I’m sitting at a coffee shop in the Calcutta airport, drinking a cup of tea and feeling all kinds of drained. I spent my last day in India sick and in bed at the hotel, so I’m wiped physically. Some kind of food poisoning, I think.

But it’s probably more than that. Calcutta is an exhausting place. It’s huge – the world’s 8^th largest urban agglomeration. It’s busy – traffic here makes Phnom Penh look like Warsaw, Indiana. It’s also desperately poor. Sure, there are people in Cambodia who are absolutely destitute. But in Calcutta, the sheer scope of the poverty is unbelievable.

The city itself seems stuck in the 1950s. The ancient infrastructure groans and sags under the weight of millions and millions of people driving, cooking and living on the gritty, grimy streets.

I took very few pictures in Calcutta. I think I used my big camera maybe once. The streets are so crowded, there’s no place to stand back and discreetly shoot photos. Plus, I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to take photos of the families living under tarps, the urchins begging for food, the small children defecating on the curb. It all feels too invasive, at least for now. I settled for offering quiet blessings: “May God bless that child…may God give us the wisdom and the resources we need to help change this place.”

And that’s what really made the last couple of weeks in India so tiring. We spent lots of time brainstorming about future plans. We had a ton of meetings. Lawyers, pastors, potential ministry partners, board members… but we didn’t really have any of our kids to hug and play with. That makes a huge difference. In Cambodia and Thailand, we often have busy schedules filled with stressful conversations and hard work. But we also have the kids. One embrace from a child that we rescued erases an hour’s worth of stress. One song at an Asia’s Hope children’s home can compensate for a whole afternoon of traffic and travel. (Have you visited one of our homes? If so, am I right? Testify!)

We did have some great times here. Praying with our brothers and sisters in tiny churches tucked into the sides of mountains was an honor par excellence. Playing Karem with the kids from the Grace Children’s Home in Kalimpong was almost as great as playing Takraw with our kids at Asia’s Hope Hot Springs Home in Thailand. Visiting the Assemblies of God church in Calcutta was a huge encouragement – wow, what God is doing to bless the city through that congregation! But it’s not quite the same. Maybe next time. Maybe after we’ve actually done something in India, we’ll feel the joy and encouragement we feel in Cambodia and Thaialnd.

But for now, I’m just plain tired. And I’m ready to get back to Cambodia. I can’t wait to hear the kids squeal in delight as my car approaches the gate at the Asia’s Hope Christian School. I need a few more of those hugs – hugs that have been, well, I guess they’ve been earned.

And then I’m ready to be home. Back with my wife, my kids, my church, my office, my grocery store, my grill, my bed, my blue jeans and my cup of coffee. But first, I have to grit through the next 14 hours of flights and layovers, and then the 30 hours to get home on the 8^th.

Thank you, God for your world. God bless India.

I'll post more about our future in India later -- right now, there are many things I can't yet discuss publicly. Keep praying. God is on the move.

I’ve been on something of a blogging hiatus since arriving in India 8 days ago. At first, my writing was slowed by exhaustion bordering sickness, but as the days have gone by, it’s been the sheer pace of events and the extraordinary expenditures of emotional and intellectual energy that have kept me from writing.

India has thus far exceeded, no, confounded my expectations. The breathtaking beauty of the Himalayan vistas and the gut-wrenching serpentine paths required to reach them have produced in me a state of near intoxication. 

Despite the Sikkim State Travel Commission’s claims to the contrary, the roads in this part of the world are not safe and pleasant to traverse. Imagine, if you will, the sensation of driving to the top of an 800 story parking garage paved with railroad ties. Now replace the walls of the parking garage with sheer cliffs and 1,000 foot ravines, and throw in a few hundred lorries filled with rocks careening towards you, horns blaring and tires skidding. Then make it rain every once in a while.

This is, I must say, not a trip well-suited for the faint of stomach or weak of heart. A three hour drive in this terrain is as exhausting as a 12 hour drive on a U.S. interstate. Thank God I’m not the one driving. This is what we’ve done for the last week. Every day.

Marebong, Lopchu, Ranka, Rorathang, Pedong, Cheebo, Gangtok, Darjeeling, Siliguri. We've seen 'em all.

