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I made it home safe and sound on Saturday. Thank you for all your prayers and support. It feels good to back and I am slowly recovering from jet-lag. Please check back here in a week or so as I hope to post a slide-show of the happenings of the past 4-months.

-Nate

Closing Thoughts

Well, this is my opportunity to reflect on my semester in India and put down my thoughts on paper. Without trying to be overly profound (although it is difficult when trying to communicate what God has taught me while I am here) I will share a bit of my experience.

Contentedness Feels Relative Sometimes, But Does It Have To Be?

The title of this section kind of says it all. People say, “It’s all relative,” and at times that is true, for example in India the UP is not the Upper Peninsula but Uttar Pradesh, and “cracker” is not a condescending term used to describe shady white people, but rather fireworks. In my brief travels outside of the U.S. it seems that being content is relative sometimes too; I’m content living with fewer luxuries in the developing world, but when I return home I lose that attitude of gratitude.

It’s amazing how great a hot shower feels when you take one at a fraction of the frequency that you’re accustomed to. It’s amazing that a plate of rice and dal can taste as good as a nice big steak (well maybe not quite). It’s great having a nice, dry, warm bed after monsoon, and it reminds you of how much you have to be grateful for. I’ve always wrestled with the passage from Luke 12:48, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” Well I’ve certainly been given much, but I am only beginning to hold up my end of the bargain by doing ministry not to try and earn something from God, but out of my understanding of the depth of God’s LOVE for me and the many BLESSINGS he has given. It’s all about being CONTENT with what you have and GRATEFUL for God’s PROVISION. My hope now is that my gratefulness is not dependent on my country of residence, but even when I return and drink water straight from the tap, that I would still be OVERWHELMED daily by the AMAZING God that we serve.

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

There is a Switchfoot lyric, “The shadow proves the sunshine,” I think in so many ways that has been an accurate description of how my faith has been impacted during my time in India. There are certain truths about who God is that have become personal to me, not just words on a page or orthodox theology, but they mean something to me because I have seen first-hand the practice of idolatry and false religion. India is a nation where Christianity is the fourth or fifth largest religion, so the religious culture is a bit different than America. Hindus worship idols of metal, wood, and plastic created by human hands. Contrast that with the fact that we can have a personal relationship with the ONE TRUE LIVING God. Muslims work hard to pile up as many good works as they can, hoping that when they stand for judgment it will found that what they did on earth will be enough, but we have a God who sent His Son to pay our debt IN FULL and be our RIGHTEOUSNESS, so we can be CONFIDENT in our SALVATION and our works are driven by His LOVE for us.

“The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’.”

-Romans 8:15

Published At Last

Our Project Reports went out the door today, and how great it feels to be done. Here's a little bit of what we have done:


























This weekend will be my last in Mussoorie as we are leaving Monday night to travel to Jaipur and see the state of Rajistan before returning to Delhi for our flight back to the States on Friday.

Please pray for safe travels and that we would be able to reflect on our time here and transition well to life back home.

The Final Countdown

God’s Church

Last Sunday afternoon we had a church dance party. It was so cool to see the different nations represented through dance; India, Nepal, South Africa, UK, and the US. It reminded me so vividly that Christianity and God’s Church is not just an American or Western thing, His truth and salvation spreads across the globe, it transcends language and culture.

The pastor and his wife cutting a rug

Our Work

Our director/IT man dissecting the office server

Well the only thing that has really been going on the past week is work. I feel like I’ve been saying this for the past month, but we are almost done with our project work. We lost a few days to IT woes, but thankfully we were able to recover files from our network(although it is no longer operational). We are in the final stages of revisions for our drawings and report, I think it will be one of the largest reports that eMi² has published with 22 drawings and 30 some pages of report text. Apparently we are a rather long-winded bunch.

Please pray that we will see the completion of our project through before we depart. Also please pray that I will be able to process the things that I have learned here in India, and be able to transition well back to American culture.

Look forward to seeing y'all soon!

-Nate

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Bird-Day!
We had our own little eMi thanksgiving yesterday, it was actually quite impressive considering none of us really cook extensively. Chicken was substituted for turkey, but the spread was quite wide ranging and all the food turned out great.

