Life with the Hyde's in India

Hello all,

Well, as I am sitting here at my computer the sun is shining from an almost cloudless sky after a heavy downpour yesterday afternoon. The temperature is a comfortable 31° with a slight breeze. That’s 88°F for those of us who don’t do centigrade! Tonight the temperature will fall to 22°, which for us is very comfortable. It must be hard living somewhere like the UK to understand just how normal these temperatures feel to us now. In the middle of winter it may get down as low as 6° at night which for us really is COLD, stove lighting weather. Daytime it will be around 26°, that’s about 47F. By then of course monsoon will be well past and we will have had all the rain were going to get for the next year. We have adapted. Isn’t the human body amazing, the first year we were here in India we wore T-shirts and complained about the heat through winter. It’s funny when you look back at it everybody wandering around in jumpers scarves and blankets wrapped round their shoulders and there is us basking in the beautiful weather! Well I can honestly say 47°C this summer was hot but not unbearable, we have seen 50°C + now that is hot. Yes, we have adapted.

We always seem to be running some sort of experiment here. I have to admit my favorite so far has been setting up our recycle system. Now we put very little in the skip. It has even inspired one of our neighbors to do the same. We compost all we can including the chicken waste, cardboard and paper is recycled into composted or chicken bedding. Glass and plastics and metal we give to a man who collects recyclable materials as his business. Many of our projects are made from material we have around the place, we installed an overhead watering system for the back garden made 90% from recycled material.

Very fine misting in the back garden made
mainly with recycled materials. Guess where
we will be standing in the summer heat!

 We have just completed laying the pipes to make the very front bed next to the road easier to water,

Our pipes laid ready for automatic watering

again recycled materials. It cost us a few new fittings but that was about all. We both love to do things like this, it makes our life easier and there is so much satisfaction when a project works.

This year in the garden has been a biggie for us.

Since we came to India we have had varying degrees of success growing some of our own food. To be honest sometimes it just hasn’t been worth the effort when local markets are so cheap when in season. However the use of pesticides in great quantities by the farming industry has always made us cautious to say nothing of the vastly superior flavor of our own crops. We have tried very hard to remain organic in our own garden but this year has been a monumental struggle.

We planted at least a month early, well before the monsoon had finished to hopefully improve germination rates. It is a risk some farmers take to get better prices for their crops. It should be noted however that many crops are destroyed by late monsoon storms. Something else we had not fully considered also makes sowing at this early point dangerous for crops… Billions of pests and diseases can hit without warning. At this point we are beginning to understand why so many farmers use so much pesticide. The rate of infection is astounding. Overnight crops can be decimated by pests that weren’t there when you went to bed. White-fly, a horrible black caterpillar about 1 cm long that does nothing but eat and moulds are the worst but by no means the only problem we have had. The odd snake doesn’t really count as they keep the mice and rats down so we leave them alone they leave us alone. Our latest visitor was a quite large black cobra. Deadly if you get bitten but not a problem if you just let them go their own way through the garden without interfering. After all not so many years ago where we are living was jungle. We also get a female panther every year. She hunts around the colony when the street dog puppies are born to feed her cubs then moves on. I know it may seem sad to see so many puppies disappear each year but if she didn’t hunt we would be overrun with wild dogs. We have only seen her once and have found her paw prints in our seed beds. It’s lovely really to think of her wondering about but it is also best to be very very careful at night during her hunting season.

WEEDS

 Weeds, I don’t know what you think of weeds but for  me now it describes an area of ground that turns into a jungle the moment you turn your back. They are however appreciated by our chickens. (Another experiment happening there).

The growth rate is amazing, warm humid conditions really make a difference. I have seen weeds grow easily 6 inches in a day… No I’m not exaggerating.

We planted our leak seeds and waited patiently for them to pop up. The grass grew, the weeds grew, we weeded (carefully). Eventually they came up and from that day to this it has been a constant struggle to keep the grass and the weeds around them under control. Christine is outside right now replanting them to grow on in our raised beds. We are hoping for a good crop this year because by planting earlier we have extended their growing season before it becomes too hot again for them. This is the reason we have planted them early this year.