The views alone are probably worth it. I mean, I can see the Himalayas from my hotel window. That is, quite objectively speaking, pretty cool. But I’m not here for the postcard panoramas -- the real beauty to be found in Northern India is in its towns, its villages, its churches. As we’ve traveled throughout West Bengal and Sikkim, skirting Nepal, Bhutan and China, we’ve seen villages without schools, hospitals or jobs. In these villages, most families are so poor that they can barely feed their own children, much less the orphans in their midst.

That doesn’t stop some of them from trying. Tiny churches across the regions have become by default drop-in centers, daycare facilities and even orphanages. We’ve met the pastors, have joined in their worship services, and have cried out to God for the resources to help them care for these precious kids. Apart from the people of God, these kids, who face a life of abject poverty and exploitation, have no hope. No means of transformation. No bootstraps to pull on, no safety net to catch them if they fall.

And that’s why we’re here. We’ve seen what can happen when God’s people work together, when rich brothers and sisters in places like Goshen, Indiana and Montreal, Quebec reach their hands out to their poor brothers and sisters in places like Battambang, Cambodia and Doi Saket, Thailand. We’ve seen kids -- homeless and hopeless, filthy and forlorn -- transformed by the love of God into healthy, happy and hopeful children who are destined for excellence, not exploitation.

And we want more.

It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be cheap. But each kid living as an orphan in a remote mountain village in Northern India is as precious to God as your child or mine. We’ve seen the need, we have the strategies and the experience necessary to save dozens – maybe hundreds of these kids. How can we turn away?

Jesus told the story of a man who found a pearl of immense worth hidden in a field; the man sold everything he had to buy the field and take possession of the pearl. We’ve found such a treasure in the mountains of West Bengal and Sikkim, and with your help, we’d like to lay hold of it.

More – much more – to come.

The view of the Himalayas from my hotel room in Kalimpong.A singing performance at the Grace Children's Home in Kalimpong

Trinity Grace Church in Kalimpong

Nepali ethnicity kids in West BengalTraffic in Kalimpong

Kalimpong

Kids in Pedong

Pastor Ambr and Ratha, potential Asia's Hope children's home directorsA child along the road to MarebongThe rough, rough road to Marebong. We actually had to get out and push. When the car could go no further, Seth, Nandu and I hiked for 45 minutes up and down 45 degree slopes to reach the village and pray for the pastors there.Tea trees on the hills near Marebong

Tea pickers in the hills of near MarebongMarebong

Tea pickersDrop-in center at a church in Gangtok

Construction workers along the road from GangtokBuddhist prayer flags

A school at a church in RorathangRorathang

My health has returned, and we're doing well. I simply haven't had the time to blog. Sunup to sundown it's go, go, go. Will post more later.

As I sit on my bed at the Kalimpong, India Himalayan Hotel, I find myself once again at a loss for words. As I said to my wife last night, I feel very, very, very far from home. I can’t begin to adequately explain what I’ve seen and felt.

Yesterday morning we left Calcutta and traveled by plane to Bagdogra, and took a rented jeep through the mountains to Kalimpong. If all of that sounds exciting and exotic, let me assure you — it is. As the crow flies, Kalimpong is a very short distance from Bagdogra. In reality, it’s a grueling 3 and a half hours of hairpin turns, landslides and sheer cliffsides without guardrails. 

I was already feeling sick in Calcutta. By the time we arrived in Kalimpong, I felt ready for hospital. We checked into our hotel, had dinner and, except for a short breakfast, I didn’t leave my bed until 3pm this afternoon, when Pastor Nandu came to take us to the Grace Children’s Home.

The Children’s home is attached to Nandu’s. As he told us tonight, “We have very little privacy. There are so many children.” When we arrived, the children were already dressed for the performance they had prepared to welcome us. All of the kids – the boys included – were wearing makeup. Many were in traditional Nepali garb. 

A beautiful 10 year old girl, whose name sounds like “Elizabeth” introduced the songs in perfect English. Then all of the children, from three years old to thirteen, sang and dance and performed skits. I had just enough energy to take some photos, exchange some smiles and offer some words of thanks after the program.

The kids left the room, and Nandu’s wife brought out some snacks – samosas, puffed corn, some cashew creams. As I reached for my plate, I just about passed out. The room, it seemed, was spinning. And my arms seemed strangely distant, as if they were being controlled by some puppeteer’s strings. Not so good at all.

Over the next hour or so, I was only intermittently lucid. I remembered going into the room with the kids and showing them pictures of Cambodia and Thailand, and I remember playing the game where both contestants try to make the other one smile. I did unusually well, as my face felt as if it was connected to someone else’s head. I also remember having to concentrate with all my might to not drop the glass of water offered to me by one of the staff.

