We left the KL airport at 7 in the morning on Friday Oct. 15.
We had a 4 hour layover in the Chennai airport before flying to Hyderabad. This is their Departure Board and it is one of those old boards that flips each square to change the word. It's actually kind of cool, but having a board like that just gives you an idea of what kind of airport it was. There were no shops or common restaurants. We sat in this lounge area before we could go through security and we were just soooo bored. Then once we went through security I was hoping there would be something more, but nope just a big room with lots of chairs. There was a little canteen and a spa, but the spa didn't even have a ceiling on it, so you would have been able to hear everything that was going on in the airport so I don't think that would have been very relaxing. Plus we didn't want to spend the money on that. So, there we sat for at least 2 hours just watching this board just flip around.
This is the plane that we flew in from Chennai to Hyderabad. The first plane we flew in was a bigger jet with tvs on the back of every seat. I'm not going to pretend like I know what type of plane this is, but Gary asked me to take the picture.
I took this one just to show how close we were to the ground.
We are officially Indians in this picture! This is also our last picture before we meet the people who will change our lives forever. Gary hates getting these kind of pictures made...if you can't tell.
When we arrived in Hyderabad we didn't know what to expect. We hadn't seen Dharma in 2 years, after all. Just a little background on how we know Dharma. He found Gary's website on the internet one day and contacted Gary and told him he wanted to come to America and learn SFT. He ended up coming and living with Gary, Brandon, and Brett (Gary's two roommates at the time) for 6 weeks. He went to the office with Gary everyday and studied and perfected his SFT knowledge as much he could with the time he was there. He then went back to India and spread SFT throughout. Gary and I are 100% positive that more Indian preachers are trained in this program than American preachers. Dharma has worked hard and continues to work hard for the Lord and the spreading of this great program, SFT.
We had barely walked out the door when Dharma and Jyothsna, his oldest daughter, greeted us with garland. Oh and I got a garland from Jyothsna and Dharma...how 'bout them apples!!
After the 'hellos'
Joysthna told me later that she was sorry she didn't say anything that day. She said she was just too excited and couldn't think of what to say! She is so cute!!
The two of us in our garland. This is a way to honor people in India.
A group shot taken by Moses. He lives in Hyderabad and just thought he would come and greet us. He will turn up later and I'll tell you more about him since you can't even see him now : ).
Yeah that's right 2 garlands...is garlands the plural of garland or is it just garland??
We arrived in Hyderabad at 4:30pm and were expecting about a 5-6 hour drive to Narsapur. As we started the road part of our journey we weren't very tired because we had slept a little on the plane and we thought that we would arrive in Narsapur at about 10 or 11. After a little while I asked what time we would get there and they said a long time. I finally fell asleep and woke up around 9 when we stopped for a bathroom break and to eat. I asked how much longer we had, thinking it was going to be another hour or 2, and Joysthna informs us that we still had a long time to go. She said she told me in error in the email that it was a 5-6 hour drive and it's at least a 7 hour drive but since it was night time it was taking us longer. Once we got back in the car I fell asleep again and tried really hard to sleep as much as I could, but for those of you who have been to India and riden in a car know what I mean when I say it's not that easy to sleep. The road that we were traveling was a two lane road with enough traffic to fill a four lane, if not bigger. My sister would never make it in India because she is scared to pass people, but the Indians push their limits when it comes to passing. Sometimes we had to SLAM on our brakes because we were about to hit a big truck head on and we had another big truck beside us that we were trying to pass. Whew was it scary!!!
We finally arrived in Narsapur at about 3AM. I have sketched a floor plan of each level of Dharma's house so you can have an idea of what it looked like.
The dimensions I'm sure are not close to what they actually are, but this gives you and idea. The outside of the building was painted in blue (because that's Gary's favorite color). The inside of this level was painted pink for me : ). We had a running joke going to see who had the most colors going on for that day depending on what everyone was wearing and what color cups we were drinking out of. It seemed that blue always won...BOOO!!
This is the 2nd level and it is the church level. The stairs on the right side go down to a bathroom. It's open on 3 sides and on the "top side" is a floor to ceiling wall. This level was where we spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
The third level is where our bedroom was. As you can tell the first one on the left is labeled our bedroom. Dharma built that room specifically for us and says that nobody else will ever stay there. He also built the other two rooms for both of our parents to come and visit. Tony, Gary's dad was supposed to come with us on this trip but had to stay back because of his job. We hope he will be able to come with us in the future and since my parents also have a room there maybe I can get them to come?!!
I know that pictures would have been better, but we were so busy all week with workshops and such that we forgot to take pictures. However, we do have some pictures inside these levels so I'll try to explain them.
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