"Greetings in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
That is how almost every e-mail starts that I receive here in the Registrar office.
Indian Christians are very old fashioned. I should say "most" Indian Christians. When they greet you they do not say, "hello." but instead, "praise the Lord."
I guess it's nice to be acknowledging God left and right but it's kind of obnoxious to me.
It is very hard for me to not let my critical, technical, analytical mind get in the way of my relationship with Jesus. I am critical of the music people play here. I am critical of the way they speak. I am critical of how loud they pray. I am critical even of how they dress. Even if they did everything as I thought it should be I'd still find things to complain about.
I was reading an article on Relevant Magazine's website about consumerist worship. I thought the excerpt above fit me very well. It's by Stephen Miller. The actual quote is a little longer,
We dare not approach the throne of an objectively great, timeless, unchanging, and holy God with a consumer mindset that says we can only worship him if our subjective preferential demands are met.
So of course as I'm processing how to actually do that or rather not do that. I sit in staff meeting and because the content of the meeting is not something I "like" I whip out my phone and do some professional photo editing:
I seriously have a problem.
But I don't know how to discipline myself in this area of paying attention and not being critical.
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A few weeks ago Romel and I went to Bangalore. It was amazing. The weather was fantastic. The people were nice. I was teaching in the DTS there for an entire week! It was a wonderful time to actually be the guest speaker for once.
We were told a few days after our arrival that there was a Krispy Kreme nearby.
Krispy Kreme guys.
We took six donuts home with us all the way to Pune! It was so amazing. Like I would go back to Bangalore just for Krispy Kreme in the future.
This is a view from the bus on our way to Bangalore.
Riding buses in India is good and awful. It's faster than a train. I feel safer because not just anyone can come on the bus at any stop. You get to watch bollywood movies. I watched the entirety of Chennai Express and loved it even though there were no English subtitles.
The awful stuff is sometimes there are children and those children sit right behind you and they kick your seat or pull it down like the entire ride. I absolutely cannot sleep unless I'm laying down and even though the buses seats' recline almost horizontally, it's not quite there. Lastly, they stop like twice where a woman can pee, but a lot for men cause men in India just pee wherever they want and it's gross.
Sometimes when we travel by train I have to dress up like a ninja so people don't stare at my beautiful skin and hair.
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The sun has been coming out FINALLY and so we did some major cleaning of our moldy, stinky clothes. It's weird seeing my wardrobe so empty. It's usually oozing clothes out of every orifice. Instead now there's a giant pile of clothes that need to be washed next to our washing machine while my wardrobe gets some breathing room for once.
Such beautiful flowers here. These just started growing on the side of the dirty road when the sun started showing itself.
This is one of my favorite pups. She and her brother stay outside our gate mostly. They are really annoying when they bark but they're sweet and I pet them often. I sometimes want to take them in and give them baths and keep them as my own but they're quite large and Romel would kill me. I call this one "Pups McGups" and her brother "Pupster" ha ha. There were three of them when they were little puppies but a few years back one of them disappeared. I hope someone took that one in but odds are something terrible happened between the dog gangs.