Over sowing. Because we don’t have a lot of ground available for vegetables we use a lot of tubs, planters etc. year after year we have complained about the terrible germination rates we have been getting from seeds purchased here. This year I have to hold my hand up it was me, my fault, I did it! Every tub planted, every crop we sowed without exception germinated far more than we are used to. Consequently every tub was a forest of little seedlings desperately trying to reach the light. Our germination rate this year has been incredible. Normally we would expect 15 to 20% germination, this year it must be over 70%. We are learning so much from this experiment.

Locals call these cala lilies they are beautiful

Motie getting on now, about 13yrs, he has his own
blanket in the corner of the living room and comes
and goes as he pleases.

Hanging baskets up again looking very pretty

Side view of our kitchen garden
raised beds at rear of house

Geetas plants can't remember the names but
she loves them

A type of lily that smells gorgeous

Our tomatoes far right with melons on the left. Perfect for light but awful soil hence
the grow bags. Herbs will go in the space

Love this plant adds color to the garden

Roses growing up the chicken enclosure

View of our rockery and plants

More cala lilies among the rockery

Carrots and kohlrabi in the background, with our water butt collecting water from
our RO water, we do not waste anything. Christine adds chicken manure to it for the garden.

Chris's peppers great success this year, I bet they
will be very hot.

Capsicum 

We tend not to grow native Indian vegetables because they are so easily available in the market. We concentrate on vegetables that are not so easy to get especially UK varieties. As an aside, we were in the UK recently to renew our visa’s and took the opportunity to buy some UK seeds that we don’t see here. Runner beans, we planted, they grew rapidly up the climbing net we had erected. Great excitement waiting for the first baby bean to develop. About 3 or 4 weeks in we suddenly noticed the leaves going brown, in two days whatever it was spread across the entire crop. We thought we had lost them but with the help of our pests and diseases app the problem was identified as a leaf miner that we don’t get in the UK. Presumably our beans had no natural immunity. Repeated spraying with soap water and milk mixed seems to have them under control but only time will tell as we have lost all our flowers. Ah, the joys of gardening.

Beetroot pickled,  Christine's first
attempt and it tastes yummy

Many of the crops are doing splendidly; our kohlrabi in particular seems to be very happy with the new planting time. Cucumber, melons pumpkin and tomatoes are all doing well although lettuce in particular has suffered badly from being eaten overnight or hammered to death by the heavy rain. Tomatoes are difficult here with many varieties succumbing to fungus diseases and mould so this year we planted six different varieties some hybrid some old favorites like Money Maker. Of the six we have lost four varieties to fungus or mould. The two that remain are hybrid disease resistant varieties… Lesson learned.

Just for a laugh.

Imagine the scene, 3 AM in the morning a light creeps under the closed bathroom door. Inside dressed only in a pair of shorts a man sits on the WC facing the cistern, his arms inside the cistern seem to be doing something. If I was to die at this point was on earth would anybody think! Actually I couldn’t sleep, we’ve had a leaky cistern for weeks so it seemed the ideal opportunity to fix it. With it repaired and working again I headed back to bed. Christine mentioned a few days later that it seemed to have stopped leaking. The Phantom plumber strikes again.

One of the things we both miss about the UK is a good northern bitter beer.

Christine is 100% a northern lass and enjoys a good bitter. Mostly here it’s fizzy stuff in a bottle, very drinkable but not northern ale. Another thing we brought back from the UK was a couple of tins of homemade beer ingredients. Yorkshire bitter. Well needless to say since then despite the difficulty of getting ingredients (thank you Mel for getting us some more tins on her visit to the UK) home brewed beer is now available at the Hyde abode and very nice it is. 

This is where the magic of brewing
beer begins complete with heat
blanket taped in place to aid brewing

A fine bitter and doesn't give you
a headache next day

     

We have been looking into brewing using natural ingredients which are available here rather than the tins of prepared concentrate which is not available here. Yet another voyage into the unknown for our stomachs! We will update you. We also make fruit wines which are usually pretty good although there have been one or two that are best described as yuk! Banana springs to mind. Cranberry is gorgeous especially with a roast dinner so is Blackcurrant.

Chickens.

