India:An Indian Evangelical prayer meeting and Salar Jung Museum Trip 2

My Grandma and Grandpa left on Monday to enter the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC). They will be serving in Germany. My Monday morning I was able to call and talk to them for 15 minutes. It meant so much. They will be gone for 18 months, and I might leave on my mission before they get back. I’m praying for one of my flights to be delayed on my way home so we can cross paths in the Dallas airport. I want to hug them very, very much.

Update 12/9/10: Not only did my flight get delayed, it took 77 hours to get home when originally it was supposed to be 24ish hours.  One of the lessons I learned from that incredibly valuable experience: do not ever pray for flight delays.  

I went to an HIV/AIDs clinic with some teammates. The clinic was started by Dr. S some seven years ago in his home. When they were having 700 people a month go through their living room, he relocated the clinic to an apartment. When they outgrew that, they expanded to the second half of the complex. He is one of the most gentle, caring people I’ve ever met. After a tour, he invited us to their staff prayer meeting, “only 10 to 15 minutes long.”

It was at least half an hour, if not 45 minutes., but I’m so glad we stayed. The back of their hymnbooks said Indian Evangelical Medical Association. There were biblical quotes all over the clinic walls. I was not familiar with either of the songs we sang, but really enjoyed them. We sang along guitar chords. Then they took turns sharing their thoughts and feelings on stories of healing from the Bible. It was remarkably similar in set up to a Mormon Fast and Testimony Meeting.

I really appreciated one older woman’s perspective on the woman “having an issue of blood twelve years,” who pressed through the multitude around Jesus and was healed after touching the hem of His clothes (Luke 8: 43-48). She said that the woman would have been very courageous to press through a crowd of men, as it was “a Man’s world”. She said because the woman was ill, she would have been reproached verbally and physically by men who would have been angry she would touch them as she pressed to Jesus.

The staff members are kind and full of faith. I enjoyed my time with them. :)

I went to Family Home Evening at our church. Keeping simple commandments brings great blessings. I was still feeling particularly homesick, and B. was there. She took a moment to talk with me, and a certain comment from her brought tears to my eyes. It was tender, and it meant so much to me to feel great love so far away from home.

Once I got back to our apartment, another blessing occurred: I was able to get on the internet (after several days of the internet being down) right as my brother was online (and my mom and dad). :)

Tuesday, I was able to go to the Salar Jung Museum again! It was A.’s last day here, and she went with me. We went through the same rooms I’d been through my first time, but I still “discovered” new favorites. We were also able to zoom through most of the rest museum. It is one of the most fun museums I’ve been to. How many museums are there where there is a room just of clocks? Or a collection of over 60 different [empty] snuff bottles? I also got the idea the guy really liked Mephistopheles…there were Mephistopheles/devil characters throughout the collection. A bronze statue, a porcelain figure, a huge statue, a silver…

One of my favorites: a six foot tall statue, painted (?) gold done by an anonymous French-person. It was double-figured. The front was Mephistopheles, but the back of the statue was Margaretta. The sculptor worked it so Mephistopheles was leaning backwords, evily triumphant, but the back (we could see it because there was a large mirror directly behind it), showed Margaretta leaning forward. She looked tired. It was very, very cool.

Other favorites: in the armory next to gun horns were cool snail-shell-shaped items called “blunderbusses” (one of my new favorite words), an ivory Japanese falconer with a puppy at his feet (when I read My Side of the Mountain in sixth grade, I wanted to be a falconer), an ivory elephant and his rider being attacked by three tigers (the rider was trying to javelin one), and its sister carving of one elephant being attacked by three tigers. I was amazed how one of the tigers on the side of the elephant was actually tearing away flesh. A. was right: it is possible to look at small art works for a very, very long time because there is so much to look at.

I don’t recall ever paying attention to embroidered art. On one side wall hung an embroidered male peacock. It just about took my breath away. How did the artist make the tail shimmer different colors as the eye turned? How did they get so much detail in the eyes of the tail? How could thread be so gorgeous! I wish text books could capture the real deal.

Another favorite was the silver collection. The pieces looked pewter instead of silver (little signs in the display cases said “in pollution experiment”—I think that’s the only excuse they can come up with for not taking care of the items). We looked in one case and saw giant metal rings with 18 inch diameters that said “ankle rings”. “For what?” Then we saw the sign “Decoration for elephant”. I call them “ankle bangles”. (You should say that out loud. There’s a certain catchiness to it… ) There were also triangle earrings 8 inches long, and a giant necklace over seven feet long with four inch “silver” fishes hanging off it. There were large bridles for horses. The parade animals must have looked spectacular, but I don’t envy the weight they carried.

There was also a collection of 10 “toy” elephants. The largest was four feet tall, the smallest 8 inches. The big ones were on wheels. I kind of gleefully shouted when I saw them, and was glad no one but A. and the security guard was in the room.

We watched our first Bollywood movie, Jab We Met, on the projector. I really enjoyed it. :) It didn’t seem the over-three-hours-long that it was. I laughed just as much if not more than I do during Pixar movies, but that was in part due to the clay-mation trains and the silliness of parts. Every time I’ve thought of it today I’ve smiled. And the musicals they broke into periodically were very fun.

Tomorrow we're going to install two more garden beds in Kowdipally. :)