Mango Season and Holy Underwear.

Well it is beginning to be a wonderful mango season here in India. I almost got mugged by a falling mango the other day. I was on the phone, minding my own business when all of a sudden something fell to the ground next to me. I looked down and there was a green mango. It nearly missed me. At least a person is 99% likely to survive a mango falling on you. If it was a coconut or jack fruit I could be dead.

In India they cook with something called a "pressure cooker" and I personally am terrified of them. It is like a normal pot you cook in, except it has a cover that is fastened down with a "whistle" on the top which lets the steam/pressure out when it gets too much. I wish I was not afraid of them because it cooks things super fast! You can boil potatoes in no time with these pressure cookers!! It's quite amazing. However, there are so many horror stories of them exploding and people getting scalded and killed even. So, that is why I'm terrified of them. Anyway, the real point to this is my life feels like a pressure cooker right now. There is something building, and building, and I keep getting closer and closer to this wonderful thing about to happen, but it continues to be just farther than a hand reach in front of me. Just out of my grasp and so I move closer, and then it is still just out of my reach. My excitement is building up and my emotions are building up and very soon I will finally be able to grasp this thing and it most likely will be one of the best moments of my life! But living with the building pressure is the hardest thing. I just want to explode now and get rid of all this steam and excitement inside of me, but it is not time yet.

We have begun the prophets today. For the next three days we have class morning with a lunch and work duty break, then class in the evening also. It is sort of like the first three weeks of the school where we did that every day for three weeks. Yikes.

The students need to learn all the new ways to study the prophets. The foundation is still the same, observation of the text, interpretation of what it means to the original reader, and application of how to apply it to our lives today. But now they have new things to look for. Predictions, Oracles, Prophecies, and the constant cycle of sin, judgment, and restoration. They also need to know about the different types of literature throughout the prophets: poetry, narrative, apocalyptic writing. Also a review of the figures of speech.

Now we're getting serious. The Prophets are difficult, long, and basically all about the same two things. Going into exile and then the return from exile. It's quite easy to interpret if you know the history. Not very much is about Jesus and not very much is about the 2nd coming. Here are some statistics of the prophecies in The Prophets of the Old Testament:

1. Less than 2% of prophecies are messianic, or about Jesus Christ coming as Savior.
2. Less than 5% of prophecies describe the church age, or basically the time from when Jesus first came until his 2nd coming.
3. Less than 1% of prophecies have yet to be fulfilled. Basically, 99% of all the things in the prophetic books has already happened.

Hows that for interesting? Everything in the book of Daniel has already happened and is history. Same with most everything in these books.

Something rather peculiar happened the other day. It was one of those, "you never know what will happen in India!" moments that frequent my days, weeks, and months here... I really lucked out in the apartment I am renting. My land-lady and her two sons are catholic. They have no problem with what we are doing here and I am able to be completely honest with them about what I do and when I teach and what I teach. Now, the first time the oldest brother knocked on our door around 8:00 at night he started yelling at us because a friend of ours came over and did not close the gate and so the dog got out of the yard and was "thrashed" by a street dog. This was not okay with our landlord, and the dog's owner, because his dog is a pedigree labrador and he wants to breed her with another pedigree labrador! Heaven forbid she should get pregnant by some rufian, mutt street dog. Yikes. I had never seen him so angry. And after that happened they brought poor little Debbie (that's the dog's name) to the vet and got a doggie abortion. Yikes. But, this is not the story I wanted to tell you...Anyway, that's what happened the last time he knocked on our door. On Monday night around the same time we heard a knock at our door and were not expecting anyone so of course we are afraid that he is upset again for something we did horribly wrong!! So, I opened the door and there he was standing right there! He explained that every year on the day after Easter they have a priest come and bless the house and suddenly out of nowhere this Indian Catholic priest jumps out with this long white kurta-robe. He asked if it was okay for him to come in and bless our apartment also. I said, "sure! That's cool!" so the priest walks right into our house and begins sprinkling this holy water all over everything! He walks into all the rooms sprinkling holy water from this eye drop bottle (that's what it looked like, I can sprinkle visine over things too and say the name of Jesus). As he enters each room he sprinkles water, says something like "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." you know, the usual Catholic blessing I suppose. In our bathrooms, kitchen, our bedrooms!! Good thing I didn't leave out my dirty underwear or anything, but I definitely had my clean underwear hanging on our clothes hanger inside the doorway to dry. At least now I know for the next week my underwear has been blessed and sprinkled with holy water. Thank you, Jesus.