Updates from India 45

This month we return to our usual format. We hope you enjoyed last month's Mega photo special.

Comment
BGI Cultural week
Holi, the festival of colors
The future of Indian cricket?
Garden
Comments from Kris

Why did Jesus need to die for us?

2016 years ago in Israel the religious leaders were crucifying Jesus for blasphemy -- for claiming to be God. He was considered by the establishment to be a radical, troublemaker, a sinner who had to be silenced.

Only weeks earlier, Jesus' friend Lazarus had been dead four days. Yet Jesus publicly brought him back to life to show His power over death.

He healed every disease, every sickness...even those blind from birth or those who had never been able to walk. Nothing was beyond his power. He even gave this power to his disciples so that they too could and did heal in his name.

Jesus had shown miracle after miracle, even if you do not believe in Him this fact cannot be denied, the miracles are recorded for all to read. They proved his deity and his equality with the Father. He had absolute power.

Yet he allowed himself to be betrayed by one of his own followers and subjected to the horror of crucifixion. What must it have felt like to him watching that betrayal and knowing what was to come? Did He feel fear? Yes I believe he did, but for us, to save us He allowed it to happen.

The whipping, thorns in his head, nails through his wrists and feet did not kill him. Neither did the slow suffocation on the cross, or the spear to his side. Jesus could have stepped down from the cross at any time. Remember his was absolute power to overcome all things. This point is vital I believe to understanding the crucifixion, Jesus chose to die, he was not killed, and it was his decision to make.

This was the equivalent of someone bending over and putting their head under water, and choosing to deliberately drown when they had the power to raise their head at any moment. Jesus chose to suffer and die. Does anyone really believe that nails driven by man could hold Christ to the cross unless He chose it to be so?

He was very clear about this. Jesus said he was choosing to lay down his life for us. Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this that someone lays down his life for his friends."

Because he looked at our hearts, our actions, and saw us as sick, needy, weak, sinful, blind and lost. (This was Jesus' stated view of us). Whether you agree with him or not, he saw us as desperately in need.

And, he saw us at risk of dying eternally separated from him. Never to experience eternal life. He saw us as cut off from him by our sin, destined to die in sin.

He took the penalty of death that we deserve, and took it himself to literally save us.

In describing this, the Bible says, "perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love toward us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Hours before his crucifixion, fully aware of his imminent crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus stated his intent as he talked to his Father: "that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Instead of deserting us, leaving us to the consequences of our sin-- he came to us. He entered into our world as a man born of woman. He took the penalty of our sin and bore our death, himself, so that we may have eternal life through Him.

If you believe as I do that Jesus is my saviour there is great joy in this message, if you don’t yet believe I pray that one day you will come to know Jesus Christ and be saved from your sins as I have been. When that happens you will be changed in ways I cannot describe, a great light shines from within you; you are whole for the first time in your life.
Please consider the lines below.

"Jesus, I ask you to come into my life. Forgive my sin. I thank you for choosing to die on the cross for me. Please lead my life as you want. Lead me to my salvation. Amen."

Building the stage for the BGI* college Cultural week
(*Buddha Group of Institutions)

Every First year have as part of their degree course to undertake workshops in wood, metal, clay among others.
This set was built primarily by the First year as their Bamboo workshop. other students helped when they could but the majority of the work was done by them. they learnt about joints, tying, the strength of Bamboo in compression, flex and in tension. Also what could be done to make green Bamboo into curves, as in the doorways. This was a huge undertaking for a first year class who had no prior experience working with this material. Add to that a very tight time frame to get it built in, blazing sun to work in, we think they did so well as can be seen below. Suffice it to say they have all passed this phase of their training with very high marks.

This is the stage being laid and levelled.

All this was built without a single nail or screw.

These are all from the two nights. Songs, dancing, awards, fashion shows 

skits and much more.

Costumes were all made by the students from recycled materials.

A fantastic success, a really great time was had by all the guests, faculty and students. There is talk that this may become an annual event, we certainly hope so.

Holi, the festival of colours.

