Favourites of the Week: 16/3-22/3

Nothing too profound this week. Perhaps next week... we'll see. Definitely some that I like, I didn't have to search for favourites or anything, but no deep thoughts on them :~) And yes, I'll try to get some normal blogs posted before next week's photo blog...

kind of a reminder of why I am here...



This cow was so relaxed. There were people working all around, and she just didn't even care.

I like this picture because I look really happy. I probably won't post too many selfies in here, but I like this one.

No real reason. Just like how it turned out

I was taking pictures of this guy, and when he saw me, I thought he'd be annoyed, but he stopped and posed for me instead. I like it when people do that. It makes me feel like less of a jerk for taking their pictures.

This was one of my favourite pictures from the wedding. It turned out a little blurry, but everyone looks so happy. There was a part where the bride and groom had to take turns standing up and pouring rice over the other's head. Whenever the bride had to stand, she would stand on the hem of her saree, and almost fall over. Each time it happened, there was more and more laughter. Overall, the wedding was a very solemn affair, so this picture shows a little bit of levity in it.

I like the togetherness in this photo. And especially the husband's hands supporting the wife's hands. Sort of being her protector and whatnot. I couldn't understand what was happening, so I could be totally off, but that's what I think when I see it. They're working together to hold up the water jug. 
 

I was having a hard time getting any decent photos at the concert, then this one happened. Mainly because he's bald. I honestly think that if he had hair, it would be a crap picture. But the dark photo with an outline of light around everything was perfect.

The lyrics... need I say more?

Favourites of the week: 9/3-15/3

I'm going to start doing a "Favourites of the week" blog, and will post my favourite pictures that I have taken during the week. People who look at my Facebook photos will have seen these already, but I wanted to get some of the photos out there more, plus it's a good place to look if you only want to see perhaps 20 or so pictures rather than the dozens that I post some weeks.

Sometimes there will be more photos, sometimes less, depending upon how many pictures (and how many good pictures) I've taken during the week.

The best photos thing isn't really up for argument. You may not like some of the pictures I post, but they're the pictures that I happen to like the best.

Enjoy!

 

 

Sunset during a walk one of my first evenings here. Sunsets tend to soften things, making even the city look beautiful.

 

This dog was so relaxed, sitting in the median in the middle of the road. He seemed to be absorbed in his own thoughts as he pretended nothing existed around him.

 

Right after this picture was taken, I walked past this lady, and she stopped mid-purchase, and turned around to watch me as I walked by. I don't think she even noticed that I took her picture (I was a ways back, and used the zoom), but she definitely noticed me.

 

I guess I just liked the bright colours of this temple. It looked freshly painted, and contrasted with the bike repair shops and things of that nature that surrounded it,

 

There were so many of these little old ladies sitting alongside the road begging. It's almost harder for me to see that than to see the kids begging. For the kids at least there is a chance of hope. For these women, you do not see any hope in their eyes.
 

This one was kind of an accident. These eagles, or hawks or whatever they are, were playing around on the thermals rising off the rocks. They swooped and spun, not hovering as raptors often do. I don't think they were looking for food, I think they were just having fun. I was bummed when this one flew just out of the screen, but when I looked at the pictures later, I was very happy with how it turned out. I like the accidental composition
 

I'm not entirely sure why I chose this picture. I rather like the detail in the stone wall, and the colour contrast. I think that's pretty much my reasoning. 

 

 

This little guy couldn't decide if it was more important to hide or to figure out what on earth I am. His Mom chose a brilliant place to hide her puppies. There's water, food, privacy, sunshine, and shade. They live right next to a spring, which it protected by great boulders like the one he is hiding behind. I wanted to cuddle with him so bad, but Mom wasn't real thrilled with my presence there.
 

Do you see him? Such incredible camoflage

 

 

 

It took a few shots to get one that focused beyond the rock wall, but I'm glad I took the time. This might be my absolute favourite of this week.

