This week was… seriously uneventful.  It was super productive, in that not having too much to do allowed me to catch up on a lot of notes and transcripts I had been neglecting, but that doesn’t make for the best of stories.  One thing we did do, however, was visit this fishing village to interview a few people, and I guess that was the moment I realized that we BYU students do actually live in a rather nice area.  This family we went to visit lived in a room.  Like, it was an apartment structure, but the ‘apartment’ was literally only one room.  The cookware was in the “back yard,” just a small area of concrete, and the bathroom was attached at the front of the home.  And this one room was big enough to hold a double bed.  That’s it.  The bed and room to walk from the front to the back of the house.  And I swear I saw four HUGE rats through the back door in the hour that we sat and talked with this family.  That is the one thing about the third world that I just cannot get over.  The bugs, I kill ‘em, or ignore them (that is the more common choice).  The squat toilet – I am a pro.  Showering with buckets, not a problem.  Mice?  Well, if I take a deep breath, I can let them be.  I just have to count to ten and remind myself that mice do not in fact eat people’s faces.  Rats?  Oh, heck no!  I hate them, Hate them, HATE THEM!!!  They are so SO gross.  Remind me to bring lots of Tupperware when I move to Nepal, because I am determined to have a rat-free home, even in Nepal!  One of the rats bit Dr. Krishnayya’s toe the other day.  And, heartless as this is, it was actually quite funny, because earlier that day Ashley had pointed the rat out to Nuckolls, and he’d been all ‘there is nothing you can do about them, but they are harmless.’  And it was THAT NIGHT that a rat bit Krishnayya’s toe.   He is fine, or it would not have been so funny, but seriously, they are worth fearing. Also, in this village, which smelled very bad, as it is a fishing village and so it’s all about dead fish up in that place, I saw a rat that had been run over by a rickshaw or motorcycle or something.  Gross!  Also, the women in this village were consumed by playing this game with broken bits of bangles, which was pretty crazy.  Our trash is the entertainment of these grown women.  Crazy!

Another thing we did this week was to have dinner with a member family that invited us over.  It was actually very nice.  I don’t know what more to even say about this, except that they made really good curry, and they had a dog which lived in the apartment with them.  That was kind of funny, just because there are so many strays here, and I have no idea where that dog goes out each day if it lives in an upper level apartment.  That is really all I have to say about that, but I just do not know why an Indian family would ever have a pet dog. 

Okay, seriously, that is all I’ve got to say this week.  Maybe I will add some pictures.  Maybe I will not.  So, yeah, that was India this week.  Hope all is well in the good old USA.  Love,

Emilee

A Sri Chakra

This little girl just happened to be beautiful, so that is why this picture is here...

This girl, Deeksha, became my BFF in Sri Sailaam

And this is her little sister, whose name is currently escaping me

Some old men reading the paper.  Do you see the one facing the wall.  This proves that old people are crazy in EVERY culture!

Sri Sailaam temple

Kalavahena being performed

Mani in the back (oh, I love this good and sweet woman so much!!!) and Padamaja in front.

These pots are all used to make rice at this cafeteria-style restaurant in Sri Sailaam 

More Kalavahena

This is the older woman who dedicated her week at Sri Sailaam to being a very protective mama bird!

This is the guy who proposed to me.  I really should get less picky...

A cool view.  Do you see those ledges.  Yep, I rode a bus over those roads, all the way down.  There were only a handful of near-death experiences along the way...

This is the second largest dam in Asia, so that is pretty cool.  Mostly, I loved the view.

New friends.  Clearly I don't take selfies often, as I accidentally stuck my tongue out while concentrating to get this shot (which isn't even that good)

My new Indian mom, who gave me American oatmeal.  She is a Saint!

Okay, that is it :)

