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On Tuesday night, we put Lydia on her plane bound back for America, thus closing another chapter in our India venture. We will be spending the next several days in Delhi, resting, reflecting, and planning the next phase of our journey.
Lydia’s visit was a great opportunity for us to evaluate how what we have experienced has affected and changed us. It put to use the hard-won street smarts and intercultural wisdom we’ve accumulated in our time in India. It allowed us to experience some new things, and revisit some old ones in new ways. It has also helped us to demonstrate to ourselves that we have accomplished many of our goals for personal development in our time here.
Sarah feels very accomplished and satisfied by the things that we have learned about ourselves, each other, and Indian culture through our struggles to live here. Lydia’s visit has galvanized this feeling. She feels “finished,” in a sense. She has achieved what she wanted to achieve, and could happily leave tomorrow, but is also willing to stay to satisfy my lingering goals and curiosities.
I have also done some reflection on our experiences, and I realize that I have grown a lot through our time so far. I don’t quite feel “finished” in the same way: I think our erstwhile growth is a starting point for more interesting learning, experience, and reflection to be gleaned from critical interaction with the culture and ideas that fill this strange continent we are in.
I want to open this process up to the input and feedback of our community. This is a discussion that Sarah and I are having, and we want you to be a part of it as well.
In the next few days, I will be exploring three topics relating to where we have been, and where we are going. First, I want to explore how our journey has changed us thus far. Second, I want to unveil and explain the subjects that I am hoping to occupy my thinking with for the rest of our venture. Finally, I want to review some of the challenges that we are facing, or anticipate that we will face in our continuing journey.
These topics of meditation will not necessarily result in any easy or direct answers in terms of immediate questions. I doubt that having thought through these issues, we will know where we will go, or what we will do when we get there. But this is the nature of our journey. We came to India to be in India: not to see India or do this or that particular thing. Nevertheless, we trust that as we pray about and reflect on these issues, our vocation, what God is calling us to for this particular moment, will continue to become clear.
Pray for us!
Hello. This is Mom and I will have a response to your blog shortly as will Dad. It may be early next week. We are looking forward to more reflections on your experiences during the month of Lydia's visit. Great new picture of the two of you on your home page. Lots of love, Mom
The two of you have grown measurably in your intercultural skills; now what to do with time you have left? What would be the feasibility of studying the change agents in the subcontinent - those that are offering hope, both secular and religious? We all have a predilection toward being in and with the church and what it is doing and can do next; but if that is the only group that you encounter you may be limiting yourselves. It is also not clear to me exactly how much time you have left.
As an avid reader and a visitor in November, I find myself wondering where the hope is for India and the subcontinent.
Dad
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