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The day began rudely Tuesday, November 8 with the sounding of the bell to summon the compound residents, young and old, except for Bonnie and me. The “bell” is really a splicer for railroad rail suspended from a tree by a rope on which the summoning minion beats with an oversized bolt. Shortly thereafter, PA amplified chapel services blared from the meetinghouse – until the loss of electric power once more deadened the boom of distant voices and plunged our little world back into the abysmal darkness of the predawn day. Our third story room was adjacent to and towered over the roadside, perimeter wall, so the horn blowing traffic from early morn compensated for the sedated young voices from the distant chapel. It was a new day at a new venue – Skinner’s Garden.
Without electric, there is neither indoor lighting nor water, since the rooftop storage tanks ran dry overnight. However, a gentle voice of a preteen child at the door announced the arrival of campfire heated hot water in two aluminum buckets. Had I been the one lugging them across the compound and up three flights of stairs, my aging body would have complained from the aching knees to the lungs grasping for breath – besides having sloshed much of the liquid cargo along my pathway.
The pink, pedestal, bathroom sink drains directly on to the floor immediately at one’s feet, and from gravity’s drawing force empties through a corner hole in the exterior wall at floor level. On the plus side, there was a mirror above the sink by which to shave, between dipping my razor in the aluminum bucket of nearly scalding water just a half stoop away. At another location days ago and also on an occasion of an electrical blackout as the day began to dawn, I fumbled with our toothbrushes in the dim light. The foregoing along with my poor color vision, I failed to distinguish in the near darkness between the pink and the purple toothbrush cases. To my dismay and to Bonnie’s horror (you guessed it!), I brushed my teeth with her toothbrush. Yuk, Yuk and Yuk!
Everywhere we go in India we come face to face with what even the Indians call Indian Standard Time – which means virtually nothing starts at the appointed hour, but is more likely to begin at least an hour later. That translates to “wait, wait and wait some more!” Time is relative, but here time is nearly meaningless. However, the airplanes do not run on Indian Standard Time, as one fellow lecturer from New Delhi discovered when he missed his airplane. A second commonplace phrase is The Indian Way when it comes to trash disposal. Any location where the one dispensing the trash is not personally sitting or standing is a suitable discard site for virtually any unwanted wrapper or other item (e.g., over the compound wall, out the window of a car or a building and on the ground where one emptied the disposable teacup, etc.). Indian Standard Time and The Indian Way may be what bind together the diverse Indian states, cultures and languages into one nation.
Fortunately for Bonnie and me, everywhere we have lodged in India (and Myanmar before coming to India this trip) has sported a western toilet, and few of the places to which we have gone away from our temporary homes have lacked what we have come to think of as a civilized necessity; only rarely has Bonnie needed to succumb to the inconvenience of an eastern toilet, and only sometimes did I need to face the same scenario. Maybe not so good for dehydration or for our kidneys, we are good at not drinking too much or waiting for a more opportune occasion. Frequently under the best of circumstances, though, hygiene and cleanliness completely escapes the hosts with whom we lodge or the inns in which we stay. Where we travel in the world, a bathroom is a luxury, indoor or outdoor, and most nationals use any and every little piece of real estate as their personal but public toilet facility – shamelessly in plain view of passersby.
Today for breakfast we were introduced to “black salt.” Upon reading the ingredients, black salt is powdered rock salt. Bonnie commented that in the USA we put that on snowy and icy highways, but we do not eat it. When discussing last night our breakfast meal for today, I opted for scrambled eggs or oatmeal, but not both – we got both! I had never thought of having tomatoes for breakfast, but I enjoyed the whole saucer of those slices, since Bonnie has never developed a taste for them.
Nearly every year when we come to India, I get sick with bronchitis, but this year so far I am fine. Instead, Bonnie took ill yesterday with sore throat, swollen glands and coughing. She is sleeping even now from some medicine she took, though happily, she is not feverish. In less than an hour each of us begin four hours of teaching; I will teach preachers and Bonnie will teach their wives and other women who have convened for the next two days of biblical edification. I will be teaching Bible Geography and Bible Archaeology while Bonnie will be teaching character studies from her book Living Principles. Brother John Dean has already scheduled me for teaching next year in one of the preacher training schools with which he works – teaching Hermeneutics as well as Sermon Preparation and Presentation.