Christine keeps chickens, it’s an endangered Rajasthan species well adapted to the heat of summers here and a good layer. One problem with them they stop laying and moult as soon as the day length shortens. Research tells us that they need 14 hours of daylight to be able to continue producing eggs. We have installed two big LED lights in their run and are switching them on as the daylight ends. This appears to be working as several of the hens have come back into lay. We have been looking for a battery operated timer so that the lights can be switched on in the early morning giving a more natural transition from dark to light. Our major problem has been we have many and I do mean many power cuts it is a daily occurred that we just live with. We have a battery backup system and inverter to keep our freezers and fridge running but a timer obviously would need resetting every time the power fails. We have just found a very cheap battery backup timer on Amazon.

Our lighting has been installed 

 The chicken lighting is going automatic. This will be better for the chickens and save us from having to remember to switch the lights on and off. We will keep you updated as to the results of this experiment as time goes on.

Geeta has just come bustling in from school. A happy chatty little girl who seems to love every aspect of life. She is just completing her midterm exams we eagerly await the results she has worked so hard over the last year to catch up as much as she can we are both so proud of her. I have just been reminded of a promise I made her yesterday that we would crack a coconut this afternoon…. 

Ah samosa's Geeta having break 
on way home from school

She's growing up quickly

She loves the fresh coconut milk and then attacks the coconut flesh with gusto!* Christine keeps talking about writing an update on Gita tracing her development from when she first arrived here to the present day. Quite when this will get done your guess is as good as mine but over she has promised so I guarantee it will happen.* Update. We peeled all the outer fiber from it, drilled holes with a screwdriver in the eyes and Geeta happily started to drink the coconut milk…YUK it seems our coconut is rotten inside! We broke it up and threw it in for the chickens, they seem to enjoy it so at least somebody got somebody got something out of it.

Christine and I are both well allowing for the fact we both have arthritis and asthma. I suffer from IBS which can complicate life. As winter approaches we both feel more pain but it is nothing compared to the pain we both felt when we visited the UK over Christmas. Remember the adaption? It works both ways we are now no longer able to cope with the cold wet winters of the UK was very evident to us on our last visit. We both ended up with lung infections and the joint pain meant that our painkiller intake shot up. Christine had her toe bitten by one of our lovely 5 cm centipedes last week, big fat toe and lots of pain for a day of two. In many ways it’s our own fault that we get so many insects and wildlife into our garden. Squirrels lizards bees and a multitude of different birds visitors regularly. We watch as pairs of birds make their nests in our bushy shrubs and hunt through the grass looking for bugs to eat. I have also given up being totally paranoid about a heron that occasionally visits taking some of my fish from a pond, it has to eat as well I suppose. Update. Yesterday sitting having acquired evening drink on our front door porch a large and I’d mean large insect crashed into Christine who brushed it away, it dropped the caterpillar it was carrying and bit her hand. Within moments she was beginning to itch and suffer pain. She took antihistamines to keep it under control but this morning she had to go to the local chemist buy a stronger version. Her hand is quite swollen and in the area of the bite she is oozing  serous fluid which at least is relieving some of the pressure. A few more days will see it healed. The joyous Indian flora and fauna strike again!

Update; Christine has been taking an antihistamine. Itching and swelling has reduced considerably but we have just read the leaflet for side effects. Vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, lack of coordination, headache, blurred vision. Christine has had two days of hell. It’s a bugger when the cure is worse than the problem. Won’t be taking that again.

My daughter Frances is marrying her long-time boyfriend Sean at the end of this month. We are both very sad due to lack of funds (to be honest… No funds) we cannot be there but there is good news. The wedding is taking place at Rising Brooke Church Stafford and will be streamed live on the Internet so we can see it happen. With modern technology we are hoping to combine a small get-together here with their reception there and have two-way involvement. May God bless their union with happiness and health. They have both walked a tough road through life and really deserve the happiness that having a loving, understanding and trust worthy partner can bring. 

Frances and Sean, difficult to get photo 
where they are not pulling faces, thank you
Amanda for taking this one for us.

We wish them every happiness in their marriage.

Geeta has a few days holiday now so one of the things I have promised to do with her are some science experiments. Primarily magnets. She already understands how a magnet works but I want to show her some of the things you can do with them. It should prove interesting!

On a very personal note.