 

 

 

Everyone complains that pigeons are gross and dirty, but I love the colours in their feathers, and the way they shine in the sun. And in my opinion, they are some pretty darn elegant looking birds. Also, I really don't care about statues, so if pigeons want to crap on them, that's fine by me.

 

This man was here when I went up the hill, but he was sitting, and the cat was laying well away from people. I guessed it was a typical street cat who had no interest in humans. And then I came down and saw this. They aren't really snuggling, but simply giving each other companionship. Moments like this, between a person and an animal aren't that common here, but when you see one, it often makes for an eye-catching photo  

 

 

I just like how clear his feathers turned out. I really don't have a good reason for this one either. It caught my eye, so I chose it.

 

These horns always make me think of my Dad. And the way this one was tied to the mirror, and the vivid colours... I don't know. I guess most things come down to colour for me here.
  

This was outside of a shop, and all three of the females in the picture are so different. You have the little girl, waiting for her Mom. Many would probably say that she is too young to be alone near a busy road, even if the lady inside is her Mom. Too much of a chance that she could be hit by a car, or snatched, or who knows. The woman in the advert, and the one in the store, are about as different as can be. It still startles me when I see these underwear ads here. For a culture so mindful of modesty, it seems strange that they would post huge pictures of scantily clad women on the walls of buildings.
Will this little girl grow up to be more like the woman in the ad, or the woman in the shop? Will she go more for the modern, or the traditional? Modesty, or wearing what is popular? I'm not saying that she would necessarily be an underwear model, but what will her values be as she grows up?
 

This dog seemed bored with life, as though guarding these ads was just too much for him. He didn't even shift when I walked up to take the picture. He may have glanced up, but even that was half-hearted. His eyes struck me though. I've always loved pale coloured dog eyes. Absolutely stunning. 

 

Everything an Adventure

Come to find, one day a week, High Tension Road (a road near my flat, thus named for the high tension lines running the length of it, rather than for being a place where tempers flare) turns into an impressive market which rivals some covered markets that remain permanently in one place.
The market spills into side roads like streams trickling down from a river. These typically mellow streets become increasingly crowded and noisy as you near HT road. Large, ungainly carts filled with vegetables, more delicate carts carrying costume jewelry, tarps spread on the ground, carrying any manner of items from mirrors to dishes to more piles of fruits and vegetables; all fill the sides of the road.

Vehicles are forced to slow, and even motorcycles cannot dodge so easily as usual through the foot traffic. Everyone is in shopping mode, focused on the stall they are looking at in that very moment. Very little distracts them from the task at hand.
One thing will distract most of the shoppers however, and that is the sight of a white girl walking through this market. People stop in their tracks and stare. And not only the children. An older woman stopped in the midst of her shopping, straightened up, and turned to continue watching as I walked past.

 I walked, smiling at people who stared, and trying not to gawk at the colours and sights. And trying to focus on the things I needed to buy as well as the swirling activity around me.
I needed fruit and veggies pretty bad this week, but next week, I plan to focus more on photography. Perhaps go a little earlier, find a place to get some coffee or something and sit and take pictures. Some people may say that it is a touristy thing; that if I grew up here, or was at least more used to the culture, I wouldn’t even notice it. But I think I would. It’s all the colours. There is chaos, but somehow it is lacking the frantic ‘serve me now!’ mentality that say, an American mall would have. And really, I could probably enjoy myself spending a day in a mall, taking pictures of people. But somehow I feel that I would end up with a visit from the cops, and would perhaps even be kicked out of the mall. Heck, I got in trouble for doing a photo scavenger hunt in Walmart when I was about 14. Here though, people smile. Or they ignore me. Either way, they are not terribly concerned by the fact that I am taking pictures.

Relaxed chaos. The colours of the produce, and women’s sarees. The babble of voices as I catch a few words here and a few there, whether English, or part of the limited Hindi that I recognize. It is both an adventure, and it is typical, everyday life. Which is the way life should be. Everything an adventure.

The Old Man and the Dog

I was wandering through town, taking random pictures of things when I saw this street dog just chilling in the middle of the street. He seemed so relaxed despite the chaos around him. I stood for a while, taking pictures of the dog, trying to get a good shot between the passing vehicles.

