Today was a wonderful day…a Sunday in all respects (minus going to church). After waking up at 6:00am to see Bryley off for her two months of traveling, we all went back to sleep for several hours. I woke first and spent the morning and most of the afternoon praying, learning, discovering, writing, and reading. At lunch, I invited one of the teen girls, Jancy, to come up to our room, because I had something for her. I was planning on giving her a sparkly nose stud (the majority of women in Tamil Nadu have one or both nostrils pierced) and she said she wanted to come up and henna my hand. So she came up, and I discovered her nose wasn’t actually pierced, but maybe the thought counted, and she hennaed my right palm anyway.

We talked while she did it, mostly about America and my family, and when I mentioned my dad was a pastor, she asked if I was Pentecostal, and when I said yes (just because the only other option is Catholic) she was really surprised, and I found out she, as well as three other girls in Prema Vasam are Pentecostal. (Christians are less than 2% in Tamil Nadu, and Pentecostals are definitely the minority. Jancy was really excited, and I was really excited, and I’m going to church with her next Sunday. I can’t wait…I haven’t been to church in soo long, and I was really wanting to go to a Tamil service before I left.

Later today, I walked into Periyapanicherry on a quest to satisfy my craving for samosas. I got caught in a beautiful downpour and the roads were shining and the rice paddies are green and there were no samosas in Periyapanicherry. No worries…I made a quick executive decision to just keep walking down the road and hope there was a town down that way. There was, about four or five kilometers away, and the first shop I came to had amazing onion samosas that were only 1 rupee each. Good times.

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