New Relationships

This morning, we awoke to a ring at our doorbell from the "bread man." He is a merchant that bakes bread and delivers it several times a week around Mussoorie. He had first stopped by on Monday and said he'd be back on Wednesday. We ended up getting a loaf of wheat bread and some cinnamon rolls. It was definitely a new experience for us to pay someone to deliver things for us. It is one of the new relationships that we need to get used to in India. Today this really began to hit home when a man (employed by the school) came by to pick up our trash and sweep our porch. Later this afternoon, the grocery store had all of the food we ordered last night delivered to our door. The most prominent of these new relationships is our ayah. An ayah is an Indian maid, or domestic worker. Ours is named Umilla and she just started today. She took the groceries that arrived today and even cooked us dinner. Though I doubt she has ever left this region, she makes an excellent lasagna.

In addition to cooking for us, Umilla will clean our house in the afternoons and do our laundry for us. We have never paid people to do things like that for us, but this is just something that people do in India. The nice thing is that we get to help people by spending money in the local economy. It is definitely a relationship that will take some getting used to.

In addition to these new relationships, we are getting to know the people that are working here at Woodstock with us. Since we knew that we were going to have a hot meal prepared for us today, we invited three other new staff members to eat with us. It was a very nice time of fellowship and we even had ice cream with fresh peaches for dessert. In this picture are Megan, Jennie, and James, with Beth getting everything set up in the background.

We've also been able to spend some time getting to know the more established staff here at Woodstock. We've had dinner at a couple homes already with promises of more to come. We are excited to make more connections and build more relationships as our time here at Woodstock continues. It's amazing to think that we've held our first dinner party, and we haven't even been in India for a week.

Dave and Beth