Hallo from the chalabogundee country of India!

For those of you who don't know, chalabogundee means beautiful in Telugu. Tasha and myself (Sarah) have been slowly learning words from this facinating language, it has become a favorite passtime with some of the kids and teachers, trying to teach us words and laughing with us when it takes forever to pronounce it correctly. They have tried to teach us phrases a couple of times, but it always feels like too much to learn at one time. The kids in the house here at Bapatla are very eager to learn new english songs from us and even a couple skits; they catch on so fast and we love to watch them act, they're facial expressions are allari (funny)! The Gospel Meetings have been quite the experience; we have only attended one Gospel Meeting as a whole team, the rest of the time at least one of us has been too tired or really sick. We have had one Gospel Meeting every night since Monday, they usually get back about midnight from them, and we will keep having them every night for the rest of this expereince. They usually involve a bit of travelling, sometimes a couple hours to and from our destination and the meetings are about three to four hours long, so by the end of the day we are all beat. We had the experience of going shopping in Guntur, a larger centre about 1.5 hours away. That experience ended up being quite frustrating for us girls because we didn't have much say in what we bought. The women we were with were very pushy with different products, alot of the times we felt that we didn't get what we really wanted. We appreciated their generosity in purchasing outfits for our whole team, however we were frustrated that we didn't have a say in the style of clothing. We are always finding that we need to take a step back from ourselves and try to see where they are coming from, try to understand where the cultural barrier is affecting our relationships with the people here. We could all use prayer for patience, to have more understanding hearts, and that even in the midst of our frustrations to always show compassion and love to these children of God. Also a continued prayer for health as Kevin is still unwell, Tasha has a bad cold, it seems a constant headache and is quite tired, and the rest of us I fear may be getting slowly run down, i guess only time will tell. Vandanaloo (thanks) to all of you for your love, support and prayers. We miss you all and we will keep you in our prayers and hold you close to our hearts. Much love, Sarah and Tasha.