Just as I stopped to take pictures of the dog, an elderly man passed me. He stopped and turned, then stood there, watching me take pictures. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but could not tell if he was interested, or displeased, or really what his thoughts were. I tried to not feel awkward as he watched, and as soon as I finished with the pictures, I started to walk down the road in the opposite direction from the man.
He stopped me though, saying ma’am to get my attention. After that, he said something that I didn’t understand, then motioned to my camera. He took his glasses off, I think to make himself look more distinguished, and stood for a photo. He thanked me, I showed him the photo, then he thanked me again and walked away.

It always intrigues me when men do this. It is often older men who want their photo taken. My Mom had a security guard who wanted her to take his picture when she was here. They pose in a very solemn manner, and don’t even seem terribly interested in seeing the photo afterward. They just want it taken. It’s fine by me, because I end up with interesting pictures, but it also makes me curious as to why this is such a special thing. I’m used to little kids asking to have their photos taken, but am still rather taken aback when older gentlemen do the same.

Support Letter

Since I'm leaving this evening, I thought I should send out my support letter. Enjoy.

 

It will likely come as no surprise to you that, once again, I am getting ready to leave for India. Even after spending almost a year there, I have not rid my system of India, and will be heading back after being in the U.S. for about two months.

This will be a different type of work than that which I have done during my previous trips. I will be based in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, roughly 520 miles North of Ooty. I will spend four months working with Immerge In, an organization dedicated to planting culturally relevant churches among Muslim communities. They are working now on putting together a curriculum they can use to train missionaries to do church plants. I will be helping them as they design this curriculum.

I will spend 2 months travelling through various parts of India, interviewing missionaries who have been in the field, working with the Muslim community for extended lengths of time. I will compile the interviews, and put them into a book, which will then be used to teach missionaries who want to work with Muslims.

It was really interesting how I got this job. I was at an Innovative Initiatives conference for missionaries in India that was put on by the parents of a friend. They thought after I my job with Leg Up ended, that I may be able to find something else there. By the end of the weekend, I had pretty well resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to find a ministry to work with. Then I was talking to a woman I met there, and had the thought that perhaps I should ask her if there was anything I could do to help with their ministry. She said that they had been looking for some time for someone who would be able to do this book for them. The problem was that they were looking for a female expat (an expat is someone who has left their own country to live in another country, usually for an extended period of time. In this case, they wanted a westerner) who would be interested in the job, and though they had been praying, and even begging various people to do it, they had found no one. Well…female and ex-pat. Describes me pretty well…. So I asked if they would be interested in having me do it. They were over the moon. All they knew about me at the time was that I was working with a group that did horse therapy. They didn’t know that I write, and they didn’t know that I love to travel. So of course, asking me had seemed like a silly thing to do. But they were thrilled to find out that it was exactly the kind of job I would love to do. So, with a couple of pastoral references, they decided I was definitely the person for the job. And I’m hoping I prove them right…

After two months of travelling to do the interviews, I will spend another two months in Hyderabad putting the interviews into book form and helping them with any other work they need done.

In October, I have the great opportunity to help start another therapeutic riding centre. There is an equestrian centre in

Pune, Maharashtra, and they have been wanting to offer therapeutic riding but do not have anyone who can teach their staff. I will be working with them for a month, teaching them to do therapy and helping to start their program. It’s really exciting for me because it will be the second therapeutic riding program I will have helped to start in India in the last 5 years. It doesn’t sound like that many, but considering the fact that most people in India think that horse therapy is nonsense, and I never set out to start any such programs, it’s pretty neat that things are coming together like this.

Both of these jobs are volunteer jobs. I will be paying rent and general cost of living while working. While I am doing the interviews, my travel expenses will be covered (train and bus tickets), but otherwise, I will be paying for everything. Thus, any support that I am able to raise would be brilliant. It will be probably about $100 a month for rent, food, etc. And I just purchased my plane ticket, which was $630.

