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Pastor Dan's Blog…
I am so happy to have returned home
this June from The United Methodist Church’s Greater New
Jersey Annual Conference, knowing that I am now
officially appointed and licensed for a new year at the
Andover United Methodist Church. My family and I are so
grateful to have been so warmly welcomed into such a
loving church family. It’s been a wonderfully
fulfilling first year for me, and I am excited about all
the things we have begun together. This community of
faith has so much going on right now, that I would not
want to miss any of it.We have continued to develop a
vibrant and happy worship style, emphasizing the talents
and enthusiasm of all ages of people. That has never
been more evident than on Easter morning, when we
released balloons, played all sorts of instruments,
shared a huge brunch and a fun Easter Egg hunt.
Since then, we’ve welcomed new
members, undertaken service projects (like buying Fair
Trade Coffee and raising money for Africa University),
planted flowers, repaired the large cross on the front
of the church building, purchased a new sound system,
and attended a Sussex Skyhawks baseball game at Skylands
Park. And that’s not all, by any means.
On June 11, in order to show our
appreciation for the terrific students, staff and
teachers of our Andover Pre-School, we held our first
“Kiddie Carnival” and picnic, with balloons, games for
families with pre-school kids, and all kinds of prizes.
That was a great success, and a lot of fun.
Now we need to build on that
success, by continuing to seek ways to serve our
community. We can help at Manna House, collect items
for hurricane relief, work on our project to collect
roadside trash, or help on a Habitat for Humanity
project. We had a lot of fun last fall raising money
for Hurricane Katrina victims with a car wash—why not do
that again?
Our worship services this summer
have continued to be fun, as we’ve sung a lot of our
favorite hymns and learned some new ones too. If you
haven’t been to a worship service lately, come check it
out. And bring friends—summer is a great time to visit
a new church.
It’s a good time to be the church
in this place. Many thanks. God bless you all—
Grace and Peace,
Dan
Pastor Dan's trip to India
Message #1 from India
Wannanghum! ("Hello" in Tamil). Here I am in an
internet cafe in the middle of a bazaar in a suburb of
Cennai, India. We got in safe and sound, roughly on
time, and to our "resort hotel" about 2:30 this
morning. The flights were fine, and the food was
great. The hotel is pretty spartan, but we're all
having a terrific time so far. Very hard to find
telephones--I haven't actually seen one yet, so don't
know when or if I'll be able to call. And I don't know
yet how often I'll be able to write, since we'll be on
the road most of the time. But I wanted you to know
that I've arrived and I'm fine.
We've passed by a lot of ocean front property with a lot
of orderly-but-poor looking thatched houses, surrounded
by sorted rubble of various sorts of building
materials. When we asked what they were, our guide told
us that those were refugee villages, from the Tsunami.
Many villages from around here were apparently wiped
out, and various groups have donated funds to build
these temporary houses.
Everywhere there is an amazing mixture of poverty,
modern growth, crowds and odd vehicles. We passed an
amusement park for kids called "MGM Resort Dizzy
World". We also saw a crocodile farm.
Message #2
Dear All,
Thanks for your notes. I'm back for a very quick follow
up message. We've spent the day visiting the church on
the site that St Thomas was reputedly martyred on, and
the cathedral where he is supposed to be buried. Then we
visited a seaside village of temporarily constructed
thatch huts, where a fishing village was wiped out
during the tsunami. Everyone was tremendously friendly
and glad to see us. The children were especially fun to
play with; they loved trying on my glasses and taking
pictures with my camera.
Tonight we'll take the train to the south. Got to leave
for the train. Hope to be able to email again soon, but
who knows. Anyway, you know you are in my thoughts.
Love to all,
Dan
Message #3
They've given us a fifteen minute shopping break, so
I thought I'd send a quick note.
Yesterday we went to an interfaith school and community
development organization, and visited with women's
self-help cooperative members, who have been gaining
some economic an social independence by growing
mushrooms, making clothes, running pre-schools, etc.
Very interesting--and a bit embarrassing to be treated
like such important visiting dignitaries.
Today we took an amazing ride by bus up to the top of
the "Blue Mountain" to OOty, past monkeys, elephants and
a lot of very scary traffic! Beautiful scenery, and
very nice people. We conducted our own little religious
service at the top, among the students, which was very
nice. Then to a botanical garden--and lunch at an
Indian-run Chinese restaurant!!
Now on to the next town!
Got to go---Love to all!
Dan
Message #4 or #5?
Dear All,
I spent over an hour earlier in the week writing a very
long email to you, trying to bring you up to date on all
of our adventures. When I tried to send the email,
though, it was unclear whether the message actually went
through. If you received the message, this note may
seem pretty redundant; if not, I hope you'll have better
luck reading this message.
