Animals Along the Way

We recently went on a trip into the countryside.  It was a long, bumpy ride.  For much of the trip we were driving on either dirt roads or one lane roads full of pot holes, cows, and pedestrians, carts, trucks... Along the way we saw many different kinds of animals.  I tried to take more pictures but I am not very good at taking pictures from a bumpy moving vehicle.
   Here is what we saw
       Camels (they came from the West with their owners selling herbal medicines)
       Monkeys
       Sheep
       Goats
       Igrets
       Water Buffalo
        Pigs
       Chickens
        White cows with blue horns
        Brown cows with long ears
        Brown cows with humps
        Brown cows with short ears...  (and on a different recent trip we saw an elephant)
It is fun living in a country where you see things that most people only see in zoos or on farms :)

This last picture was taken right next to the area where our lunch was being cooked...and we got some fresh milk from this cow for Silas.

Some promised photos

Silas loves playing in the dirt outside our house!

He also loves taking a bath.

This is a cow eating trash in our neighborhood.  There are many cows that we pass by as we are walking.  The other day a calf was drinking from its mother's utter right in the middle of the road and had to move over so our car could get past.

A field in our neighborhood.  Not sure what is growing.

Still no Pictures

So, I charged the battery in JPs little camera and have been faithful in taking more pictures (I got some great blackmail photos of Silas), but I cannot find the cord that connects the camera to the computer- so more waiting.
    In other news, we moved into our new place on Saturday evening only to find that ants had taken over our kitchen.  This however was quickly resolved with cockroach chalk.  AMAZING stuff!! They were all dead so quickly.  I have been doing much manual labor the past few days trying to get the place clean.  There was dust all over the floors.  Then we had a welder and carpenter come today to install screen doors and a safety gated on our stairs, so of course much more dust.  I am very thankful for the help of friends.  This house, as expected, is not ideal for a toddler, but we are making it work and I love the neighborhood.  This evening while the carpenters installed the doors I sat outside with a few neighbor women while Silas played in the street (not what is sounds like) with a bunch of children.  I am looking forward to building relationships with these women and watching Silas grow up with their children!

Resist and Draw Near

It is always interesting to me that way I can have a verse memorized and still not really understand- until one day God uses it in the pruning and teaching process and a light comes on and suddenly a new and personal truth is discovered.  This has happened lately with two passages that God has brought together in my quiet times and reflections. 
    James 4:7-8a "Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and he will draw near to you."  Now I know this probably appears obvious, but drawing near to God and resisting the devil are very much tied to eachother.  In fact, when you draw near to God, you are resisting the devil.  By spending thoughtful, prayerful time in the Word, time in worship, time in God's presence, time in confession, then you are very much resisting the devil.  You are making it very difficult for the devil to deceive you- to plant lies in your head.  I have discovered this connection because I have not been drawing near enough to God.  Sure, I have a quiet time and I learn things from the Bible and through other believers...but I haven't really been drawing near to God- abiding, dwelling in his presence- letting him teach me and fill me...  Anyway- it was at this time that the deceiver was able to do just that- deceive me- make me doubt the very core of my faith in a way that I had never done before.  This is where the other verse comes in. 
    2 Corinthians 10:5 "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."  A thought in and of itself is not sinful- but when we allow it to fester, keep entertaining it, keep meditating upon it, that is when it can lead to sin.  Satan fed me a lie, but I kept meditating on it.  Instead of immediately recognizing it is a lie and replacing it with a truth from scripture, I kept dwelling on it until it so plagued me that I couldn't worship God.  And then that is when I cried out to God and asked for his deliverance- and then got my husband to pray for my deliverance.  Then I was set free.  My mind and faith was set right again.  In a way I am thankful for this crisis of faith, but I also know that if I had stopped the thought from the get go it would not have lead me to the blasphemous thoughts that I entertained. 
     So that was a few months ago, and I write this now because I was reminded of the same verses a few days ago when my thoughts gave way to a different kind of sin- that of speaking in frustration and not honoring a sister in Christ.  I realized that the reason this response came out of me when pressed was because I had been meditating personality traits and actions that bothered me about her instead of focusing on love, patience, humility... Because I did not take the thought captive to the truth- the truth that she is beloved of God, redeemed, precious in God's sight, worthy of my respect...- it multiplied and caused me to lose self-control.  It was a fairly small thing, mostly unnoticed by others, but something that I was not proud of- something that God has helped me to overcome in the past, and something that I had to apologize for. 
   1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God gives you a way out when you are tempted so that you can stand.  I think that often the way out is really in the beginning- it is preventative.  It is drawing near to God daily, hourly, moment by moment so that deceptive thoughts can be immediately taken captive and replaced with the truth!

