Here now a week now in India. We are at the orphanage getting ready for the three day conference, where i most likely will be playing with children and getting dirty. The men in this group are the fab five, styling hand tailored indian shirts for the conference.

3 days ago while i was waiting outside the post office in the hot indian sun, while ullas and mike were making a western union transaction that took hours, I decided to pull out some drawing pencils i bought here and sketch the street and the shops by the post office. Many passer by's stopped by to get a glance at my drawing, some thought i was drawing a map.

Mike asked if i could draw and paint a mural in the kids' classroom after discovering i could draw. So i sketched out a picture of Jesus with black hair and black eyes and and gave him a nice tan, close to a indian skin tone, placed a big red heart on his chest, with his arms out to the side with palms up their is a golden glow around his body he is standing on a grass with purple flowers. To the left of the grass is a small mural of ocean waves with the sunrise in the background with mountains.

The kids were mesmerized by the painting, before i was finished the lord said to me write above the painting " I am the Lord I am the King" and it was finished. Two days later with alot of unused paint which fell on a monday, we had all day to prepare for the conference, I decided to bring vibrant color to the plain concrete walls to the girls room, By the way, the asian wall paint Im using is highly toxic, I did not eat paint chips while I was a kid.

I sketched out noah's arc filled with 2 elephants, 2 giraffes, Tucan sam, a pink hippo---Props to Mary Clark, and of course i represented with a bengal tiger, below are ocean waves that connect all three walls in the center of the room are two windows facing you as you walk in, in the center of the windows is a mountain floating on the ocean with a glowing cross erecting from the center of the mountain with a small green forest in the background.

The group wanted me to paint a dove with a olive branch and a rainbow. Dizzy from hours of painting and the fumes i retired, and Meredith took over and painted a dove and a rainbow above the mountain, She got sick from the fumes and had to leave, The lord insisted i finish the outline of the dove and rainbow that was unfinished and asked me to bless the painting in his name. The girls and boys of the orphange were already at the conference. Im looking forward to seeing the girls reaction to their room. Ullas asked "where is noah? why isn't he on the arc?" I replied "he is downstairs sleeping."

Posted by Max Gruber at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We are in a cramped taxi traveling down the smog filled streets of India it was like Indiana Jones but less Hollywood, it was real. While oncoming traffic is racing at us at every corner weaving in and out of traffic, the rule is if your vehicle is bigger get out of the way! This is just a little taste of Calcutta.

I have never been to a third world country before or what I envisioned it might be like wasn’t even close to reality, A photograph from my fancy Kodak digital camera or adjective after adjective could not describe this experience. Their were stray dogs roaming aimlessly with no food, some that were missing limbs. The streets were overpopulated with people and traffic, vendors with pictures of Hindu and Muslim idols and statues littered the streets and shops, Families outside were washing their clothes and their baby and getting water from a polluted pond with garbage surrounding every step, while a cow with sunken in ribs is drinking out of the same body of water. This was my first real glance of India; I thought to myself surely god can’t be here in this chaos.

At that moment the taxi stopped and here we were standing in this reality, as the taxi sped off and my heart raced with fear and confusion, then suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw the orphanage and the darkness became light, The orphans were peeking around the corner with curious glances, We made our way into the orphanage, These children were here because their parent or parents were prisoners.

We sat down and the children greeted us by putting flowers around our necks, They introduced themselves and sang songs about Jesus loudly and proudly their song of his love echoed this small building while passer by’s stopped by the window of the orphanage to get a quick glance of us, I broke down, holding in my tears as hard as I could, these children had Jesus he was here in India and their prayers were answered,7 people from across the world are here in Calcutta to bring gods love to theses children this is surely a blessing.

Posted by Max Gruber at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)