 

It always seems strange to us that some Christians will not take part in this festival while are quite willing to enjoy Diwali and that is far more based in the Hindu religion. Holi celebrates the victory of good over evil by throwing colours into the air and at each other.

Holi celebrations start on the night before Holi with a Holika bonfire where people gather and do religious rituals in front of the bonfire, and pray that their internal evil should be destroyed as the bonfire starts. For us as Christians we cannot take part, but it is an interesting spectacle to watch. The next morning is celebrated as Rangwali Holi - a free-for-all carnival of colours,where participants play, chase and colour each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders. The frolic and fight with colours occurs in the open streets, open parks, outside temples and buildings. Groups carry drums and other musical instruments, go from place to place, sing and dance. People visit family, friends and foes to throw coloured powders on each other, laugh and gossip, then share Holi delicacies, food and drinks. In the evening, people dress up and visit friends and family. It is a time of great joy.

Yes even Bleu' got involved !

Removing some plate glass windows.

Try this UK scaffolders!






Football and indoor sports as part of the cultural week at BGI

A hotly contested five a side competition between the student years.

All this energy at over 90F

We both love working here at the college, very different in some ways to what we are used to so we too have to learn. Each session we teach or project we undertake gives us huge satisfaction in knowing we are helping to mould some of the next generation of Indian Architects.

Carrom

(also known as Karrom) is a "strike and pocket" table game of Eastern origin similar to billiards and table shuffleboard. It is found throughout the East under different names though most non-eastern people know it by the East Asian name of Carroms (or Karrom). It is very popular in Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and surrounding areas and in the Middle East as well. In South Asia, many clubs and cafés hold regular tournaments. Carrom is very commonly played by families, including the children, and at social functions. Different standards and rules exist in different areas.The objective of play is to use a striker disk with a flick of the finger to make contact with and move lighter object disks called carrom men, which are thus propelled into one of four corner pockets.

The aim of the game is to pot (or pocket) one's nine carrom men and the Queen before your opponent.

Ref: Wikipedia

This is a game we both like, when we
can we will buy a board.

Table tennis....far too dangerous for me!

Lookout world......the next generation is coming.

Local boys playing cricket, you see this all over India, every chance they get they play. Looking at them I wonder, am I seeing the next Kohli?

Garden .........................Mint!
Of all the things we miss in our garden one of them has always been mint. Just by chance we spotted this at our local veg market, four bunches....the entire stock. Kris has made mint sauce and it has joined our bottled storeage to mature.........mmmmmm lamb and mint sauce.

Now thats what we call a jar of mint sauce....

We have also put a few in water to see if we can get them to root, if we can it will be great as long as we can keep it alive over the summer (48/50degC).

Melon planting

If they don't come up guess
who is getting the blame.

American Pumpkin growing well. 

We have chosen this spot because it gets sun all
day, we will grow in the troughs and the melons
 will ripen on the sand.

Tomatoes.
Time to begin supporting them,
next month we will have to put
up shading or they will burn.

The leeks have now almost
 reached eating size. We are
both looking forward to leek
 with cheese sauce....yummy

Other seeds in pots to plant out.

Among them are, 6 Papaya trees (F1) that should have bigger sweeter fruits, cucumber, Peppers, Indian gourds, and now of course...melons.

 Comments from Kris.

Well here we are again, its been a very busy month with work and Cultural Week, preparations and the performances at work by the talented students.
We were asked to design and build the main stage with the students, which was a huge task. As the first years had to do a bamboo workshop we decided that this would be primarily their project. They had no previous knowledge of working with this material so that was a challenge to teach them what they could and couldn't do with bamboo. As you can see above I think they did an excellent job, it took just under two weeks to design, build, paint and then assemble, it was very well received and became the focal point of the two night show. We are very proud of the effort they all put in and the results were amazing.
I have been busy finishing off the painting of the jeep and can say at last that the painting is finished hurray, it was fun doing and I love the colour its as near as we could get it to British Racing Green,


my favourite car colour just like they paint Morgans (my favourite car). We still have some work to complete but have made great progress as we continue to do the restoration ourselves.

