as i feel so refreshed..." looked at my watch.... 6 30! dont thenk thats happened in quite a while!

today, i booked the first step of our mammoth india holiday at the begining of august, us guys tickets to bangalore, then on with the girls from bangalore to cochin in kerala. takes about 12 hours. the next step is up to a place called munnar, way up in the western ghats (look it up!) - a cool amazingly scenic tea plantation. i will describe it to you more as i book it.

also today, we planned our schedule for the comming weeks....and we are paying for our lack of activity previously! we will, from monday, be helping at 3 different football clubs, one near to us, one in the far north (kk pettai), and one in the south (sm nagar, our community). then, we will be running a after school club for the sm nagar kids, 3 times a week. then, 2 more lessons a week for the local boys who failed thier 10th standard (gcse level) and cannot get a decent job because of it. ranjith is included in this group. there is a possibility, if we can handle it, of another lesson somewhere up the road doing hobbies and lifeskills. AND we have 3 lessons of proper hardcore teaching each to do with the jacobs well girls. i ahve done 2 lessons with the new lot now, which have gone well, btu have found even with a detailed syllabus, teaching is soooooooo complex. its not just about being passionate about it, you need to understand what to teach in what order, when,what is important, what isnt, how to teach it and so on.

random info: phil colins/genesis has broken the tamil music dominance in the internet cafe....how very odd.....woah.......now its eye of the tiger! lol this is surreal!

talking of tamil stuff......there is the a HUGE tamil film out at the moment, the biggest ever, bigger than any bollywood one (in terms of screen resolution, hwich it breaks indian records) and is breaking all sorts of records. its called "sivaji: the boss". never before in the world have i found a place where an overwieght middle aged man with a big moustache is the heartthrob, and admired by young and old indians....no joke! in th same way say, brad pitt is idolised in the west....so is the middle aged large guy in sivaji! look it up on the interent, tamil films are HILARIOUS! i plan to bu a copy of sivaji when it comes out, and show it to you all!

some of you have mentioned in emails the attitudes of the the other guys, luke and steve. i fear i have misrepresented them in my emphasis of the enjoyment of the bangalore girls company. here is what i wrote in an email about them both (but i have added bits!): "as for steve and luke, they are both good guys. steve is just as fired up as me for this trip, and is an extremely focused and evangelically minded christian, and is just as enthusiastic as me about it. he is very intelligent, and is a brilliant debator! he is just as desperate to have things to do as i am. luke is also a good guy. whereas steve and i talk about God stuff, we normally discuss how we feel and so on. he has some intersting ideas and attitudes to things. i will be able to explain these more efficiently when return, as som,e of them are difficult for me to describe here. but basically he is very very very reflective, (much into his henri nouwen and thomas merton books), and he has the attitude it is all about his own spiritual journey, himself and how he feels. looking back at that sentence, he seems perfectly justitified i guess, as a lot of our trip is about that, but i cannot explain it correctly. he is not to bothered if there is a lack of work, and is not in the habit of what we might call "making the effort". i like to make the effort with most things i do and the people i meet, however distant or random, but luke doesnt really tend to follow the same though. i will explain him better in person hopeflly! having him aorund has been good for me however, as he has influenced me to be more thoughful of my opinions and arguments and so on. and many other things im sure!

we are now starting to become good friends, and i feel we can spend time with each other just for the sake of enjoying each others company, not because we are stuck together so we have to!!! we see to all be very at ease with each other now, which is really good, as we are all so different in many ways, but so similar in others. id be hard pressed to find a bunch of people that are so similar, but at the same time, so different! hope thi is understandable! dont worry friends back home and across the world....you are not being replaced! you are all too good to replace, no joke.

sadly, there is so much good blog material to include, that has passed from memory while i have been busy, and now i have got most inportant news out of the way, i can continue recounting these things!