Sometimes we are judged to be rich foreigners. This I must stress is by people who don’t know us. They have no idea of the struggle we go through every month to make my pension last, to pay debts, rent, electricity and all the other bills a family faces each month. It’s been a very long time since I was able to take Christine out for a nice meal at a restaurant. For her birthday she was going to get her hair done and maybe dyed….. We had the money put back for her to do this but it has had to be spent elsewhere. There was a young Indian mother, just given birth prematurely, no blankets no nothing. She couldn’t even feed herself or the baby. Christine bought the blankets and food for herself and the baby. We later heard through the village grape vine that both mother and child are doing well. This is the sort of person that God gave me for a wife. She never complains just does her best every day to make our lives as good as she can. She is a remarkable woman. We were talking today and I said to her “the number of people who are alive today because of you and what you have done since we came here is fantastic’. Most people myself included are proud to say if they have contributed to saving one life, Christine has directly saved at least four lives, four people (at least) alive today because of her, yet she never mentions it and if somebody does she rapidly passes over the subject, as I said a remarkable woman. I may not be a rich foreigner with a flash car and lots of money in the bank but I am a multi-millionaire in so many other ways.

We try very hard to live our lives according to gods teaching. We both believe in living a life in faith and accepting whatever God puts before us.

Well that’s about it for this blog, I hope you have enjoyed it.

God bless you and keep you safe,

Chris, Geeta and Christine

Life with the Hyde’s in India

 

Well it’s been a while!

We have intended writing a new blog many times over the last few months but didn’t. Our life here had become chaotic in many ways and we both felt that the blog was beginning to be nothing more than a monthly diary from us. Perhaps we just needed a break. 

Well whatever the case this is our new style blog, we will not publish on any given dates but when we feel we have something to say or something you might be interested in. It’s a look at our life in India and for this first blog we have included some background on us for new readers. If anyone wants to know more about us than please read our earlier blogs, there are plenty to choose from. Any comments are very welcome.

 

So welcome dear reader to;

  ‘Life with the Hyde’s in India’.

It’s now monsoon. If you have never experienced a monsoon rain storm trust me you have not seen rain, full on waterfall style rain! It’s an incredible experience to stand and literally be soaked to the skin within seconds with beautiful warm water. After months of dry heat half the population of India is in the streets dancing in the first heavy rain. It causes vast flooding, rivers burst their banks in fact rivers that don’t normally exist burst into life during monsoon. The amount of water that falls within these few months is quite literally all we shall have until next monsoon. It floods town’s roads houses anywhere where there isn’t sufficient run-off. Unfortunately this means that many of the works of man suffer. Roads are in some cases completely destroyed for the rainy season. The only sensible vehicle to have if you intend going out of town into the jungle areas in monsoon is a well-equipped Jeep.

Sadly we had to sell ours to cover some of the costs incurred when the NGO we were working for without notice ended our contracts. We try to forgive the way we were treated but forgiveness is difficult when you now have literally thousands of pounds to repay in debts incurred because of that action. If you want a few more details on this please read our previous blog. We are both committed Christians so we try and I think have almost succeeded in forgiving the owner. But we still don’t know why our contract was changed from 3 to 2 years, or why the owner did not contact us directly but passed the message through a third party by WhatsApp! Anyway enough of that….

Everything is green; everywhere you look life is bursting out. Nature just seems to explode at this time of year. 

visitors from Africa

They survive by eating decayed fruit

When we first came to India we were horrified to see people chopping major branches from trees leaving them as nothing more than a trunk and stubs of branches at the end of summer. It’s a classic example of not understanding the Indian way. For most people other than town and city dwellers, and that means at least 50% of the population wood has been their only fuel source for many generations. Even now when gas is available to all most tribal communities still depend on wood. At the end of summer trees are ‘pruned’ the wood is put away to dry for use during the winter months. As for the trees, two weeks later they are pushing out fresh growth.

By this point some six weeks or so into the monsoon the trees look very much as they did before pruning! The growth rate is amazing. We planted beans that honestly grew 8 inches per day until we had to start chopping the tops off.

If we have had continues wet days we light the fire
this then drys out the house

And the washing.   Hows that for old school!

This year we are trying an experiment. Everything we have been told says wait until after the monsoon before sowing seeds. Well we have tried that time and again we find that the growing season for some of the crops we wish to grow is too short. We usually have tomatoes still happily producing fruit when the sun gets too strong and the temperature too high for them despite shading they die. This year we had a sneaky plan.

Ignore everybody and plant within a week of the monsoon starting.