It’s been two whole weeks since we’ve last spoken… Sorry about that.  Well, in my defense I was gone for over a week of that, at this amazingly beautiful place called Sri Sailaam, but I will get to that.  First, I want to talk about church today, because during sacrament meeting a beautiful talk was given by someone visiting from the district presidency, and it was in English with no false doctrine shared, but also it just filled my heart with understanding and a desire to repent. So this brother started out by telling us how, after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit in the garden, it was Satan that told them they needed to hide themselves from God, while Heavenly Father sought them out and invited them to come before Him in spite of their disobedience.  He then said that we, too, are often told by Satan that we should hide, rather than go humbly before God and seek His help (remember, it was Christ who clothed Adam and Eve after they choose to go before Him and the Father).  And these last few days I have been feeling dark and distant from my Heavenly Father without really knowing why or how to return home to Him within myself, and part of it was that I didn’t have the opportunity to take the sacrament last Sunday (oh, how I love the light that enters into me upon partaking of the sacrament!), but I realized that the other part of it was that I was hiding from Him.  Like, I want to be close to Him, and to have His love close to me, but I don’t (didn’t?) want to give up the thing that was dividing us.  And so, because I was cleaving to my sin (anger towards some people I work with her) I was choosing to hide pieces of myself from my Father.  I wanted the feeling of love and being perfectly known, and the feeling of forgiveness and power as the atonement works in my life, and yet my Father couldn’t give that to me if I was only giving a part of me to Him.  It was like I was saying “fill 2/3 of me with light, but I have this dark 1/3 of anger right now, and I’d really like to keep that so could you just turn the other way?”  Shockingly, He doesn’t work like that, haha.  I was trying to hide in my anger, but still get the blessings that come from being in his presence, and honestly, I was trying to do the impossible.  And because of that, the other stuff wasn’t ‘working’.  My prayers were hollow and left me feeling hollow because they were untrue, and while I was reading my scriptures, I was making room for the light of their words because I was busy nursing the darkness of my pride.  And, well, I haven’t fixed it yet, but I was just so grateful today for this idea of how we still do things to choose to hide from the Lord, even though we know that it is only when we leave our place of hiding that He can really help us and clothe us with His love and light.  And I am not totally over what has been bringing me down, but I am ready to come out of hiding, and I think that is a pretty good first step.  Oh, I wish I could love people better, and be more like my earthly father who has taught by example to give without question and to continually and proactively choose to be unoffended by my fellow Children of God.  I wish charity came naturally to me, as it does to those who so eagerly and continuously love me each day.  I wish I could love people just because they are God’s little ones, rather than continually dissecting and over-analyzing and worrying about how it is they are seeing me.  I wish I was less self-absorbed.  But, I am so grateful, because I know that the atonement of Jesus Christ is real, and that He fills us with light in spite of the darkness we sometimes choose for ourselves.  I am grateful for His promise that we can change, and I am happy to think that, maybe, just maybe, He has grown in me greater charity than was there two years ago.  And I am grateful to come out of hiding, and know that He will heal me over and over again, while continually building me into who it is We want me to be, the greatest and most expanded and most full of light version of me there can possibly be.  Mostly, I am so grateful for the privilege it is to repent!  What a joyful word of light and hope!!!

Other than that, I also went to Primary this week, and the kids are doing so well and I have found I am in love with me.  My new dream is to be Nepal’s primary chorister once I am living there, because there is just something so good and sweet and pure in sharing the gospel in its simplest form with these oh so faithful kids, who, of all the millions and millions of people in India, are privileged to know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and He lives.

Well, after all of that, Sri Sailaam seems to fade in glory.  As much as I enjoyed seeing this temple and taking part in rituals, learning about them and seeing how they brought people joy (for even these things can add light to lives, though it is certainly in a lesser degree than is done through knowledge of and a relationship with Christ), well, I am just grateful that I KNOW that my Savior Lives, and hope lives in this world.  But, I will share some funny things, as I know (or tell myself to keep myself happy) that you are interested.  So, I went on this trip to Sri Sailaam and it was so fun, and the area was BEAUTIFUL, and blissfully not humid (as much as I am a Virginia Girl, Virginia has air conditioning), and I was there with these 5 Indian women, each of whom felt they needed to take on the role of my mother.  So I had 5 overprotective, micro-managing ‘moms’ this last week, which was an adventure all of its own.  The oldest woman there was probably about 70, and she went so far as to force feed me by hand when I turned down food (at least one mouthful), because… well, I actually don’t even know why.  She didn’t speak a lick of English, but she knew how to get her way.  Then there was Padamaja, who was so lovely and also spoke only Telugu, but she watched me and let me communicate with her, so that while everyone else was trying to make me take some curd with my lunch, she was explaining how it triggers my gag reflex and they really ought to just let me be.  And then we met up with a women there who spoke perfect English because of her brother who lives in the States, and she made me Quaker oatmeal that her mom had brought back from her last trip to Maryland.  I am so tired of eating rice, it is all I can do to eat half a cup at lunch each day (whether this is a physical or psychological rejection of rice, I have yet to determine), and so you would have thought that little packet of oatmeal was manna from heaven.  She also gave me 5 little mangoes.  Okay, I am realizing that this is all revolving around food, but food is an important part of life, and becomes more so when you are always hungry but can’t bring yourself to eat what has been made for you (okay, it is not as bad as all that.  I PROMISE I am not starving, though it would not be an overstatement to say that we students go to the local bakery about once a day to eat something that won’t make us feel slightly sick).   Anyways… But, these women were just so very funny, and they were proud of me because they said most other foreigners make it through about two Kalavahena rituals and then bow out, but I just kept on keeping on.  That made me happy.  I like being in this community of women and learning from their meekness and faith.  I am learning here the true meaning of “meek does not equal weak,” and I want to be a more gentle and submissive woman than I am.  But, yes, it was a very good and funny and productive and meaningful week.