I can't remember if I've told you about our visit to a
relief village for tsunami victims. The fishing village
buildings on the seashore were wiped out by the wave,
which swept several kilometers inland. So a Baptist
relief group rebuilt thatch houses for the people, and a
Swiss town donated fishing boats. Although they say they
were afraid to go back to the sea for quite a long time,
now they say they need mostly new or refurbished nets of
various kinds. The people were amazingly friendly and
welcoming, especially the children, who loved taking
pictures with my camera and trying on my glasses (which
they thought made them look very cool).
We have continued to see and learn amazing new things
during our travels through southern India. In
Coimbatore, we visited an ecumenical center for social
service, which promotes nonviolence, interfaith
understanding and cooperation, and education. The
center, called Shanti Ashram, supports a variety of
nursery schools, training centers, and women's self-help
cooperatives. We enjoyed visiting several of them, in
which the women grew mushrooms, sewed clothing, and made
organic fertilizers for sale. It felt odd, though, to
be treated like such important dignitaries. The whole
village had worked hard to clean up everything for our
visit, and people dressed in their best clothes gathered
around us and stood on housetops to see us. The
children were all taken to school, even on their day
off, just to recite for us.
In Madurai, we stayed at a wonderful seminary (Tamilnadu
Theological Seminary), run by a combination of various
protestant denominations. The seminary is very
dedicated to interfaith understanding and social
service. They are particularly concerned about helping
the Dallit (or "outcast") people, who have historically
been so oppressed by the social structure. They require
all students to spend a year in a dallit village or in
the urban slums, working with the people, and another
year in the school's social service projects, which
include a battered women's shelter, a youth
automechanics training center, a Dallit trade union and
social reform organization, and a children's center.
All students and faculty work endless hours in these
projects, which seem to be expanding all the time.
While we were there, we also visited one of the oldest
and largest Hindu temples in India, at Meenoshki, built
over many centuries, beginning in the reign of King
Pardia. What a fascinating place.
Then we traveled by bus across a wide sweeping
agricultural area, filled with beautiful coconut trees,
banana trees, rice fields, and small-scale brick-making
operations. Eventually, we crossed over the mountains
into Kerala, touring spice plantations and tea
plantations along the way. On the western side of the
mountains, the climate becomes much hotter and rainier,
and the vegitation becomes more lush and tropical.
To our surprise, the farther into Kerala we got, the
more prosperous the houses and buidlings seemed to
become, and the more churches we saw. Gradually, we
began to see a little church in nearly every village,
and many of the small roadside shrines dedicated to Mary
or St. Thomas. The tour buses, were typically named in
large letters on the windshield "St. Mary" or "Holy
Family", instead of "Sri Krishna" or "Ganesha", as in
Tamilnadu. Kerala has the highest density of
population of all Indian states, the highest literacy,
the highest percentage of Christians, one of the
strongest communist parties, and the highest alchohol
consumption in India. Kottayam, where we are staying
at a very old Orthodox seminary, seems, in fact, to be a
largely Christian enclave, although there is also a very
large temple in the center of the city (which is
currently having a big festival, marking the its
founding).
While here, we've visited St. Mary's Church, which
claims to have been founded by St. Thomas in the year
52. While there's no way to confirm that, there are
strong traditions in this part of the country about St.
Thomas, and there were clearly Christian communities
flourishing here as early as the second-fourth
centuries. There was also a very early Jewish community
in the seaside area of Cochin, which for nearly a
thousand years, between the fifth and fifteenth
centuries, maintained its own small principality in an
area called Shingly. We visited a still-active (barely)
synagogue in Cochin, built in 1564, very near the
Maharajah's palace (built in the 1500's for the Raja by
the Dutch). On the way back from the coast to Kottayam,
we enjoyed a long boat ride through the beautiful
backwater, past vast rice paddies and small villages.
Beautiful country.
During our various stopovers, we've heard a lot of
lectures by faculty at the various seminaries,
concerning Indian religion, politics, economics and
social issues. We also attended evening prayer services
at the Orthodox seminary, standing behind the rows and
rows of seminarians, deacons and priests. That was a
very moving way of feeling connected to a long and very
foreign tradition, reaching back to the ancient Syriac
churches.
Tonight we are taking a long train ride to Bangalore.
I've got to sign off now, to head back to the school.
Will write again as soon as I can. Thanks for all your
notes and prayers and good wishes.
Love to all,
Dan
Message #6
Thanks so much for all of the emails and good wishes you
have sent. I don't have time to reply to each message
separately, since we only get a few minutes occasionally
to visit an internet cafe, but I really appreciate your
notes, and all your thoughts and prayers and concerns.
I hope you will continue to pass along my emails to
anyone who would be interested.
After a long overnight train trip, we arrived in
Bangalore yesterday morning. Bangalore is a huge,
modern city of about seven million people, full of wide,
clean boulevards and tall office buildings. While I've
seen a large Catholic cathedral and a couple of large
mosques, the city seems much more secular in its
orientation than the places we've visited earlier (which
seemed to have a shrine or temple or church on every
corner. We've been staying at the Church of South India
Women's Hostel, accompanied by many women taking various
kinds of employment training and a large number of
clergy attending an All-India conference of some sort.
