The end is near

No, the title is not a fatalistic statement. It is the truth. Sadly. I leave Moussoori tomorrow at 10am for the roughly 8hr. trip to Delhi. But lets not think about that now, ok?
Lets talk about this weekend. We left our house Saturday morning with Rani and her nephew Renau for our trip to Kanajack. Rani said the hike should take about 3 1/2 hours but its India and nothing concerning time is as it should be. First off the hike was more of a mountain trek. Although the path was very level, we are in the Himalayan Mountains and at a very high altitude. Needless to say this Midwestern flat plains girl is very sore! We were greeted at a village about 1/3 of the way to Kanajack by about 30 students that had just gotten out of school. They don't see many white people around here so they kept staring at us. Rani wants to build relationships in this village so we stopped. J&J and Rani sang Hindi Christian songs and then Rani told the story of the Prodigal Son. (When the son comes home the father does not kill the fatten calf in the Hindi story he kills a fattened goat :-) When she finished she asked if any of the children had heard about Jesus, not one of them raised their hands. Rani started right in and told them about Adam and Eve. It was getting pretty late so she told them when she comes back next week she will tell them more. They were so attentive! Then one of the mothers invited us over for chai which of course we accepted. Jana brought bubbles along so I started blowing them for the kids. They had never seen bubbles before and called them balloons! They had a blast running around trying to catch them! Needless to say I had fun as well.

About 3 hours later (4pm) we reached the first village of Kanajack. There are actually 3 villages that make up Kanajack. At the first one, Dona, we were given chai and constantly swarmed by people. Rani told the women that we were nurses and we immediately had a line in front of us!! They don't normally see doctors because they are so far away and if they do they only tell the doctor what is really wrong if they are female. Oh and they had no idea what blood pressure was. Yeah, try explaining that! It got a little overwhelming for me because 1) I don't know Hindi 2) Most of the women only spoke the tribal language of Garwhali so translation was very difficult for Jana, Joni, and Rani 3) The women were fascinated by my white (pinkish because it was very hot and I was a little bit sunburt!) skin and kept crowding around to touch it. hahaha Oh boy. But we did help a little I think and the women were grateful for someone to listen to them.

After that excitement we went to the village of Kana which is where to spend the night. There is a man and is family there who has recently become a Christian. We stayed at his house and they cooked for us! We had supper and then Rani, Ranu, and Joni took a 20 min. walk to the third village. Jana and I were so tiered we decided to stay with the children of Kana. There was about 15 of them or so. We were thinking we will sing some songs, blow some bubbles and tell Bible stories. WRONG!! The kids had so much energy!! We sang Hindi Christian songs (well Jana did...), played Chawli, Chawli, Billi ( translated is means Rat, Rat, Cat. It is Duck, Duck, Goose, because Jana doesn't know the Hindi words for that!) twice, sang Father Abraham with all the motions, blew bubbles, then played London Bridge twice, and took pictures (which is more exhausting then it sounds)!!! We were even more tired by the end! It was a blast though. I am more comfortable around the children because they don't care if you know Hindi or not and will correct your Hindi without being judgemental. Needless to say everyone fell into bed at 9:30. Then we got up at 6am and headed out. It took us about half the time to get back, in case you wondered. I asked out of curiosity on the way back how many kilometers it was one way to Kana, its 20 (for those of you who don't use the metric system its 12.5 miles.) that is with a roughly 8lb backpack. Wow, I am going to sleep well tonight! It was beautiful, a great way to see "the real India", its beautiful people, and well worth it.

So that is my weekend in a nut shell. How was yours? Keep yourself posted here for the next week as I am going to upload some pictures to the blog, just a few mind you as there are almost 200! Hope all is well. Thanks for following along with me on this journey. Your prayers and support have meant more then you know. Love and blessings to all.