Thursday 26. February

Christopher and I slept long this morning, at least we tried. But there was honking all through the night so I guess our sweet dreams were interrupted a few times. But that's fair enough. We had a shower and had some crispbread and chocolate spread for breakfast before we left the room.

The others left in a car when we got down, so Christopher and I went for a walk to find some post cards. We didn't find any, but we found a communication shop where we could send emails. However, because of the load on the phone lines, we would have to wait till 8 o'clock in the evening, so we'll just have to skip it. We went along the streets for a while and experienced the chaos. We met 3 little girls about the age of 10 who understood some english. They wanted us to take a picture of them. We did it, and pop!, we had 20-30 spectators looking at us.

At last we found a shop where we were told htat they maybe sold post cards, but unfortunately there were only birthday greetings, Valentine's cards and such items. So we returned to the hotel to have lunch. Guess what we had! Chicken and rice, of course.

Sverre is sending emails at R. K. Communications. After lunch, Christopher and I went and sent emails to our church and to a friend of mine. Some other people were in charge now, so we didn't have to wait till the evening. We paid 30 rupees pr. email. They were using an X.400 based system, and it seemed to be complicated to send to more than one recipient at a time. But anyway, we got the mails away. The computer was OK, a Pentium 100MHz with Windows 95 and a monochrome monitor. The shop was called R. K. Communications, run by M. Rama Krishna. We got his card. Pretty long email address also: mrk@RKCOMM.XEEVGA.XEEMAIL.ems.vsnl.net.in!

Before we left for villlage ministry, we had half an hour of prayer at Tone and Lars's room. Tone stayed at the hotel today, and Inger is going to lead the service. We're going the same way as yesterday, passing the monkeys, but I didn't manage to take any pictures of them this time either. But there are many herds of cows along the road. Yesterday they told us that they grow rice, cotton and sugar canes here. And we learned how to say "Jesus loves you" in Telugu: Yesuni nenu premin chuchunnanu.

We arrived at the missionary station before it was dark, a bit earlier then last night. We were served fresh coconuts, the juice is very clean and good for the stomach, which is a good thing for our western stomachs. It didn't taste very much, however. We ate the coco meat also, it was a bit strange. I don't really know whether I liked it or not. I think I could get used to it.

There's a really beautiful starry sky here, espesially when the lights are out. I observed "The Great Bear", "Orion", "Cassiopeia" and the "Pleiades".

We were another place today than yesterday, but they had the same kind of sound equipment and the same share of kids. I suppose there was about 150 people gathered. Inger introduced us, then Lars took over and then we sang a few songs while Christopher guarded our things. The lights went out almost at once, so they got the car and used the front lights as spot lights. Unfortunately, the sound equipment was battery driven, so they made it work again.

Then Christopher shared a few words about The Holy Spirit while I guarded our things. The lights came back on just when Christopher started, so there were some disturbances. As I was sitting next to the building, they opened a door behind me, so I moved a bit, and they came to serve us coconuts. But they didn't really choose the right time for it! Luckily, the pastor came and stopped them.

Tove preached a strong message of salvation and invited people to receive Jesus after a few more songs, and many accepted. Afterwards, we prayed for those who wanted to be filled with The Holy Spirit, and many of them wanted to. As Inger was praying for a girl, the girl suddenly started to pray very intensely, so we were a bit unsure whether she was filled by the Spirit or something else.

Before we left the place, Sofia started talking with some kids, and in a moment the whole village was gathered around her. It was really a show, but it could have been dangerous. Because the villagers don't know how to behave in all situations, they may suddenly turn from joy to violence. But we got Sofia safely into the car and set off.

After a couple of kilometres, we stopped to visit the bushes. Then, in the darkness, I saw lots of small, flying lights, fireflies. It was really a marvellous sight, lots of small, lighting dots flying around.

The ride home went well. We were generally better fit than last night, and our driver does a very nice job. I had some crispbread when I got back to avoid taking the malaria tablets on an empty stomach. They can be a bit tough. We're going to bed now, we're leaving at 6 tomorrow morning to go back to Narsapur, and the alarm sounds at 5.