Chennai 3rd Branch

Today we attended the Chennai 3rd branch for the second time. We returned to familiar faces from both this area and Rising Star. We were uplifted by the faith and testimonies of the saints in this area. Last week a young man gave his farewell talk before entering the mission field and this week his brother gave his homecoming talk. They both have a solid understanding of the Gospel and a deep love for the people they know and serve. We were particularly moved by a young father named Gopi, who is in the Sunday school presidency, who spoke of the struggles he has had and the blessings he’s received. He has one young son and hopes to have four more children as soon as his wife is done with her studies. He told us he is planning on coming to the Salt Lake temple (the first temple he will have attended) next May. We knew him for only a few hours in two weeks, yet we already love him and are happy that he will be able to attend the temple with his family and be sealed together.

Beaches

Matt and Becca asked us to collect sand from the different beaches we visited. In Sri Lanka the beach was brown and black (from ilminite sand that is slightly magnetic separated from the normal sand by the waves and deposited at different times of the year). In Negombo, we had fun collecting sand and taking pictures.

We also collected sand and seashells in Mahabalipuram after swimming. The beach was powerful and the waves huge! I got bowled over a couple of times. My swimming suit was filled with about a pound of sand by the time we were done. Tyler kept having to stand between me and Indian men who were blatantly attempting to take my picture. Awkard.

Matt and Becca and Fam, this is for you!

Vijay and Ambiga meet David

All good things are a result of volleyball. Let me clarify this. In the evening on our first day in Mahabalipuram we were walking down the street talking about how it’d be fun to join in on some games if we see any kids playing together. We have often seen groups of children playing cricket together and have always talked about joining them, but never had. Not ten minutes later, I looked over a large wall on a side street near the beach and saw a volleyball net and a bunch of young men and boys. It didn’t take us long to decide to approach them and ask to play. Everyone stared at us as we walked toward the net, but were very friendly when we exchanged greetings. We asked if we could play and they were more than happy to let us. One of the older players (mid-twenties) was quick to kick another boy off the court to let us play (I felt bad that we didn’t rotate in – they didn’t rotate at all – but the guys that sat out were happy to go and seemed just as entertained to watch two foreigners try to show off their volleyball skills). The game was fun and they were impressed that we could play their game. Some of them were quite good and the game turned out to be competitive. As it got dark they called it quits and we stood around chatting with everyone for awhile. We ended up standing in the middle of a circle asking and answering questions back and forth. We were about ready to head back to our hotel when David, the oldest boy, who seemed to be a leader (and who had the best English), invited us to his house. This turned out to be the beginning of a deep connection with him and his family.

We weren’t sure what to expect, but we chatted in broken English on the way to his house, which we later learned was in a little community of his extended family. He brought us in to one of the rooms, introducing us to his wife, mother, father, sisters, and nieces along the way, and sat us down on two chairs. Everyone else just stood and smiled and we spoke to David and his father – the only two who could speak English.

David handed us a photo album and we started looking through pictures of him over the last few years. We learned that he has a lot of interests and unique talents. He is a gymnastics master and teaches a class on the beach, he has played on a travelling volleyball team, he is in a dance group, he is a welder, and is currently studying at a college. He also told us how he had become a gymnastics master. He said that he was playing on the beach one day, doing some acrobatics, when an older German man approached him. The man told David he was impressed and later offered to send David to a gymnastics school to further train him. He paid for an entire year and at the end of the year, David was at the master level. When the German man returned, David was already teaching his own classes. The man came back often and had many connections with Mahabalipuram. We had the impression that this man had helped many people in similar ways.

As we looked through pictures, they brought us some delicious herbal tea (Mandy wasn’t a big fan of it) and smiled at us a lot. After awhile he moved us to he and his wife’s room and showed us their wedding album and told us about their traditional marriage ceremonies.

By the end of the evening they had given us ice cream and drinks, we had exchanged contact information, and had planned to see each other again the next day. They had even helped to give us Indian names, who happened to be famous actors. I am Vijay and Mandy is Ambiga. We walked back to the hotel excited to have made some new friends.

We were back the next evening with our wedding pictures on a thumb drive and they all gathered around to look. Before we even got started, his wife, sisters, and nieces were admiring the way Mandy did her hair (side French braid) and I suggested that Mandy could do the same thing to the youngest niece named Vanilla.

They loved that, and as we looked through pictures the rest of the evening, Mandy did the other niece’s hair and David’s wife’s hair in different styles that were foreign to them.

When Mandy was done, I told David to ask his wife if she could do Mandy’s hair. She did a cool fish-tail braid and decorated her hair with a fancy hair clip and jasmine blossoms. But they didn’t stop there. They put make-up on her forehead which is not only decoration but also designates that Mandy is married.

As we went through our pictures, David kept telling us ours looked like a Hollywood wedding with the bride in an “angel dress” and the groom in a suit and tie. They pointed out that we were smiling in every single picture and said that was nice (but clearly different from their pictures). He showed us the dvd of his wedding and we showed him “Time in a Bottle” that I played at our luncheon. Then he started playing some of his favorite music and a little dance party started right there in the small bedroom.