By about 7pm, dinner was served. It was delicious, and it helped to restore a portion of my strength. Now that I’m back in my hotel room, I feel once again like I’m going to pass out. I don’t know whether I’ve caught some bug, or I’ve somehow become dehydrated. Dr. John thinks it’s just mental, emotional and physical exhaustion from being “on” for three months straight.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll have church with the kids and with some of the local believers. I’ll be praying for some miraculous level of healing. We have a very busy week ahead of us. In fact, this next week will set the course for any future work we will do in India. Please join me in praying that I will fully recover, and soon.

I had heard that Indian flights are more lively, that the people are louder, more garrulous.

I had heard right.

The flight from Bangkok to Kolkata was markedly different from any other I've taken in Asia. Aside from the fact that 97 percent of the passengers were male, this was the most boisterous flight I've ever endured. The passengers pushed and jostled and shouted as we got onto the plane, and kept it up throughout the 2 hour flight.

Within the first ten minutes, the female flight attendant serving our section gave up all pretenses of smiling subservience and adopted a permanent grimace, enlivened by the occasional look of plaintive incredulity.

At one point a male flight attendant burst from the curtain separating business-class from, well, luggage-class and shouted, finger wagging, "Once is enough!" to the man who had been pushing on and off his in-flight service button for the last ten minutes.

A giant Sikh a few rows away jumped up and entered the discussion. Neither Seth nor I could tell whether he was on the side of the passenger or the steward. I wondered if there would be fisticuffs. There were not.

After a very long wait at the baggage carousel, we exited the airport, greeted by Pastor Nandu. He ushered us to a taxicab which looked, like much of the city, like it could have been made in the 1950s. The next 40 minutes felt -- and, in the dark, looked -- like the ride to the Lestrange family vault in the bowels of Gringott's Bank.

Or, as I reflected this morning, it was like experiencing Phnom Penh in fast forward. Everything here is bigger, faster and, somewhat incongruously, both dustier and more colorful. Though I can see how one could get overwhelmed here, I really think I'm going to love this city. Confirming that will have to wait. 

It's almost 9am. We're heading down to enjoy the hotel's complimentary breakfast. If the condition and cleanliness of our room is any indication, I think I'll have a Clif bar instead. At about noon, we're heading to the airport, where we'll hop on a short flight to Bagdogra, and then take a car to Kalimpong. From what I can gather, Kalimpong is absolutely nothing like Kolkata. I'm sure I'll love it too.

Well, I’m now officially on the last leg of my three-and-a-half month journey. Seth and I are at the Phnom Penh airport getting ready to board our plane for India. After a stopover in Bangkok, we’ll arrive late this evening in Kolkata.

We will meet Executive Board member Dr. John Campbell and Pastor Nandu Gurung. We will travel tomorrow morning by plane — and then by car — to Kalimpong, where we will spend the next two weeks meeting with potential ministry partners and visiting villages with large orphan populations. We’ll then return to Kolkata for a few days of meetings with our Indian attorney, Mr. Biswajit Sarkar.

We hope to emerge with lots of stories, a greater understanding of the situation in India and a clear plan for Asia’s Hope’s immediate future on the subcontinent. To be honest, I’m already worn out. I’m downright exhausted. My stomach is feeling iffy and I have a rash that makes it painful to walk. But I know that I’m right in the center of God’s will, so I’m taking it all in (somewhat belabored) stride.

It’s been great to have Seth with me on this portion of the trip, and I believe that we will return to the States even better friends than before, with a renewed energy and  heightened sensitivity for the work at hand.

Please pray for us. I’ll keep you posted, and I’ll start taking photos again soon. I promise.

Namaste.

It’s 4:30 in the morning. As much as I’d like to be able to go back to sleep, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Jeff, Ian, Seth and I all need to be up in an hour anyway, so I figure I’ll take a few minutes to update this here blog of ours.

My days here in Battambang have been more than chkoo-ut tik tik – a little crazy – but they’ve also been incredibly rewarding. 

…As an aside, I’ve given up on crafting beautiful prose. I know, for instance, that most skilled writers excessive use of adverbs (and parenthetical asides), but this trip has been filled with so many amazing experiences that I can’t help peppering my paragraphs with words like incredibly, unbelievably, astonishingly and inexplicably. I’ll gladly accept a C+ for composition if you’ll grant me a B+ for content and an A for effort…

Well, if you can get out to Battambang, Cambodia in the next couple of hours you’ll see something pretty wonderful.

