James Kirk

Hi! I’ve got 10 minutes to give a quick update. So, we arrived in India safe - first by plane to Delhi, then by train to Dehradun. The first night we were there, we just hung out, ate dinner, and decompressed from the travel.

The next day was Sunday, and we began by going to a Dehradun Vineyard church service. It was an awesome experience - vibrant worship music (I tried singing in Hindi), people thanking God and sharing their needs and prayer requests to the whole church, and John giving a good sermon. Later that night, we joined the congregation for a New Year’s Eve potluck at Sunny’s house (Sunny is the pastor of the Dehradun Vineyard). Ashley baked a cake, I helped make barbecue chicken, and we also made mashed potatoes and good ol’ American mac & cheese. It was a great time, and I loved getting to meet a number of really cool people from the church.

On Monday, we went to a village outside of Dehradun (I can’t remember the name of the village). There, we conducted a program for the children of the village, played games that involved a lot of running around and laughing, and had lunch with a local church there. David, John, and I took off with Sanjay, the local church pastor, to survey sites for our two water purifiers we are to install. We really got some good planning done during that time - it’s fun getting to do something technical on this trip. During the course of our walk, one of the locals, Sanjeet, took us inside his house to look at something really cool: a cobra. He also had a python that I got to hold, but that doesn’t come close to seeing a real, live, angry cobra from three feet away. That has definitely been a highlight so far.

Tuesday was a pretty easy day (if any can be called that - it seems I’m completely fried at the end of each night). We started out at 10 to Doon Bible College, where we were to help prepare for the Vineyard India conference, which the Dehradun Vineyard is hosting. We cleaned out dormitory rooms which families would stay in, moved desks, tables, and chairs around, and covered up broken windows. The work really wasn’t all that hard, but it’s the sort of thing that, if our team wasn’t there, would have taken the others a long time to finish. After we finished, the team separated, and the men went back to the hotel to inventory and finish planning the water purifier installation. We ordered Pizza Hut, a little slice of home… Then I went over to Sunny and Rika’s house (which also doubles as the church office) and tried to set up the wireless network with the equipment I brought. It seems working with technology in India is never easy. During my time there, there were power outages, DSL outages, and power plugs wouldn’t stay fixed in the wall (I don’t know who designed the outlets they use over here, but they’re horrible). I’m afraid I might have fried a router while I was setting things up. At any rate, it still hasn’t been finished yet, and I suppose we’ll have to wait until after the conference is over to finish what should have been an extraordinarily simple job. Then, I caught up with the group at a restaurant called Yeti (the menu had a picture of Bigfoot on it), and hung out at Cafe Coffee Day, an Indian Starbucks clone.

Wednesday we went to Hrishekesh, a Hindu holy city, and destination for many Westerners (including the Beatles) seeking enlightenment. We visited a Hindu temple there, and it was an unsettling experience. You could feel the spiritual darkness in the air. After walking in, a man started shouting at us, telling us we had to bow to Vishnu and ring a bell before we could continue. We stood there for a few minutes as we tried to tell him we would not do it, and we were starting to walk back to the entrance when another man started talking to him, and he permitted us to continue. Weird. Anyway, we went from window to window, seeing shrines devoted to Vishnu, Krishna, Manuman, and Shiva. There were also a few mock-up offices containing belongings of some famous old Yogis. Also in Hrishekesh, I saw my first monkeys in India, and walked over the Ganges River on a cool suspension bridge.

Later that night, the conference started. We worshipped and mingled mostly. It was cool meeting people from all over India, including some American missionaries in Delhi and Bangalore. Sunny spoke and emphasized to the group that we are all part of one family, and he wanted us to share, encourage, and even sleep on the floor if we had to, just like at a large family gathering. Good times.