As we were getting ready to leave, David and his father expressed to us how we had become dear and close friends. They said we were now family to them and invited us to come back and stay at their house. They told us that in a year a new temple would be finished and that if we came back, they would bring us to the temple and guide us through their ceremonies. We in turn offered them our house in Utah and shared with them how wonderful it had been to know them. We also gave them a pass along card with a picture of the Salt Lake temple. We walked back to our hotel smiling and hoping to see them again. We talked about how, if we were ever rich enough, we would like to fly them all to Utah. We also talked about the German man and how he helped David. We were impressed with his method of giving. He didn’t just give David money, which would’ve been the most convenient thing; instead he did the more effective thing and invested his money in David’s life, so that he could improve his own circumstances. This was another example for us of ways we can serve, even remotely while living at home in Utah.

We Like Good Food

We have yet to eat some Indian food we don’t like. Perhaps we like some foods more than others, but our plates are always cleaned by the end of every meal. While at Rising Star, we ate dinner together on the roof of the hostel under a long canopy.

Patrick and Myra, of our middle-age group,
enjoying their food unabashedly.
Generally the teenagers sat on a separate table,
the older group in the middle,
and our group on the cool end of the table.

The typical meal was red rice with two or three sauces, mixed fruit (mango, pineapple, etc…), and a wheat or rice bread all served on a banana leaf. 

It was the same food that all of the children and staff ate. Sometimes we were able to eat lunch with the children and this was the same type of food. On the first day they taught us how to properly eat with our hands – it is quite effective.

Too often we sit down to a meal at some restaurant or hotel and wish we had a camera, but just can’t wait to eat and never end up getting any pictures. Some of our favorite dishes are: 

Parotha

Any Paneer dish (cottage cheese cubes)

Rogan Josh

Anything with the word Masala (which just means a mixture of spices)

Tandoori anything

Sambar (breakfast)

And the popular chicken or veg. tikka masala is even better here

The majority of Indian dishes (and restaurants), it seems, are vegetarian. At first we were always looking for something with chicken or mutton in it, but once we discovered how delicious the vegetarian dishes were, there was a whole new world of delicious food for us to try.

While we were in Sri Lanka, we sought out typical Sri Lankan food as well. It also consists mainly of rice and curry, but is on average much spicier. The places we visited also seemed to have a larger portion of the menu dedicated to sea food. We didn’t like it quite as much as Indian, but we really enjoyed a few dishes along the way, like the tomato soup at this restaurant on the way to Kandy. It had the most amazing view. 

At most restaurants, we spend around $10 for a full meal for both of us including two main dishes, rice, at least two types of naan, a couple bottles of water, and often big ice cream dessert. Some of the best values include veg. Samosas at some corner stores which cost about twenty cents for three and Parotha, which fills one of us up for about fifty cents on average.

Mmm!

Loving the Lankan Life

On Monday morning we flew to Sri Lanka. As we stepped off the plane into the airport, the first thing I noticed was the cleanliness and closer similarity to Western airports. As we drove to our hotel, the beauty and comparative cleanliness to India was apparent. It was quieter and there were much fewer people.

After a short nap, we ventured onto the beach behind our hotel for a leisurely walk. The beach wasn’t extremely clean, but it was beautiful. You couldn’t swim in it as there was a reef right off the beach and the waves would come crashing and billowing into the air. I loved the sight, smell and sound of the waves.

After a short romantic stroll J, I convinced Tyler that we could walk out to the street running parallel to the beach and catch a ride on the bus into Colombo (about 20-25 kilometers away).

We got our first glimpse of the extreme friendliness of the Sri Lankan people. We met a man on the road that greeted us and told us about how they had come together as a community after the tsunami there, and how people support each other and treat each other all like family. He helped us to figure out the correct bus to take.

I absolutely love and admire the friendliness of these people. They were always willing to help us find our way, going out of their way to direct us. They were always smiling and greeting us and many offered to have us to tea.

Our second day we went to Negombo to the beach. Again we met tons of friendly people and had a great time. On the way home waiting for the bus, I sat on the railing of a bridge over a river. After I hopped down, some ladies came to tell me not to sit on the railing as they were concerned because the river below contained lots of crocodiles and they didn’t want me to fall. We spent the remaining time waiting for the bus, trying to catch a glimpse of one.

We went to Kandy on the third day. On the way we went to an elephant orphanage. There they house and care for elephants that have been injured or orphaned. They also breed elephants there as well.

We also went to a spice garden where we got a massage and learned about all types of spices for things from losing weight, to sleeping well, to an herb that can remove hair in five minutes and last for about 2-3 years after using it consistently for four to six weeks. It was pretty fascinating.

We ate lunch at a scenic restaurant overlooking the jungle.

 We saw the Tooth Temple where I joked the tooth fairy lives but is a place where they claim to house one of Buddha’s teeth.

Sri Lanka was beautiful and we absolutely adored the people. As we flew back to India, though, we felt a sense of coming home. Seeing sites is fun – but the people are the greatest part of travelling.

I love this quote by Sister Hinckley –

"Travel is wonderful, but if you do very much of it, the places all become a blur. But the people - when you get wherever you're going and begin to meet the people, you come alive again. People are wonderful. Each one has a story, each something to give, each knows something interesting, something that can make your life richer"