Finding our places.

Hey everyone!! So much has happened since the last post. We arrived safely in Kolkata yesterday morning. The Salvation Army hostel no longer exists, but God blessed us so much with leading us to the best (and cheapest) place around!! We love it here :) It's called the Hotel Maria... not your typical hotel unless you're into cement boxes with nothing but a couple metal beds and a community hole in the ground for a bathroom. It's wonderful though; the simplicity is just what we wanted. We've been meeting lots of awesome volunteers here since that's what pretty much everyone staying here is doing.

Today has been crazy! We went out into the city this morning. It's so different... People are going to the bathroom and bathing and sleeping in the streets. There are piles of trash and stray animals everywhere. The cars don't even drive in lanes or anything, they just kind of drive all over the place, honking their horns all the time to let people know they are there. You never dry off here. It's so hot, even though it's been overcast, that you are always sweating. Finding breakfast was interesting. I had a street samosa, aloo paratha (flat bread filled with seasoned potato), and chai tea for a total of 11 rupis, which is the equivalent of a little over 20 cents. Awesome, right?! I had a really horrible pain in my stomach for a while, but we prayed over it and it felt completely better in a few short minutes! Which was wonderful because I really, really didn't want to miss going to orientation.

We had orientation at the Mother house this afternoon and we got placed in our houses! Grant will be working in a house called Nabo Jiban. It is a house for handicapped men and boys. He will be feeding them and washing them and trying to help them learn how to do things for themselves. After praying about it for a while, I felt led to work in Shishu Bhavan, which is a home for mentally and physically handicapped children. I will be washing, feeding, teaching, exercising, and loving on these kids, and I'm so excited! Others in our group will be working at the home for the destitute and dying and the home for challenged women. Can't wait to tell you about our first day.

Grant and I are both reading a book called Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne that I highly recommend. One of our favorite parts that we really wanted to share is... Shane says that people shouldn't be asking why God allows all the bad things like hunger and poverty and war to happen unless they want God to ask them that question right back. Pretty heavy thing to think about, right? It's so true, and it's something that I haven't really realized until now. So many of us stand by wondering why bad things happen, or feeling bad or sad that bad things are happening when really we should be taking some action to end them. I'm as guilty of it as everyone else. Hopefully this experience will change that part of me.

Anyway, we have to get up at 4:30 in the morning Indian time to go pray and have breakfast with the other volunteers before our shifts in the houses, so I need to go to bed, but we love you all so much! Seriously, thanks for all the support. Goodnight.