Okay, that’s it.  This was all a whole lot of random put together into one unit of a weekly report, but then, isn’t it always?  Love to you all,

Emilee

I love the fourth of July!  Just saying.  So here is what we did!

Made and ate delicious food!!!  It really was good, thank goodness.  And I ate ABSOLUTELY NO RICE yesterday!  Woohoo!  (Even though I really like rice)

There is just nothing more American than apple pie.  A huge thank you goes out to our friend Sirisha from the local bakery

This is what India looks like when you try to decorate it for the fourth...  Not great, but not too shabby either :)

Anyway, our fourth was great!  I am getting better at being away for the fourth.  Three years ago, I was in a remote village outside of Kathmandu, and the only thing I had to celebrate with was oreos, so there is that.  Two years ago the fourth was the WORST day of my mission.  Seriously, it was horridly awful!  I was so homesick, and there was sister drama, and it was just a bad sort of day.  Last year I spent the fourth with one of my best friends Sis Falke, aka Jenny, and we sat on the back porch to watch fireworks and both of us said "I wish you were a boy right now" #notsucharomanticmoment.  That was actually a REALLY good fourth.  This year, it was India, and the food was good and there was pie and in the evening I took a walk on the beach, so all was lovely.  PLUS, I was able to skype home/skype the Hughes Crew, which was such a treat and a blessing.  I talked with them all for over an hour, and LOVED it!  I am so grateful for family and friends and love and tradition, even as I grow old and grow kinda far away.  Also, here is one funny story.  Because we were celebrating the 4th, Rajyalakshmi asked us how long we were ruled by the British, and I said 150 years as a rough estimate.  She then said "We were ruled for 200 years," but with an inflection in her voice that made it sound like she was trying to say "haha, the British ruled us longer than they ruled you.  Beat 'cha."  I just don't know why she was so proud of that.

Anyway, this week was pretty non-eventful.  Mostly I was feeling very lazy, so that is why.  I did get some beautiful henna for the fourth, though.  I LOVE henna.  Also, this next week I am going on an adventure, so I won't be here to blog next Sunday, but I will get back to ya'll when I return to Vizag, probably next Wednesday or Tuesday (I don't know why I wrote those in that order).  Anyways, today was also very fun, probably one of the most fun days I have had here so far.  First, I went to church.  Then I took a nap.  Then I went on a walk with Momoksha and Siddhartha, Durga's two little men.  Then I indexed, and for those who don't know, there is currently an opportunity to index records from the freedmens bureau, which was created to protect the rights of 'colored' people after the end of the Civil War and slavery.  They were actually supper interesting to work through today.  Also, the Home Teaching message this month is really good.  Anyway, then everyone went to the park, because Dr. K isn't here, and since it was fast Sunday Durga didn't have to cook for us students, so pretty much everyone in the house had a day off, and it was so fun to go to the park with them.  What I was not fully aware of was that the park leads to the beach, and so Silouja and I were wading in even though we were both in dresses.  Well, a wave came and caught us by surprise and got us wet past our waists, at which point we just went for it.  I am now the proud owner of a very sandy dress, but it ain't no thing since I got the dress for only $2 at the Salvation Army (aka my favorite store!  Try it, I bet you'll like it).  Anyway, so here are some pictures from that. Also, after that, I ate left-over American food, complete with a pepsi-float (as they don't have root-beer here).  It was such a good day.  Okay, all my love!

Emilee

Oh, PS, today we were in Primary again, and someone forgot the keys to all the upstairs classrooms, so Primary was booted and got moved to the Branch Pres. office.  That was a TERRIBLE idea, if you ask me, but I do have greater love for Primary than others, so I guess it was okay.  The kids handled it well, though.  Unfortunately, it limited some of the activities we had planned (we were in charge of lesson and singing time this week), and so when we had gone through all of our material and still had 20 minutes to burn, I taught the kids how to make paper birds, a skill I perfected as a 6 or 7 year old during sacrament meeting (after the sacrament was passed, to be clear).  The weeks lesson was on obedience, so I told them they had to obey my instructions if they wanted to end up with a bird.  It was actually pretty fun, in the end.  All I am saying is that you never know when your hidden and half-forgotten talents from childhood will spring up and save your hide.  Again, it was an awesome day.  Especially the part where we went to the beach!

All the pretty flowers at the park!

The pretty beach at the park!

A VERY wet me.  Also, what was nice was that at this stretch of beach there were all these rocks, which broke the HUGE waves before they could get to us.  Let me tell you what, I love to go swimming in the Indian Ocean, it is SO FUN!!!