so instead i will give this a more spiritual turn and atempt to recount some of the things i have learnt thus far about God and so on. i chose india for a number of reasons, one of them being that it was the biggest challenge i could find. i had heard so much about the poverty here, and how i would be mobbed with street children in mumbai and so on. however, this didnt happen, (the point of mumbai isnt to be over considered, it is just an example of a pre concieved idea about india) as we had little work to do upon our arrival in chennai. there wasnt the huge amount of work which i had expected and was relying upon to oost me back to where i had been upon my return from thailand. this was my first lesson learnt, and i recount it here in an email sent a few weeks back: "The inconsistent schedule of work has been an unusual source of spiritual development for me, though it is still a tough part of my time here. Before I came, I had built up certain expectations of how much work I would be doing here, and looked at the trip as a time of rushing around doing God's work and making big steps each day. I was relying on this trip to bring me back to a place of focus on God which I had reached after my recent trip to Thailand. So when we arrived and found our schedule to be quite light, I was forced to realise that I need to be focused 110% on God all of the time, when there is no concrete work to be done, and not just relying on the times when I am out working for Him, to be the person He wants me to be and to live the life of service to Him that I have chosen to follow. Another example of this can be seen in my expectations of my team's own evening devotion sessions, which we had done in Thailand and had been extremely beneficial to me. I again was relying on this trip to bring me back to the place I had been after my Thailand trip in terms of worship, and not trying too hard to acheive it during normal life back in England, due to my expectations of this trip. When we arrived, due to some team members preferences (one member being a Quaker), we have not been able to do a devotion session which fitted my pre-concieved ideas, and that I was relying on to bring me closer to God.
I tell you all this because it has taught me not to rely on particular experinces to bring me closer to God, an I have come to understand the importance of having a strong foundation in God and being just as commited and focused on living for Him when I am not doing specific work for Him as when I am out working for Him. I am now trying to spend much more time in prayer and focus on God, and more effective studying of the Bible, so that I am living 110% for God all of the time, not just when I feel I am achieving something.
I hope this is all clear and you understand what I am trying to explain! I feel it is quite hard to explain without me sounding like I had no focus on God at all before I came here! There are other things God is slowly teaching me, but this is probably the clearest example so far."

well thats one, the other main one is back on the subject of india being the biggest challenge i could find. in past weeks i have wondered and asked God where this big challenge has gone, and what i will have achieved. then it dawned on me, if i had been doing tonnes of work with the extremelypoor and underprivialged, this would not have challenged me massivly, i would have enjoyed it, got on with it and so on. ive now realised that God has in fact given me an even bigger challenge.....not doing very much at all! as mentioned in the above account, i have learnt that you need to be 110% on fire for God all of the time, not just in the brief periods when you are working for him. im not talking about being a commited christian all of the time, thats different. living 110% is living every moment for God and his will for us, and considering his will for each situation etc, which is very easy to do when you are in concretework for him, and not so easy to be just as fired up when you are sitting on your bed with nothing at all to do that day.

i find it hard to make this clear, and i will no doubt explain better in person when i return. God has basically, given me exactly what he knew i would find hardest, in more ways that one. he has honoured my prayers of being challenged and pushed, and i have learnt that what i think to be the hardest thing, or the way to brig me closer to God and so on, God has a much better idea. when i prayed for a challenge, i was thinking poverty and hard work. God has shown me that he answers my prayers, but that doesnt mean they will be answered the way i want them to. mnay time before i have, and im sure many of us have, considered a prayer unanswered just because it hasnt turned out our way. CS lewis says somethhing like, "all prayers are answered, just sometimes the answer is 'no'", and i that is something i have learnt, and am happy to have learnt.

ricky martin is now playing, and has distracted me! im sure you people reading who dont have a clue what im on about with all this God stuff are relieved! you really should check it out though....no not ricky martin....God stuff.

there are plennnnnty of other things im being taught, some i am aware of, some im not, so hopefully ill share these when they become more clear. i hope you appreciate me sharing all this, andi ask that you dont take it very very seriously, as i my descriptive skills at the narration of my experiences is somewhat lacking, and im sure i have missed various points out, making it hard to understnad, trivial, or just "didnt he know that before?". to that i say, we know most things, we read about them each day i the bible, but do we follow them? paul says that somewhere i think...anyway, my point is, we know plenty of things, and we think we stick to them, but sometimes God can point out to us that really, were not feeling it properly, its just theory. again, ive probably stuffed this little sermon up good and proper. its the thought that counts though!

the final countdown is now playing, so i better sign off! adam, this always reminds me of you, and driving in your yaris, and your families likeing of 80s music! lol issign you buddy, and all of you friends, family, and everyone who is kind enough to read this!

thanks to everyone prayig for me, keep it up! you need it riding in the auto rickshaws aroud here!!

next blog will detail the girls visit, the week before that, and other random observations....

see ya

josh