Greetings from Tiruchirappalli

Hello! Writing you from Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu!

My team arrived here late Tuesday night. We are staying on a YWAM base and it has been nice to be around other students. They are having a school here called School of Evangelism and Pioneering, that is for students planning to start their own ministries or get into church planting. Most of the students have been in YWAM for awhile so its been really great to hear some of their stories, especially about their DTS and outreaches. We are really enjoying spending time with these people. Indian hospitality is like nothing I've ever seen before. They have even tried to make the food a little less spicy for us :)

Our first day we visited 3 Hindu temples in the city to pray and it was intense! There are hundreds of thousands of idols here. The spiritual heaviness inside the temples was incredible. Each one had a large market place in front of it where many sick people lie out on the streets and women and children beg. It was so sad to see the thousands of people giving offerings and bowing down to these idols.

One of the temples we had to climb 350 steps- and I was like dripping sweat and wheezing all the way to the top as all the Indians stared and effortlessly made the climb- but once at the top you could walk around the sanctuary that overlooked the entire city and the sun was just setting. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Sadly we couldn't have cameras unless we paid a ridiculous amount, but one of my teammates brought hers in. I'll have to get her pictures.

Yesterday we did some programs in a center here for children with cerebral palsy. It really touched my heart to spend time with these children.

We have also visited several slums here and are really praying with the base and their vision for different ministries they want to start here. There is such great need. We did an open air the other night in one of the small villages and many people came for prayer afterward. Many are hungry for the truth.

Tonight my team and much of this base will be leaving on the bus for Chennai to go to hear Loren Cunningham (ywam founder) speak at the 50th year celebration! So that will be cool. He is getting very old and it will be cool to be able to say I've seen him. I'll also get to see the wonderful family we stayed with and got so close with in Coimbatore. We will be sleeping on a church floor there because we don't have any other accommodation, but that's okay. We weren't able to get train tickets for the way there and the bus will take about 10 hours, but we are leaving late tonight and are praying the seats should be nice enough to get some sleep on the way there. On the way back though we have tickets for the train in a sleeper car so that will be nice.

I will try and write more when we return from Chennai in a couple of days. Please pray that we may have safe travels.

xo