Life Changing Words Ministry

President's Journal

5 Dec 2006 – Pune – 7:00am

After hearing Georgene’s voice, I joined her and Pastor Joseph and listened to their conversation. Through that I discovered that there would be the IPH Pune birthday/anniversary party at 5:30 that night—and I was supposed to show up in my kurta suit. The meeting started as a normal church service with worship and Bill and Georgene speaking some. (The translator was my roommate Pranay; he’s a very good translator, taking large chunks in either direction. He’s the young man who’s working in the English language call center, and George spent a couple of days working with him on phonetics and he got several promotions because of his improvement in speaking English.) After the standard service, we had the actual party. I "got" to accept the flowers on behalf of LCWM and cut the birthday cake. It was an interesting cake-sharing ceremony. Each of us got one bite and then the plate passed onto the next person. Very different from what I’m used to in Western-style parties. After the party, there was a long period of personal ministry by Bill and Georgene with some of the people there which lasted late into the night.

5 Dec 2006 – Pune – 8:00pm

After a relaxing morning, and a late lunch, I went with Bill and Paul and did a brief drive through of UBS (Union Bible Seminary), then tried to find an emporium for my remaining souvenirs. We found the right style of place but the wrong kind—a whole emporium of just small, local clothing stores. Since it wasn’t what I wanted and the guys I was with were not shopping experts, we just went back to IPH, in hopes of finding someone there who knew where better souvenir shopping stores were, but everyone else was busy that afternoon. As a result of the early return, I was able to sit in on one of the Bible studies that Georgene leads for the women where Pastor Paul was translating for Georgene. For dinner, we had a really cool baked cucumber and tomato "western" sandwich, like nothing I’ve ever had in the west, but it was between two pieces of bread, so it was "western." While I was writing this up, my roommate came in and informed me he’s talked with friends and found some stores he thinks might have what I want for tomorrow.

Coming Soon

This entry is still in the process of being transcribed and edited.