Well that’s our plan. We first began planting two weeks after the pre-monsoon storms that always precede the main monsoons arrival. We are predominantly using tubs to start the seeds off before transplanting them to their permanent positions in the garden. We have gone ahead and planted way way earlier than we would ever have tried. I can only say to date we have had incredible success. Germination rates we just can’t believe, in many cases I have over sown the containers because I am used to the low germination rates we normally get. Consequently we are having to do some thinning out! I think several of the neighbors will be in the queue for seedlings.

The big danger of course is the rain. We wondered if our delicate seedlings would survive the hammering of rain and the containers being regularly flooded. For the farmers this is a risk they have to bear every year so nobody is ever 100% certain of even getting a crop. Many farmers sadly lose their entire livelihoods because of monsoon storms flooding and washing away fields.

We have included a series of photographs looking around the garden at present. As you can see there are lots of tubs with tiny green growth. Some crops, like our English runner beans have gone crazy I have never seen a bean so well named!

One of our two Cherry trees.Look at the path!

We have worked very hard to make our back garden a better environment for growing. We have role out shading, overhead misters and raised beds. Because of the way the walls and the building are positioned there is a constant cool draft being drawn through our roofed area we built to keep the bikes and winter fuel dry during the monsoon. 

We have a leak to fix next summer.

This seems to keep the back garden temperature down at least 2 and sometimes as much as 4 degrees C cooler. We are even looking at rebuilding an old cooler (so called Desert cooler, or evaporation cooler) and putting it on the wall to extend the growing season. After all it’s only a fan and a few filters so running costs will be negligible. The benefits could be huge. That just about sums up our attitude; recycle it, repair it or re-purpose it. With the composting system and the chickens, we have very little waste. Bottles and cans are collected by a very nice man who recycles them for money. That’s his entire business so we support him as much as we can by encouraging others not to just dump their recyclable waste.

Of the fruit in the garden it’s a mixture of failure and huge success. We have a grapevine now two years old that this summer had 18/20 bunches of soon to be lovely black grapes on it. We netted, moved the grapes so that they were not so accessible and we hoped that would be enough.

It wasn’t. Our grapes, the moment they started to turn black were decimated by the local bird and squirrel population, who I swear must have been keeping 24 hour watch on them. We did not even get to taste one, honestly that’s the truth the little buggers had the lot. Well at least we have the satisfaction of knowing we offer a better quality snack!

Now to a success story, as of today we have harvested over 12 kg of cherries from our two trees. Needless to say friends and family have benefited as well as our freezer. Cherry pie…. Yummy.

2 Kg of our own cherries, Amazing good  crop this year.

Jamun, a sort of Indian plum about the size of a gooseberry has also been prolific this year. Other fruit yet to deliver are oranges, custard apple, pomegranate, grapefruit, papaya and Blackberries (Indian) we have no idea when they will fruit as we were given them as a present by a really good friend this year. We also have various ‘I wonder what this is?’ Growing in various places. The mango was good this year, maybe 2 Kg of fruit. As it is growing every year the crop is increasing in proportion to the size of the tree.

I don’t think any of us have worked as hard before in our garden. Christine and Geeta have both been amazing. Geeta is especially looking forward to cropping the carrots… How many will make the kitchen remains to be seen. She understands the principles of recycling/reusing that we have adopted. When she is in the garden helping us weed she looks at it as collecting food for the chickens.

Geeta is doing well at school her teachers of very impressed by her determination. In some subjects such as Hindi writing and English writing she is a little behind but considering she is not using her natural arm and has to work left-handed we feel she is doing well. Her general knowledge far exceeds the ordinary student. We never ever fail to answer an enquiry from her the last one to me being ‘how heavy is the universe?’ Her love of science and biology in particular animal biology is we are convinced leading her to her stated ambition of being a vet. Animals just seem to love her. She has become fascinated by animal care. She has a way with her that animals respond to. She talks to birds and they call back to her. The street dogs all wag their tails at her. I haven’t seen an animal yet that did not respond favorably to her. She even has a friend called Barry, it is a water buffalo who comes to her for a head scratch and if he’s lucky a cucumber. She recently attended a one day course on basic animal care which she thoroughly enjoyed. There she met the head of animal aid Udaipur who is very impressed by her and has invited her to visit their hospital and see what the vets are doing there. Needless to say we are very happy about this because she has been talking about becoming a vet for at least a year now. She even has a book on animal anatomy given to her by a friend in the UK! She is quite knowledgeable and very keen to do practical work so we are encouraging her when we can to pursue this interest.