It's fascinating to see all of the different sorts of
attire from around the country.
We've attended a number of classes at the United
Theological Seminary, focusing on the widespread
oppression of women in the country and the efforts of
the seminary and churches and secular women's groups to
oppose practices like spousal abuse, dowry extortion and
female infanticide. Abortion of female fetuses seems
also terribly common, although illegal. We also joined
students at the seminary in visiting their adopted
"extended family" of poor, outcast people living in
shacks between the train station and the hospital. The
living conditions there were atrocious, but even those
homes need to be periodically abandoned, when heavy
rains cause sewage to rise through the storm drains into
their houses. Still the people were very gracious and
excited to see us, and the children were delighted to
play with our cameras (just like the kids in the tsunami
relief village back in Tamilnadu). They were very kind
to us.
Last night we were treated to a lovely dinner by the
family of our guide, Mr. Leslie Daniel, at a fancy
dining club called "The Catholic Club." Today, we've
been sightseeing in Bangalore, visiting the state
government building, the high court, the botanical
garden and other sights. Then a fine lunch in a famous
restaurant called "MTR," and then a little time for
wandering around the shopping districts. Amazingly,
that is where we have seen the first women in southern
India in anything like western clothing--but only a few
teenagers. Almost all women wear saris, punjabi dresses
or burkas (for the Muslim women), and men generally wear
plain or plaid shirts, tails untucked, with either plain
cloth trousers or a sort of wrap-around full-length
cloth that can be gathered, Ghandi-style, at the waist.
Tomorrow we will travel to Mysore by bus, and then by
train back to Cennai. Then, after only a few more days,
we will be on our way home. I can't wait to be home
again, and be able to relate more of our adventures.
Until then, thanks for all of your patience. I hope
you'll continue to keep us in your thoughts, and keep
those emails coming!
Message #7
Dear All,
Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers and
emails; it's been great fun to hear from people in the
States as we've continued our travels across India. I
can hardly believe that our journey is now almost at an
end, and my head is still swirling with all of the
thoughts that our experiences have generated.
Our last few days have been spent back in Cennai, where
our visit began. Instead of the scruffy "resort" south
of the city, where we stayed three weeks ago, we are now
staying in a YWCA International Guest House in the
center of Cennai city. It's a very nice campus, with
clean rooms and a good dining room for breakfast. Our
bathroom is unusually clean and our room even has
airconditioning--a first!
Cennai is a huge metropolitan city that seems to defy my
efforts at general description. It has wide boulevards
and some high-rise office buildings like Bangalore, but
overall seems to be a much older city. Many if not most
of the streets are full of the small bazaar-style shops
and vegetable stands that characterize the smaller towns
we've seen. Most businesses and schools and other
buildings have stone walls along the narrow sidewalks
facing the streets. It's just occurred to me that these
may be designed to discourage the development of the tin
shacks and tent communities that seem to exist wherever
the sidewalks are wide, or wherever the roadways provide
enough room. The downtown boasts a shopping mall (where
I am now), trendy restaurants, thousands of
western-style billboards,and fancy cars. The landscape,
though, also features huge traffic jams, pollution,
mountains of trash, and huge numbers of beggars, who
quickly surround any foreigners who stand still on a si
dewalk for any length of time.
All over India, there is evidence of rapid economic
modernization and immense poverty. We were taught that
the only way to avoid being overwhelmed by beggars is to
avoid looking at them, to totally ignore them. And I
found it somewhat unsettling how easy it was to learn to
ignore these people, to try to avoid the annoyance of
their pestering. I have found it unsettling how happy I
have been to find little creature comforts (like air
conditioning and clean bathrooms) restored. It is
understandable how rich and middle-class people would
seek the peace of not facing the overwhelming reality of
poverty around us--but it is too easy to treat less
fortunate people as invisible, and too easy to focus on
our own comfort and safety.
I hope that I can learn from this experience to be more
focused on the needs of others and less focused on my
own concerns. I hope I can carry such learning back
into my "regular life" back in America, which is not
without its own suffering and abused people.
Anyway, I am really eager now to get home to family and
friends again. Eager to share my experiences and
photographs, and eager to do all the things I was
supposed to do before I left home! I appreciate all
your patience, and your good wishes more than you know.
Thanks always.
Love to all,
Dan
Message #8
I just wanted to send a quick note to let you know that
I arrived back home from India safely last night, after
a trip lasting about 25 hours, including the 4 or 5 hour
layover in London. The trip was tiring, but everything
went smoothly. British Airways is a fine airline with
excellent food and entertainment, and although I didn't
sleep very much on the planes, the trip was as
comfortable as such a long flight could be.
I've really appreciated all the emails and good wishes
and prayers while I've been away, and I'll look forward
to sharing my experiences, now that I'm home.
Love to all,
Dan
Dan can be reached at 973-906-2691 or by e-mail at
dgepford@optonline.net. |