I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving!














Work has gotten real slow around here as we have run into some IT problems. Let me preface the story with this fact, we live about 300 feet from a 250-300 foot tall radio/TV tower which frequently gets struck by lightning during storms. Since the electrical system of the office is quite old it apparently is not sufficiently grounded, because when we get lightning storms you can frequently see sparks coming out of the wall sockets. So when the storm rolled in last week all the electronics were not sufficiently unplugged, and it appears that part of the server and printing network have been fried. Unfortunately all my project work is on the server and our office director/IT man has been on vacation and will be until next week. Sadly that has made things very slow around here for me.
We went to Delhi last weekend as some of the eMi staff and interns were running in the Delhi Half-Marathon. It was a good chance to see more of Delhi, and we also got to visit the Taj Mahal.
I'll try and let the photos speak for themselves.







The Lotus Temple in Delhi. A Bahai faith temple

Chandigarh

Chandigarh

Well Nick(another intern) and I got to do a little traveling this weekend. We headed to the Punjab state capital of Chandigarh. Chandigarh has an interested story since it is a relatively new city. When India first received independence in 1947 the Indian-Pakistan(both countries were created/gained independence on the same day) border was determined by the British Government and the boundaries attempted to divide the Hindu and non-Hindu regions as seperate countries. This division not only lead to a lot of violence between the religous groups involved and created the tension between India and Pakistan that still exists, but it also granted the capital of Punjab, Lahore, to Pakistan. You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India . Therefore the Indian Punjabi state had no capital. Rather than select a city already in existence in the state, it was decided that a new city would be built to serve as a symbol of India's independence and progression.

That is where Chandigarh comes into play. The site for the city was carefully selected as was a team of architects(as urban planning didn't really exist at this point) to design the new city. The team was initially headed by two architects from the U.S. but after the death of one of them a new team was assembled. The team was headed by the French(swiss-born) architect Le Corbusier. The city was laid out in a grid system with 800m x 1200m rectangular sectors. The roads are wide and divided by a vegetated median. Le Corbusier also designed most of the government buildings, which although much hyped about pretty much looked to me like most any other building from the 60's, a big chunk of concrete.

Anyway we wanted to go see Chandigarh as it "is unlike any Indian city in it's organization and cleanliness." Nick and I weren't that impressed, although it is certainly more organized it isn't really anything to write home about compared to American cities. Well the trip to Chandigarh was worth it for other random experiences that we had along the way. We got to play a full cricket match in the parking lot of the High Court(State Court) with some Indian guys. We also got to dance in a wedding procession and found the coolest vegetable market. So all in all the 8 hour one-way trip was worth it. Not to mention we had the best Tandoori Chicken.











Yours truly batting in cricket, clearly not knowing what is going on and/or looking like a baseball player. Surprisingly I ended up hitting the game winning run.



















The vegetable market












You probably can't read this but it was a label of an architectural drawing done by Le Corbusier at a museum in Chandigarh that documents the history of designing the city. It says, "Three dimensional sketch highlighting the variation of brise soleil for the facade on the Minister's Block. The design for this was suitably altered to incorporate more vertical supports for structural stability on the advice of the engineers." Perfectly sums up the architect-engineer relationship.










The High Court building, designed by Le Corbusier














The groom at the wedding procession that we got pulled into. After some dancing we were kindly asked to leave as we were distracting from the groom's moment.







Work
We are slowly but surely getting close to completing our design report and drawings.

Prayer Requests
-Please continue to pray for our diligence and focus as we complete our project work
-Please also pray for our english teaching outreach, that we would have the opportunity to share the Gospel with the men we teach, and that their hearts would be receptive.

Bread and Butter
"Where does your bread and butter come from?" That was the questioned posed to me by one of the guys we were playing cricket with after I explained to him what I do and what eMi is. While it took me a while to figure out exactly what he meant, I knew what he was getting at, "Where does your salary come from? How do you live?" I just wanted to thank all of you for your prayers and financial support which allow me to serve and live here in India.