She is currently taking a break from her kickboxing to concentrate on school and because it’s monsoon but as soon as winter arrives she will be back to training three nights a week. I know I have told you this story before but I can’t help but tell you again because I just enjoy it. I hate bullies.

We believe it is very important that she continues this is it something she can do on equal terms with other students. On a visit to her village she had a small confrontation……. ‘Disabled girl meets local bully’ it appears he tried to push her to the ground. In front of the other local kids she avoided his push hit him twice in the chest with two straight lefts then stepped in and leg swept him. End result bully sitting on ground asking ‘how did you do that?’ Geeta answered ‘with training’. Moral of the story don’t pick on apparently disabled people. Go Geeta.

                                        

Geeta with her Gold medal (in her weight class)
The scotch is mine!

She has been working very hard on her physiotherapy for her arm (extension). Since the operation she has at least doubled the movement that was available then. Her wrist is still locked but her fingers are all wriggling to some degree, more each day. If after the next appointment with the surgeon if he agrees we are hoping to arrange for surgery this winter on the wrist. Her arm does not impede her at school she has made lots of friends. She is chatty and friendly but understands about the dangers some adults could be to her especially now that she is growing into a young lady. Marriageable age in the villages is about 12. The legal minimum age to marry is 18 although this is ignored in some of the more isolated villages where marriage can occur as young as 12/14.

She is going to see the surgeon again soon to see if she can have the next (number 5) operation. This one will we hope free her wrist.

Christine has had a bit of a rough time since we came back from the UK. For the seven weeks we were in the UK Kris had to radically up her painkillers and other drugs she is on and still she suffered more than I have ever seen her suffer. By the time we came back she was one step short of using class A addictive drugs again. Since we have been back it has taken her a long time to recover. In fact she is still not fully recovered and of course the damp of the monsoon isn’t helping. 

Both of us suffered far more in the UK than we expected. We both nearly ended up in hospital with major breathing difficulties. The continuous cold and damp is something that we had forgotten. Looking back on our life before India we wonder how on Earth we coped, I suppose we were just used to it and now acclimatized to where we live. Just out of interest the first year we were in India we ran around all winter in T shirts thinking how lovely and warm the weather was. Now we wear jumpers and sometimes even coats… Just like everybody else!

The price of energy gas and petrol has skyrocketed. Our electricity bill has risen by an easy 25% despite our efforts to keep it under control. We already have solar water heating. We installed it not long after we moved into this is house. With three bathrooms and a (very unusual for an Indian house) hot supply in the kitchen all fed from individual wall mounted geysers there was our first huge cut in our electricity bill. When we bought it we specified the larger family -sized this has proved to have been a great choice we never run out of hot water. There are days in the monsoon when there is just not enough UV to heat sufficiently for Christine’s bath so she has to shower!   We are fitting LED lighting were ever possible. We can’t afford to do this all once but light by light they are being changed. Locally grown food although the price has increased it has been less noticeable. Food grown in other states that has to be transported the costs seem to go up every month and so does the price of the crop. Apples have become a luxury here.

We had one bit of excitement a couple of weeks ago. We were just heading for bed when our main inside trip box exploded into flames! Kris was off like a greyhound to the main outside isolator while I dealt with the fire. Got it repaired. Minor damage, Ho hum just another day in India.

mmmmm, smoke and flames....thats not normal is it!

We really can’t believe it but our road has been freshly tarred, first-time in 10 years and we have even had street lights put in… Wow.

Our very front garden much to the consternation of some of our neighbors has been covered with all of this year’s fallen leaves. This turned out to be a surprising amount. Nobody here seems to have heard of mulch. They have been on now for some months, a few weeds if any have shown themselves and with the monsoon the leaves are rotting very quickly. This area will be dedicated to our own brassicas.

Whilst we were in the UK we really wanted to visit our home church Emmanuel in Durham but it was just impossible for us with our financial constraints to travel half the length of the country and back for a week end. This is for us our spiritual home. I was baptized there, Christine has been a member of the church since 1987.

