This week I am going on an amazing adventure. I am going to India, and not just to India, but to a remote part of India which is 330 kms due East of New Delhi, just on the Western corner of Nepal, in the State of Uttarakhand. 
To get there, I am flying into the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, spending a night in a hotel, and then taking a 5 hour train ride to Halwadi, where I will be met by a driver, who will then take me another 2 hours to the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission, which is near Banbasa. There I will meet up with Rosey, a young woman I’ve been sponsoring for some years, and I will spend a week at the orphanage where she lives. The orphanage is a working farm, as well as being a school for children in the neighborhood, and so I suspect they will plant me in the library and ask me to read books to kids. Perhaps I will teach a few writing classes! I think it unlikely I will be harvesting grain, though who can say? Life takes strange turns. There is so much I am looking forward to about this trip. First of all, I am looking forward to actually seeing (and hugging) Rosey, who has been an important part of my life for several years now. I’m looking forward to seeing the night sky. Can you imagine what that will be like? I’m curious to see the wildlife, though perhaps not too much of it. In the past few months they’ve had several pythons show up, and I’d rather not see that. The orphanage is not far from the Himalayas, so perhaps there will be a chance to see that. Most meaningful to me will be the church service they will have Sunday morning. Sometimes, in my own country, I feel like people lose sight of the fact that faith ought to be a source of joy and hope. I suspect that in the shadow of the Himalayas, surrounded by good people and a hundred or so very active young people, I will tap into that joy.