Holi was a fun time spent firstly with our friends and neighbours going to each others homes, eating, drinking and playing colours. This year their were not as many of us as lots of people were away or as they say here "they were out of station". We got showered and changed then more friends arrived late afternoon and we started all over again at our home, a great time was had by all. We do not get involved it the rituals of Holi as it is against our faith but as playing colours represents the good defeating evil we feel this is compatible with our faith as Christians, its also great fun! This also gives us the opportunity to testify to many people about our faith as Holi comes just before Easter which is in my opinion our main Christian Festival. People here are very open to knowing how we celebrate Easter and have asked me many times what it involves and why do we celebrate it, so of course great opportunity to share about Christianity without preaching it at them.

I am still amazed when riding in traffic at how different driving and riding is here in India. I have got used to people rarely using their indicators to let you know where they are going and relying on hand signals. However I think today was lets just turn any way we want without any hand signals to guide you, it can get crazy, but as Chris has said many times no one actually wants an accident and they do their utmost to drive around each other to prevent accidents. Today a car coming the wrong way down the main road decided to drive straight at me in the middle then looked puzzled as I had to figure out whether to ride to the left or right of him, duhhhh. I have got used to traffic coming and going the wrong way but usually they give way one way or another to let you pass especially if they are the ones going the wrong way but this guy couldn't make up his mind and was blocking the road weaving one way then the next, he only moved over fully when I decided their was just enough room to the left of him to pass but he looked at me as if I was the crazy one. I saw four adults and a child on a bike the other day I still don't know how they all managed to get onto a two seater scooter. But the funniest thing was seeing a guy in front on a bike with passenger reach down to pick up his crash helmet whilst still moving to put it on his head as we were approaching a traffic police stop. Once past he took it straight off again which is common practice. Unfortunately most riders do not appreciate the risks they are taking with their lives riding without helmets. We try to educate people when we can and have spoken to many of the students about this.

Well George our cockerel is no more, he is now plucked and in the freezer ready for Christmas. Why you may ask, well we went away last October to Bangalore (Bengaluru) and when we came back he had some aggressive outbursts, they seemed to be settling then he attacked me. He was so aggressive he caused an injury to my elbow and it came up like an egg very painful, the wound has now healed, I decided to give him another chance. But less than two weeks later he attacked me again and caused a wound to the side of my head at the hairline it bled for ages and was so painful I had just had enough I was getting that I was apprehensive going into the pen. He had been aggressive at other times but not causing injury so I was less concerned but actual physical harm is a different thing altogether and he was getting worse not better. So after discussion with Chris we felt he was getting too dangerous not only for me but for others too and he had to go. On a positive note we now have Christmas dinner sorted and the two girls (hens) are much more relaxed and contented and they're putting on much more weight. We plan to get more hens as soon as the Agricultural college have them available, we know they are well bred and the genuine local hens Pratap Dhan which is what we have been keeping. Everything is set up for their arrival were just waiting for availability.

I have just dug up our own beetroot crop and pickled them, yummy I love beetroot, they will be ready to try in about a week, I can't wait.

So now we've pickled onions, mint and beetroot, made our own marmalade and we plan to preserve other foods too. Our English carrots have been dug up and put in the freezer along with our own Broccoli so things are going well with the kitchen garden. The leeks will be ready soon and we have planted tomatoes, pumpkin, papaya, capsicum, melon among others I love having our own organic fruit and veg. Chris can't wait for cheesy leeks.
The phone repair shop has had good business out of me this week firstly my phone wouldn't charge and needed a new charging socket installed, then last night I dropped my phone and as it fell the protective case opened and crash I smashed the touchscreen oops. I went back in today to get it repaired two visits in two days that must be a record, but the shop is reliable, doesn't overcharge and is very reputable I've used them several times so becoming a good customer. Yes they repaired it today in a couple of hours, bless them I'm now back in the loop.

A bit more gossip we have new neighbours, Tanuja has moved back next door with her little girl and her parents, it is nice to have neighbours again and as we have known Tanuja for over three years it is nice to have her back on the colony. She missed the Holi celebrations though which probably was a blessing for us as she is lethal when playing colours hee hee.
Well thats about all from me till next time.

Till next month
God Bless you all
Chris and Kris