October is the start of the rainy season here in Chennai. It is also the beginning of a season of Hindu festivals, which feature a lot of religious ceremonies at the many Hindu Temples in Chennai, eating (and more eating), pujas and…cows eating colored squashes – which resemble green pumpkins. Sister Gibson and I saw one in a market and mistook it for a melon – it resembles a honey dew. We sliced it open and were ready for a feast. Much to our surprise – it was a squash! Ycchh! Then, we began to see these squashes around the colony – dyed red and smashed on the streets. The cows loved them.
Sister Gibson’s October email that didn’t get to very many of you:
Dear Family and Friends,
It is raining. I heard that you all have gotten a lot of rain. It is the winter rainy season here and we need this rain. There has only been 3 days of rain. This is a good hard rain and has been going on for about half an hour.
First off I have to apologize to all of you I have been sending emails but i just found out that they have been going to never never land because cox doesn’t accept them because they are from a different country. I will try to catch you up on our lives and doings. We are living in Chennai, a city of about 11 million people. It is right on the Bay of Bengal. We live about 3 miles from the water, and we get an occasional breeze from it. We live in a colony of Sri Nagar. It is a small area of about 6 blocks. There are cows and goats wandering the streets and monkeys in the trees,. It can be a real zoo at times. We live about 3 blocks from the Church building. We work with 3 branches there and another 2 branches in a different area. We have to take the metro to get to the other building. It takes about 45 minutes. There will be a third building that we will have to get to by train. We hope that building will be finished by the first of Nov.
We are in charge of the young single adults, helping them prepare for missions and finding work, or schooling. ….and helping members prepare to go the temple for the first time. We are learning to love the people, but pronouncing and remembering their names is a different story. The people are warm and friendly, but not all of them speak english, especially the older ones, so we are trying to learn a little Tamil, that is the language in this state. We have to use a translator a lot.
We enjoyed the rebroadcast of conference this weekend. There are some exciting changes. It will be good for these people who have to travel so far to come to church.
The first 2 weeks were hard because of sickness trying to get used to the food, but everything is fine now. We eat with the members occasionally, but we carry our own water. We have backpacks with camel packs in them.
We love the people and love the work
Love
Elder and Sister Gibson
At sundown everyday – usually around 6 PM – fruit bats fly out of the forested areas around the city. There are quite a few of these uninhabited areas – such as Guindy National Park (appears to be about 1500 acres/607 hectares). The bats are huge, with 3 – 4 foot wingspans. They are difficult to photograph as they begin their nightly foraging expeditions, but we tried.
Hearing about your mission is so exciting. One day I hope to go to India as one of my great uncles is buried in Mumbai and one of my great-aunts married a Rajah long ago – not sure where exactly but I am pretty sure it was in the northern part.
Poppies are blooming in my front yard. They are not as amazing as the ones you grew but maybe next year.
Praying that the Lord will be with you both and give you joy and success in bringing souls to him
Happy that you have poppies growing. I will probably have to get some seeds from you when we get back. The work is going great, so far we have sent 55 people to the temples, both Taiwan and Manila, and another 25 people are going this month. We are determined to keep these temples busy. The Hong Kong temple is closing for two years starting next month, so the Taiwan and Manila temples will be extra busy. We will probably have to send some of our people to the Cebu City temple. We have helped 9 missionaries go to the temple. All of them are going to be serving in India. We will be getting 4 of them here in our mission. The work is going very well and Chennai is hoping to become a stake in a couple of years. We still haven’t heard any more about the temple here in Bangalore, but rumors are we will hear by the end of the year. Tell every on hello for us.