Wednesday 25. february

Today, we got out of bed at 8 and had breakfast. Eggs and toast as usual. We spent a short time in prayer before we left in 3 cars; an Ambassador, a Sumo jeep and a van.

We travelled along a river, or maybe a canal, and there was much to see along the road, like bathing of cows and people. They use the same water for bathing as they use for cooking, laundry and drinking. It's expensive to be connected to the public water supply system, so very few people can afford it.

A usual situation in the Indian traffic. The traffic is still fascinating, with bicycles, mopeds, scooters, tractors, trucks and pedestrians in rapid succesion. The rule is "survival of the biggest", blowing the horn means "here I come, and I'm not going to stop".

There are beautiful rows of palms between the fields, which are very green. Rice fields, according to Benjamin, who's sitting in the back seat with his wife, Magdalena. I'm sitting in the front seat with the driver. Again I'm struck by how green and fruitful this country is.

By the way, they use bumps to decrease the driving speed here also, pretty efficient ones. And they burn a lot of things, we often smell the smoke from burnt something. It's probably healthy to breathe in. We're driving for about 4 hours now, from Narsapur to a city called Rajahmundry (Radjamandri).

Men are mostly dressed in light, gray and light brown clothes, but the women are very beautiful in their richly coloured sarees. Many Indians live in small houses made of straw and clay, with roofs covered with palm leaves.

Their working on the road where we're passing by now, and everything is done manually, with small spades and picks. They had a motorized roller, though.

Bicycles in diverse variants are the main transportation devices for the man in the street. It's not unusual to see a bike with a whole family; a kid on the cross-bar, mother and the smallest kid on the carrier and father on the seat, pedaling.

There's a hindu festival today, so the traffic is a bit calmer. I wonder how it is usually!

We arrived at the hotel in Rajahmundry just before 12, and Christopher and I stay at room 416. The room is fair, with air condition and a fan in the ceiling. The toilet has been disinfected for our security. And there was a Gideon bible in the shelf between the beds.

We had soup, rice and chicken for lunch, and ice cream for dessert. After lunch, we relaxed for an hour before we set off to a village a couple of hours away. Christopher and I went as princes in the backseat of an Ambassador, while the others went in a jeep. There was a missionary station at the place, and we went up on the roof and had some crackers and water before we went to the place where we should have the service.

Eager kids, wanting to be photographed. It was a house with a small yard where they had set up a provisional sound equipment on the wall. It seemed like many of the people hadn't seen a "white" man before, we really attracted their attention. All the kids sat down on the ground in the "street" outside the fence, and soon a lot of grown-ups gathered also.

Sverre preaches. Tone started the service by telling about Jesus feeding the 5000, then I made a brave try to preach the gospel. Interrupted by a loss of electricity and some general disturbances I managed in a way. The dogs barked, and the kids made noise. Sofia shared something after me, followed by Tove and a few songs. Tone pulled the net at the end, and a lot of them wanted to accept Jesus as their saviour.

It was a unique experience to be there, we could really see how their eyes got hopeful as we told them about Jesus. We had a good interpreter helping us. Magdalena had a good laugh when Tone tried to sing "Cast your burden upon Jesus" in Telugu, the local Indian language. But it was a great success among the public. And at the end we prayed for everyone who wanted it.

The trip back was easy sailing, but it was a bit tight with 3 persons in the body. The air along the roads is rather stuffed with exhaust, dust and other peculiar smells. And continuously there are overtakings of cars. One becomes kind of immune against such things, I'll probably never be anxious for overtakings again...

We were back at the hotel a few minutes past eleven, and Tone ordered some sandwiches for us. We got chicken toast, but there was mayonnaise on them, so only Lars Erik ate it all. Tone and I was content with the toast only, but I ate the potato chips.