Peppers...and apology

First- I paid $.02 per bell pepper today at the market.  I picked out 5 bell peppers and asked the lady how much they cost and she said 6 rupees.  I really wasn't sure that I had heard her correctly, but she took my 6 rupees and didn't complain!  You just can't get cheap vegetables like that in the US in any form and definitely not frozen.

Apology- I have not been faithful in taking pictures lately.  I don't really think I have taken any pictures of our new city.  Therefore, I resolve to take my camera with me every day this week and take pictures of the things I see around town.  There really is a visual overload here and want to share it!  Plus my baby is getting so big and I am not documenting it.  So be on the look out for new pictures coming soon!

Photo Dump

It was impossible to get a good picture of Silas and Joyce together (I should have just used the flash).  This was our across the street neighbor in our language school city.

Motilal, aka The Hindi Doctor, and his family

My conversation partner Tina

JP always comments that I take a lot of pictures of his arms,

Our cook Kamla Didi- we miss her.

My 17 month old looking "smart".  He got a hair cut the other day at the mall and he did not like it one bit, but it turned out well.

Just Thoughts

I have recently seen different posts pop up on facebook commenting on two different blog posts- www.biblicalwoman.com called Decorating for Real Life, and one from www.powerofmoms.com entitled, Your Children Want you. I found that it was interesting how they kind of contradicted eachother on the subject of Pinterest. Whereas neither was really about Pinterest, they both made mention of it and it made me think about the way we spend out time as women.
The article on decorating said that the Proverbs 31 woman would have certainly been a fan of Pinterest, however I kind of feel like she would have thought Pinterest was a waste of her time. I am in no means criticizing Pinterest, in fact I really don't know much about it, but I have seen comments about it being addicting and more time being spent looking at other people's projects than actually doing them yourself.
I think that the Power of Moms article really hinted more at the true Proverbs 31 woman. It is a common temptation among women to compare ourselves with other women in many facets of our live: decorating, cooking, fun activities we plan for our kids, creativity, how much we saved on groceries, fashion... and sites like Pinterest, facebook, blogs, tend to add fuel to this fire if we are not careful. But God has not called me to be any other woman than the woman he has made me to be. He has given me certain gifting, talents, skills, interests... and he wants me to use those to the best of my ability to be the best wife, mom, friend, and witness for Him that I can be. While sometimes we need a little help with a creative idea and we can learn from eachother, ultimately a lot of that stuff is just fluff. True hospitality is not how nicely decorated your house is, how well you can set the table, or even how good your food tastes, and the best mother is not the one with the most fun ideas or cutest dressed children. As a wife, mother, hostess, friend, witness, I must love the Lord my God with all that I am and use the love and gifts that he gives me to love those around me.
As a personal confession, I don't feel much like a good Proverbs 31 woman. Thinking about these articles has really made me think about the way I spend my time- being a good steward of the time that God gives me during the day to spend time with my precious son- teaching him to love God and all those other things he needs to learn. God also gives me time to love and honor my husband, to serve him, to help him accomplish all that God has called him to do. And God gives me time to be a neighbor, to be a servant.
I have a long list of projects in my head that I want to do to get my new house looking HGTV ready and to help Silas learn about the world around him and how to read... and I think God wants me to do those projects because he has given me creativity and I enjoy them, but I must remember that my first priority is God and then the people he has put in my life. If these projects draw me away from those things, then they are just not that important.