The Return to Kolkata!

Welcome back to my blog!

15 months after leaving Kolkata, I am back! I arrived at 5am on Monday, accompanied by my family, who will be here for two weeks. It’s gonna be an interesting holiday for them! After some resting I vaguely showed my family around Kolkata- I was getting a bit lost until I realised that the names of some of the streets had been changed! Once I had realised what I had previously known them as, it all got a bit more familiar.

As soon as I arrived in India, I felt soo happy to be back. Over the past year I’ve really felt a longing to be here again and to see the children who I have missed so much.

So on Tuesday morning, my brother and I headed off to school. I was prepared for the fact that a lot of the kids I had gotten to know may have moved on, and I knew that some of them had gone on to live in the hostels. But there were a lot of familiar faces, and it gives me so much joy to be called “Auntie, Auntie!” again. It makes me really proud to see how much the little ones have grown up. Quite a few of the kids remembered me, and i got a warm welcome back from the teachers too, it really feels like I’ve never been away.Owen seems to have fit right in too! It’s nice to be able to share this with him, and show him the ropes!  I have managed to keep most of my bengali, so it’s been good to speak that language again, even if it’s at a low level.

Tomorrow we are all going to visit the hostels along with an english church team who have just arrived. I think I will get very emotional seeing the girls there, as I was very close with some of them when they were at the school. I feel like I will be being reunited with missing members of my family.

It’s the monsoon season here, so there is quite a bit of rain but not as much as I expected. It seems to just rain on and off..which is much the same as back home, just about 20 degrees hotter!

Anyway, I have my laptop with me this time, so i think i will be able to blog and facebook a bit more often, so you can keep as up to date as you would like!

Much Love,Rebecca xx

Counting Down…

Hello Everyone!

So, less that 2 weeks left in Kolkata, I can’t believe time has passed so quickly.

We have a had a fairly busy time since my last post, including a trip on a  special boat with Big Life Ministries and a visit to a house church.

The trip with Big Life took us out to the Bay of Bengal to visit and evangelise to an unreached village. Some other volunteers from America set up a medical camp whilst we acted out a bible story for the children there and helped with games for them. Big Life will revisit this village and hopefully start some sort of church there as they have done in thousands of other villages.  It was really a lot of fun doing this and I hope us being there made a difference.

We also paid a visit to a  house church which is part of Good News Children Education mission. It was very different from any other churches I’ve been to, with  about 25 people crammed into a very little house. But Jesus was there, and that’s all that really matters, right? This was a lovely experience, being welcomed into someones home and fed, it was a real blessing to share with these people. We sang with them and I was asked to “preach the gospel” which was a challenge, as it wasn’t how i had expected it to be, with a lot of kids there, and not very much light to read notes! It is great though, that these small churches have been set up and local christians can meet together, without needing fancy equipment or buildings.

The goodbyes have already started, when we went back to visit the hostels where some of our kids from school now live for one last time. I found this very hard as we’ve all gotten really close to these children and the thought that we might never see them again is a bit difficult to face. Its only going to get worse as the weeks pass though, don’t stop praying yet!

Thank you all so much for your interest and prayers thus far, and i look forward to seeing you very soon!

God bless,

Rebecca xxx

Prayer Video

Here is our team’s video of prayer points we made for the BMS Day of Prayer on 28th Feb, thought you might like to see it!

End of January

Hi all, can’t believe its the end of January, time is really flying by!

Theres been a bit of a change around with the projects that I’m doing,  hopefully for the better.

I’m now at school Monday to Thursday, with Hannah helping me teach my class, which has been really good.

Two afternoons a week I now spend at another school just outside Kolkata where I help out with guitar lessons. The kids there are a bit older, secondary school age and so i also help with their “Spoken English”, which basically means just chatting to them!

We’re also going to spend one evening a week at Little Sisters of the Poor, an old peoples home where we help serve dinner.

On Wednesdays both teams visit a girls hostel down the road where we have lots of fun and play and talk with the girls there.

Freeset only need us one day a week now as theyre having an influx of teams of volunteers from New Zealand, so I  just go there on fridays. Recently we’ve been helping to sort out tshirt orders, making sure they are all tagged correctly.