We confirmed our marriage there by a full proper wedding so that we were married legally as well as having married spiritually before God some six months prior at St Mary the Virgin church Lindisfarne (Holy Island). 

It surprised us how many of the members of the church had problems accepting that we were married after Lindisfarne. We knelt and gave our oath to each other and God before witnesses. Many however understood and blessed us for our decision and accepted our spiritual marriage. To make it legal in the site of man and to celebrate with all our friends and our church we had a really fun time getting married again. Our guests all contributed to a scheme to supply breeding goats to Indian families. Hence the theme of the wedding became ‘blue goats’ we even have them on the wedding cake!

When we were called by God to move to India it is where we held all our going away sales. We sold almost everything we owned and gave it to a needy cause in India. When we arrived here we had two large suitcases and three plastic boxes that contained everything we now owned.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.” Mark 10:21 ESV

People at the time asked us if we were mad! Two people in later life giving up everything to move to India and to live there on a pension working for an NGO? All we could say to them was that God had laid out a path for us that we had chosen to follow in faith. We have been here nearly 11 years and are still fully committed to following His word. Sometimes have been tough but he has never given us more than we could handle or targets that we could not achieve.

We have prayed many times to find a church here in India that worships as we do. That is not to say there aren’t churches here but they are not as lively as we are used to. We raise our hands and dance when we praise the Lord, we sing his praises certainly not what most Indian churches are used to. We used to attend a Baptist church here but it was 90% in Hindi so it was very difficult to join in or to understand what was being said. Since then we have tried one other small group but didn’t feel comfortable with some of the things they were doing.

We keep in touch with our home church Emmanuel but cannot take part in the service as it is not on line however they do publish the lesson (or word if you prefer) online.

While we were in Stafford we managed to attend a church that is spirit filled and progressive in their aims and worship. My daughter in the UK Francis was baptized there giving her life to Christ while we were able to attend. It was with great pride that I spoke at her baptism, she like me has walked a rough road to find the Lord. I am so proud of her. 

Francis and her long-time boyfriend are getting married in the autumn. May God bless them both. Kris and I stayed with them in the UK for the duration of our visit. It was supposed to be two perhaps three weeks, it was seven! We can both testify that we never felt we were a burden or not unconditionally welcome. And this was in a one bedroom flat. By the time we left we all knew each other very well and an unbreakable bond has formed. Unfortunately we can’t attend because we simply can’t afford it (remember those debts!) it is going to be shown online live so they will both know we are there and we can see the event happen.

Since being back in India we have attended ‘Rising brook community church Stafford’ who are on line for the full service every Sunday. It’s wonderful to be able to stand and sing the Lord’s praises with a live congregation it just fills us with so much joy. We can even comment or ask questions during the service or ask for prayer requests. We feel very much part of this church and so grateful to the Lord for giving us this opportunity we have longed for.

We will never leave Emmanuel Church Durham it is our spiritual home, they have supported us so much over the years especially since Geeta came to live with us so seriously injured. It is hard to look at her now happy bouncing around and remember the terrible state she was in. Without their prayers and blessings we could not have given her the opportunities she now has. May God bless them all.

So it would appear that we now have two churches in our lives. It’s all about gods timing isn’t it.

Our friends now know that 3 p.m. on a Sunday is worship time for the Hyde family. It surprises and pleases us when friends sometimes show up to join us….. Anybody is always welcome to the God spot on a Sunday; you may even get an invite to one of Christine’s famous roast dinners!

 

Our chicken coop and run has had a major pre-monsoon makeover. Last year the entire area they have turned into a smelly bog and the poor girls were looking very very sad. We have scraped everything level and put sand down and fitted a waterproof cover over the first third of the run. We then used every brick we could get our hands-on to lay the entire area. This year has been brilliant for them. They still have space, including a large bush and logs to play around on and under but now they are dry. Super improvement and they seem much happier.

  

 

Well there really isn’t much  more to tell you, it’s been a tough few months with covid and the cost of living increases but as ever our faith supports us. We never tire of telling people we are following a path that was laid out for us by our Lord the day he brought us together. He took two unhappy people, brought them together and made a new tool that will joyously serve him in anyway he requires of us for all our days. We know despite how difficult it can get we are never alone, we are never without him. Jesus is with us always.

 

God bless you all and keep you safe  

Chris, Kris and Geeta

Udaipur

Rajasthan

India.