I leave the U.S. on February 24^th, and will arrive in India on the 26^th. I am looking forward to being back in India and having a chance to do some more travelling than I’ve been able to before. There will even be a chance between these two jobs to do some travelling on my own and explore India (the support I raise will not go toward my personal travels, only toward my time doing ministry).

Prayer would also be greatly appreciated, whether you are or are not able to support my trip financially. Here are some of the prayer points I have thought of so far:

1.      Safety-I’d just as soon not have the plane crash. Or the bus, train, car, motorcycle, etc. Not being injured is always a plus in my book.

2.      Confidence-I’ve never done interviews before, and I am a little nervous about it. I don’t want to mess it up.

      3.    That I would honour God in the things I do-Everything I do, even when I am on my own      travelling, that I would not just be a dumb tourist, but that even when I am not “doing ministry” I would still be a light. I will be spending about a week in Ooty right at the beginning of my trip,

1.      and will be spending time with the dorm I was helping with last year. I really want to make a positive impact in the lives of the boys.

2.      Wisdom-My plans are still really loose. I keep telling my folks that I have a schedule, but it is all written in pencil. It probably won’t be written in pen until after the fact, because I have no idea what else will come up. There’s the possibility that I will do a short-term stint with YWAM in Australia in the middle of my trip (when I have to do a visa run…), and who knows what else. It is very exciting, but I want to make the right choices.

Thank you for your time and any support you are able to give, be it financial or prayer.

You can follow my blog at www.dragononmybelly.blogspot.com, or sign up for email updates by sending an email to lrweb7@gmail.com with the subject line “missions updates”

Have a wonderful day,

Laura

 

 

To donate, there are a couple of options:

You can send a check to:                                                Or you can go to:

Laura Webster                                                      http://www.gofundme.com/6ifelk

8718 W. White Eagle Rd

Forreston, IL 61030                               Feel free to share the website with anyone you think                                    

                                                         may be interested.

 

Skipping Church

I'm going to take a moment here to be super honest. I've gone to church three times since I've been home from India, and two of those times were for Christmas Eve services. It's not something I'm proud of, though I'm not terribly concerned about how people feel about it. I'm usually not concerned about things like that.
I kind of got out of the habit of going to church about a month before I left India. I wasn't happy with the church I had been going to, because the pastor suddenly became very bitter, and every service felt like a lecture. And not a good lecture, where you feel totally inspired to go out and really serve God, and focus more on being who He wants you to be. These were the type of lectures where you're thinking, 'what on earth? I'm not that terrible of a person, but I feel like crap right now anyway.' At the time, I was getting chewed out often enough at work for things I'd not done, I didn't really feel like I needed it at church as well. I could have gone to another church, but just didn't. Cosette and I spent our Sundays together, and it was lovely. I'd stay up til 4 am or so, instead of going to bed on a Saturday night, then I'd sleep half the day before going hiking or whatever.
Occasionally I felt bad about my terrible church habits, but that didn't usually last too long. I felt so much better when I wasn't being berated in church. And I did still go to the dorm meetings where we did devos, and I spent a lot of time with Christians, and did my own quiet time. I felt like it was ok.
And now that I'm home, I just haven't really bothered. This is much to my Mother's chagrin of course. She keeps telling me that it's my choice, as I am an adult, but she wants me to go to church. So I went, partly just to make her happy. And I'll probably go next week as well. But don't tell her or she'll expect it...
I'm not sure what it is about organized religion that makes me uneasy. I don't have any problems with God, and I've not given up my faith, it's more the people I've been around lately who claim to be Christians. It's the hypocrisy, and judgment, and feeling as though I don't measure up, even though I know the people judging me aren't perfect either, and are in no place to be judges. Honestly, some of the people who have acted the most like Christians toward me are people who don't necessarily go to church "religiously".
I'm not saying that church is bad, or even that I have made a wise choice in not going to church. I do think that it was the right choice for me during this time, and I'm ok with the way things have been. If you're reading this, I don't need any lectures on how important church is. I'm well aware of that, and I'll probably just ignore lectures. I used to have a sort of attitude toward people who skipped church frequently. I kind of felt that they weren't committed to God, and they were showing it by not going to church. The only other time I've skipped church for an extended period of time was when we went through a really bad church split, and I didn't want anything to do with the church. I was completely disillusioned with the church, and used that as my reasoning, saying that I had a great excuse to not go to church. But for people who didn't have a good excuse, they had no reason to not go to church. I've learned something now though. Just because it doesn't look like there's a reason, maybe it is just the time for it. Maybe there really isn't a reason that anyone would understand, and it's just a personal thing between that person and God.
I have also learned that it is easy to get into the habit of not going to church, and I don't plan to continue that permanently. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to go to church while I am in India, but I'll be going to church when I have a chance, and when I get back to the States. I don't know if I'll stick with the church I've been going to, or if I will find one that is a better fit for me, but I don't really want to get into too much of a rut of not going to church.
Anyway, the main point of this is to say, don't judge someone when you don't know where they are. And don't be embarrassed about where you are. I'm not trying to convince people that I am in the right with not going to church. I'm trying to say that sometimes, circumstances are different, and your friends shouldn't be afraid to talk to you because they're afraid you're going to judge them.