Some of the children from our school have been picked to go to the GNCEM hostels, which we’re very happy about, they’ll be getting a safe place to live and a more structured  education, but I’m going to miss some of my little friends!

We have the opportunity to sponsor those children and I’m hoping to do that, it would be a lovely way to support them even after we’ve gone home.

This means we’ll be getting a load of new children at school during February, so pray they’ll settle in well.

Thank you all for your prayers,

Lots of Love, Rebecca xx

Happy New Year!

hello everyone!

Hope  you are all well and had a lovely christmas and new year. Our christmas was very different, we spent the morning putting on saris for church and then had curry for lunch! It was nice to recieve parcels from home and thank you for sending christmas cards ( they are still hung up, we are reluctant to take our christmas decorations down)

We returned  from a lovely holiday with the Delhi Action Team in Darjeeling last week and were straight back to school. It was great to have a break and Darjeeling is beautiful, with stunning views of the Himalayas, especially when we managed to catch a sunset. I couldn’t have picked a better place to turn 18!

I’m now over halfway through my time in India, so please pray that the next few months will be fruitful, and i can make significant difference here before I leave.

Missing you all,

Rebecca xx

 

 

Shubo Borodin!

Shubo Borodin (Merry Christmas) from Kolkata!

We’re all starting to feel in the christmas spirit here at the BMS Guesthouse, the decorations have been up since the first of December!

This week, we have been very much involved in Good News Children Education Mission’s Christmas programme, we have travelled out of Kolkata to all the different schools and hostels that they run, and we’ve been privileged enough to watch 7different nativities in 7 days! And also watched lots of indian dancing, we should in theory be able to do one ourselves by now. 🙂

The weather isn’t really christmassy here, it doesnt really feel right watching a nativity in the blazing sun.

It is the indian winter though, and at 23 degrees, we’ve got our blankets and hoodies out, which shows you how much we’ve adapted to the climate!

On a more serious note, recently at Freeset we were taken for a walk around Sonnagachi, the red light district, in the evening, and that was a really eye-opening.  Prostitution is a massive problem in that area, there is literally thousands and thousands of women all forced to work in a small area.  It was very shocking how its not hidden at all, the women just all stand there on the line waiting for customers. There is houses packed with hundreds of girls who are trapped in rooms for their whole lives. It was heartbreaking to see.

Its such an injustice that these women are forced into this horrible profession with no choice and very little chance of escaping it.  Please pray for the work of Freeset to expand because the need is so great in Sonnagachi and the surrounding area.

I hope you all have a wonderful christmas, I’m sure mine will be very interesting and different. Hopefully I won’t feel too homesick, with all nine of us here, it should be a lot of fun.

Please do keep praying though, for the children at school who we wont see for a few weeks, and for India in general to feel the christmas spirit.

We’re off on holiday on the 28th to Darjeeling, I will be turning 18 there, and i’m looking forward to relaxing with a view of the himalayas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all, my next blog will be in 2011!

Lots of Love,

Rebecca xxxx

Getting stuck in..

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the blog silence the past few weeks, have been busy getting into the routine of work.

School is still enjoyable, and our lessons are beginning to be a bit more structured as we’re learning more about how to be a teacher. I’ve been getting to know the kids better and it’s great to be able to build relationships with them and make friends.

We’ve been getting stuck in at Freeset, painting and cleaning and moving boxes etc.

Us girls had the opportunity to work alongside the women this week to help them meet their massive order for 46,000 bags for Aldi Australia, and I was able to exchange a few words with them, but its proved to be a motivator for me to get better at bengali so I can eventually chat to them properly.

On Wednesday we spent the day outside of central Kolkata in a more rural area, visiting Good News Children Education Mission’s other projects, such as girls and boys hostels and a village outreach programme. This was really interesting as we had the opportunity to see beyond what happens at our mobile schools and see the bigger picture of the opportunities that GNCEM provides for these disadvantaged children.

We received a lovely welcome at the hostels, having dances and songs performed for us and we must have drank gallons of tea that day!

A few of us have been ill these past few weeks, but everyone seems to be recovering which is very good, so please pray that the current good health continues.

