These past two days have been a blessing. After the busyness of airports, checking in, standing in queues, flying, changing flights, taking taxi rides, touristing in Mumbai, flying again, driving on a bumpy road, adjusting to life in Padhar, late-night dinners with friends AND preaching last Sunday… these past two days have been a meaningful time of reflection and breathing, a time of thinking and pondering, a time to to come up with new ideas and a time of just being.
It is the beginning of the monsoon season, so the rain is coming, but slowly. Too slow for the farmers in the area, as they try to wait patiently, but each week the bulk of the rain is delayed, the more it affects this years’ crops. As one friend told me, “The planting season is done and if the rains do not come soon, the seeds will perish. Then there is no crop.”
At church on Sunday we prayed multiple times for the monsoons to arrive and bless the lands with lots of rain. These two days I've spent hours on the lanai of the Guest House watching the rain, listening the various bird calls, greeting the people as they come and go, all while working on my computer.
My primary reason for being here - besides just BEING - is to connect with the village schools, their administrators and staff, to assess their needs for the coming year. It is the beginning of the school year, so they are admitting new children and assessing the coming year. I have had several meetings thus far, and will continue those meetings into next week. With each meeting, the focus becomes more and more clear on what WE can do to help. Because we are a small non-profit, our resources are limited, so every request or need must be weighed by the possibility of actually raising the funds and the affect it would have to the schools and the education they can provide the students. More will come later, but right now, it is a "listening tour" of sorts and a lot of prayer and discernment on my part: that I can reflect their needs back to our Board of Directors and then make decisions that will help the children of Padhar.
For now, I will just BE for a little while longer.