Over an hour after the scheduled beginning of our classes, they finally commenced. Bonnie taught about 40 women as Vani (the wife of John Dean) translated. John Dean translated into Telegu for the 42 men besides the two of us as I taught preachers. I lost six or less to slumber in the hot, Indian winter morning, but vowed to dance on the tables if necessary to keep them awake in the afternoon sessions. Whereas in the a.m. I made my PowerPoint presentation about Bible Archaeology, in the afternoon I introduced the Bible Lands Overview and Palestine Maps. Then, it was the students’ turn to recreate the map on a blank wall by pointing out selected points in relationship, for instance, to the city of Jerusalem. The class had a lot of fun with that exercise.
In the evening, I went with Indian brethren to a village congregation about an hour away; we left Bonnie behind to rest since she was ill with maybe bronchitis and a fever. Perhaps 80 gathered for the meeting, but it was impossible to know how many were present as attendees seated themselves in an irregular pattern from wall to wall until no room between persons was left. In addition, numerous souls gathered outside the small, plaster walled structure with a thatch roof. Besides these, the village could hear every word spoken inside the humble meetinghouse by way of bullhorn loudspeakers affixed to the roof.
Spiders repeatedly repelled themselves from the thatched ceiling during our services. Walking between the minibus and the building without the benefit of light beyond what the moon provided, I was shocked when children began pelting me with something; I had seen them upon exiting the bus, and they were holding the tin pans out of which they customarily eat their rice meals. Though I had greeted them, in the dark of night as we walked, the young girls began hurling the contents of their plates at me, getting it in my hair and down the back of my shirt. Were they throwing their leftover rice at me? That’s what I thought, but they were throwing flower petals at me similarly as people in America throw rice or birdseed at newlyweds.
Four precious souls indicated by standing amidst the crowd seated on the ground inside the building that they wanted to be baptized. Two men had been outside, but came inside when invited to obey the Gospel. However, upon carrying people miles away to a creek, another woman also decided to be baptized, bringing that number of conversions to five. With headlights shining on the water, a brother waded into the muddy water in the otherwise blackness of night to receive the baptismal candidates and immerse them into Christ.
We arrived back at the Skinner’s Garden compound at 12:39 a.m. The long drive over rough roads – sometimes not as good as goat paths – made my stomach uneasy. I popped another acid reducing pill and laid my tired body down on the elevated pallet where Bonnie already slumbered. Indian style, we had a sheet on what seemed like padded plywood; the only other covering is a blanket, but cool, not warmth is what we desired, so we rested as best we could under the whirling ceiling fan, awaiting the soon beginning of still another day.
Today (Monday, January 23), Martha and I attended the first annual mission workshop hosted by the Somerville, TN Church of Christ. We set up a display to represent publications (books, magazines and tracts) of World Evangelism as well as our foreign mission labors. It was also my privilege to be one of the speakers, during which I made my PowerPoint presentation “2016 World Evangelism Media & Missions.”
Triaging everything, it was finally time to devote the bulk of our available time to finishing preparation of our lessons for overseas in Guyana, South America. At least minimally, Martha and I are prepared, finally! Next, we directed our attention to packing our bags.
However, before leaving Winona, MS on Friday, January 20, brother Jerry Bates and we packed, marked, stacked and made a manifest for an upcoming shipment, chiefly of literature, to churches of Christ throughout Guyana. We amassed nearly 2,000 pounds or about two pallets. The first opportunity, though, for Martha and me to haul this freight to a shipping agent in Nashville, TN probably won’t be until late April or May 2017.
By the way, there’s been no time for a honeymoon since Martha and I wed on New Year’s Day. We did stop by an old, old cabin—with no electricity and lacking a mattress atop the bed’s rope lattice. No toilet either, and no running water. The real reason, though, that we did not rent it is because it sits in the town square of Collierville, TN as an exhibit. Honeymoon, maybe later! Just perhaps I can convince Martha that trekking through the jungles of South America, riding fast boats up humongous rivers and cloud hopping in teeny airplanes classifies as a honeymoon to remember.
Louis & Martha Rushmore 
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