 

The Doctor isn't Real

Take a look at Facebook, or at any number of pages on Pinterest, and you will see people who have an unhealthy obsession with Doctor Who. I'm not talking about people who are fans of the show. There is nothing wrong with liking a specific tv show. I mean, I really like Doctor Who. It's one of my favourite shows I have ever watched. It's fun, amusing, brings back lots of good memories of time watching it with the dorm. In fact, I'm watching a couple of episodes right now as I write this. I'm also stalling on doing a test I should be doing, but that's beside the point...

I am talking though, about people who are so wrapped up with Doctor Who that they forget to live their lives. They are too busy being part of the "fandom" to do much else. Despite knowing that it will never happen, they believe that one day, they will hear the sound of the Tardis, and will have their chance to run away with the Doctor. 

They care more about the problems in Doctor Who than they do about the problems in real life...

And they spend so much time focusing on what is happening/has happened/will happen with the Doctor, and hoping for an adventure like the one on tv, that they don't see that they miss out on the adventures they could have. Their time is taken up with top ten lists, buying expensive Doctor Who paraphernalia, watching youtube videos of the actors being goofy.

They spend time wishing that they could go on great adventures without realizing the opportunity is right in front of them, if only they would see it. No, they won't ever take a trip in the Tardis to some other world with the Doctor. BECAUSE HE DOESN'T EXIST. He is a bunch of actors, and some clever writers, and a loyal fanbase. And that's true of any fandom. Hogwarts isn't real, the Avengers aren't real, Sherlock isn't real. Even Narnia and Middle Earth aren't real. And, while there is nothing wrong with reading the books and watching the movies (I would even go so far as to say that a good dose of fiction/fantasy is healthy). But when it takes the place of the adventures you can have in your real life, it becomes completely unhealthy. I've known people who have actually cried when their letter from Hogwarts didn't arrive. 

Sometimes it is easy to use fictional stories in our attempts to escape from a mundane life. We think that someone else has a better life, whether a fictional character, or a celebrity, or whatever. And yeah, the Doctor's companions have incredible adventures. But that's because they've been written by professionals to be amazing, and to interest people. It's easy to make things look like they're completely great when you're making it up.

So start making up your own life. Not in the way where you take a notebook and pen and spend the rest of your life sitting in a chair writing fan fiction with yourself as a student at Hogwarts, or a companion of the Doctor, but in the way that you decide what you want to do with your life, and you do it. 

What is your biggest dream? I have dozens of things I want to do. And don't say you want to defeat the Daleks. Seriously now...What do you want to do? Big or small, it doesn't matter. Your adventure may not look anything like mine. Do what you want to do, not what others think you should do. Make your life something you are pleased with without immersing yourself into a fantasy world.