Miss you all,

Rebecca xxx

Auntie, Auntie!

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It’s been a very busy few weeks here in Kolkata, as both teams have been going our seperate ways and getting stuck into our projects.

We are now fairly settled into our school, and go there from Monday to Wednesday.

We get on the (often quite small )bus with all the lively street kids calling us “Auntie!” ( or Uncle) and chattering away to us in bengali.

At school we have to sing some songs and tell a bible story, and then do english lessons.

Naomi and Hannah teach the littlest ones, of which there are many, Dan B teaches the oldest group, and Dan P and I work with the middle group.

It is a challenge planning lessons when we have no idea what they have learnt before, and during lessons is when the language barrier is most apparent, but we are slowly getting there, as we have started bengali lessons.

I’ve picked up loads from the kids though, and I find it’s much easier to practice new words and phrases on small children who are much more accepting of your mistakes!

The time that we get to just play with the kids is the most important, I think. We were told by the man who runs the school that although these kids have parents, they dont really have love, so although we are teaching them, being there and showing love is just as important.

And if showing love means giving and getting lots of hugs everyday, being called Auntie, and having my hair done all the time, then I am definitely up for that!

Hopefully you have been able to look at the photos of school I have put on Facebook, Indian kids love having their photo taken, I have discovered.

Today was our first day at Freeset, where we will be spending Thursdays and Fridays.

We are mainly doing physical work for them, helping them renovate their new building. Very different work to school, and both are challenging and rewarding in their different ways.

Freeset are a great organization, and we’re glad to help them out.

We’ve got a day off tomorrow because it’s Divali 🙂

Lots of pretty lights have been appearing everywhere, and we’ve bought some fireworks to have our own display, so looking forward to that!

Don’t know how safe fireworks from the market will be though!

Hope all is well where you are,

Love,

Rebecca xx

http://www.freesetglobal.com

We’ve Arrived!

Namoshkar!

I’ve just had my first week in Kolkata and have fully settled into the BMS Guesthouse, and got used to sharing a room with 6 girls.

The two Kolkata Action Teams have for the moment basically merged as we will be living together for the whole six months, but we’ll be working separately when we get started.

We haven’t started our work yet, instead we’ve spent this week getting to know the city, and the culture. This has been really great, but we are all itching to start doing something useful instead of just being tourists.

We’ve had curry and rice everyday, quite often twice a day, but we also had a trip to pizza hut to celebrate Dan B’s birthday! It wasn’t quite the same, but still a treat 🙂

The heat has been hard to cope with, but we’ve been shopping and having suitable indian attire has helped.

There has been a huge christian conference in Kolkata this week, called The Festival of Life, with Darlene Zschech and band from Hillsong, and american speakers. The main one being Joyce Meyer, who seems to be very famous here.

We’ve been going to the morning meetings, and I’ve found it very unexpected to be part of such a western event, but i have enjoyed worshipping with thousands of Indians.

Just returned from going to church for the first time here, and it was great! Very lively and fun.

I am certain that God is here in this wonderful city with us. I pray that we will all continue feel his prescence, especially as we start working at the slum school this week.

Thank you for all your prayers so far, I’ve felt really supported, even so far away from you all.

(Please also pray for Arika from the Kolkata 1 team, as she didn’t get her visa in time to fly out with us last week, and is flying out today on her own.)

I feel immensely privileged that God has called me to Kolkata, because I love it!

Love Rebecca xxxx

Back in Cupar

So, the first stage of the action team year has been completed, BMS seem confident that they’ve trained me enough, so I’m home for a week before flying from heathrow on sunday.

Had a nice day yesterday with a farewell service and lunch with all the lovely people at Cupar Baptist Church.

I’m now doing all my washing and catching up on some sleep, some final preparations before going down to London on Saturday.

I will be in Kolkata this time next week, scary stuff. Hasn’t quite hit me how close it all is!

Starting to say my goodbyes this week, please pray that I will be able to do this properly and make the most of the time i have left before leaving.

Please feel free to drop in on me any time this week.

Prayers for the journey please, and that things like visas are all sorted for us.

Thank you for all your support this far, please keep checking this blog, it’s about to get really interesting 🙂

Rebecca xx