July 10, 2007

Delhi days

Dear Friends,

Greetings from New Delhi! We and our five bags of earthly goods arrived safely. Thank you for your prayers. Staying at the YMCA has given us a great base of operations. We are hopeful that after many hours of waiting in lines with pictures and forms complete and in hand, our third trip to the Foreigners’ Registration Office will be successful, a mandatory requirement within 14 days of arrival in India.

During our first week here we dropped in on the pastor of a nearby congregation, the Reverend Patrick Moti Lall, where David preached in October. We also visited the Church of North India (CNI) offices where we greeted our partners, the Reverend Enos Das Pradhan, the general secretary of the CNI, and Dr. Ashish Amos, a publisher for the ISPCK (the Indian Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge). We also met and later spent an afternoon with Ms. Sushma Ramswami, the director of communications for CNI—she does much of their promotional material and is an excellent writer, photographer, and video producer.

We’ve been warmly welcomed! There will be an opportunity when the bishops of CNI gather in late summer or early fall to install us officially, so that people will meet us and learn more about our partnership.

There are many ways David can plug into churches and mission initiatives already underway with the CNI. Sue plunged right into her new relationship with St. Thomas School, where Mrs. Anuradha Amos is the new principal. The teachers returned on July 1, and she joined them for a workshop, “Creativity in the Classroom,” before the students came back on July 4 from their summer holidays.

Before we can be fully immersed in our assignments we need to set up a home in time for our youngest daughter, Mary, to arrive. The heat and humidity require that we pace ourselves and move to the rhythm of life on the subcontinent of India. Riding back and forth in three-wheeled scooters called rickshaws, which run on natural gas to help calm the pollution factor, we are slowly learning the roundabouts and neighborhoods of central and south Delhi.

One rickshaw “wallah” (driver), whom we have leaned on quite a bit, was taking us to see the apartment we hope to lease. After checking out the apartment and surveying the neighborhood, David asked him to take us to a public phone to call the real estate agent. First the rickshaw wallah asked: “International?”  David said, “Ji nehi, local.” He reached in his pocket and whipped out his cell phone, connected to Airtel, the premier plan in New Delhi!

It’s a welcome adventure to serve Christ in this land of many contrasts! Thank you for being our partners in this ministry.

Sue and David Hudson

Mission Co-workers
New Delhi, India