Take National Road 5 out of Battambang, over the bridge, past the giant statue of the man with the stick, further than the new Mormon church and the University of Battambang, about 4 minutes (depending on the number of cows, tractors, tuk-tuks and petrol trucks) beyond the statue of the dove and the globe, there’s a little dirt road that goes off to the right. It’s marked by a little blue sign.

No, not the one with the picture of the pig. The other one. It says “Asia’s Hope.” Turn there, but be careful. The rains have made the dirt road pretty treacherous. Yours wouldn’t be the first car to get stuck in the mud, and if you block the path, the buses, vans and tuk-tuks full of kids won’t be able to get through. About 300 meters to the right, there’s a gate. You won’t be able to miss it; it’s festooned with balloons.

Come on in – tell them you’re with me – and follow the music. It’ll be loud. Hang out near the back of the Hope Fellowship pavilion and just enjoy. Enjoy watching 250 teens – most of whom have experienced more loss than you or I can imagine – enjoy watching them sing and dance and shout. You probably won’t know the words to their songs, but if you ask around, someone will translate for you, and they’ll tell you that these kids are singing about how God has blessed them, and how they’re trusting him with their lives. Pretty great stuff.

If you’re there by 7:30, you’ll get a chance to hear my pastor Jeff Cannell speak. And if you can’t get there until the afternoon, you’ll still get to hear Darrell Evans, a Vineyard pastor from Salt Lake City teach. Sorry to say you’ve already missed Gwen and the guys from Australia. But we’re saving the very best for last: tonight we’re closing out the conference with a dance party and fireworks.

If you haven’t been to one of our dance parties, you’ve really never partied. John Dewit and his family will be there. So will Gwen and Vern Higaki from Western Reserve Grace Church. Ross, Loudy and Karen will be getting down with us, and you’ll get to meet Clarissa, a volunteer teacher from somewhere near Sydney. I’ll be there, but unless I get a nap at some point today, I probably won’t be dancing much. But I’ll be happy.

Okay. If you haven’t left yet, you probably won’t be able to make it in time, but I’ll take lots of pictures. And I’ll probably ask you for a donation so we can do this again next year.

Jeff, Ian and I left Phnom Penh for Battambang at about six this morning. That saved us about an hour’s worth of traffic. When I first came here a decade ago, the journey would have taken about 14 hours; driving on Road 5 had been, not long before, a war zone.

It’s nicely paved now, and with the exception of a close encounters with water buffalo or two, the trip was quick and without drama. We got here in a record-setting four and a half hours. 

Pastor Jim Brown’s team was not so lucky going the other direction. Shortly after being dropped off at the Battambang bus station, they encountered a mob. Apparently, it was led by a group of thug police officers who were intent on disrupting service because the bus company had failed to pay the full amount of their bribe. Nice.

Unfortunately for the team from Goshen, Indiana, they were in a pretty major time crunch with a tight connection in Phnom Penh, leaving them very little time to spare. They were in danger of a very expensive set of missed flights to Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Fortunately for them, Savorn heard about the disruption, headed to the bus station, rescued the team and rented them a van to Phnom Penh. I just now heard that the team made it to the airport — just in time.

Anyway, it’s Jeff’s first time in Battambang (and Ian’s first time anywhere in Cambodia), and I’m really quite giddy. Most guys only watch movies about epic adventures with their buddies. I get to live it. Tonight, for instance, Jeff’s son Ian played pool with a Cambodian prostitute while Jeff and I talked to her “friend,” a 50-something Australian man with a  wife and an adult son, about how sexual exploitation of poor Cambodian women forced into the sex trade by economic hardship is an unspeakable evil that is corroding Cambodia’s soul. We then got to explain to Ian that his new friend is going to be raped by that man tonight so she can provide food for her younger siblings…

Anyway. Deep breath…

After we arrived at our hotel this morning, I spent a couple of hours sending emails and Jeff and Ian worked on napping off their jet lag. I got restless and decided I couldn’t wait any longer to see the Battambang kids.

Well, “got restless” is probably not entirely accurate. I’ve been restless for the last few days. In fact, since my family left about a week ago, I’ve been fighting discouragement. I told Jeff on Sunday, “I really need a ‘reset.’ I have a lot of things left to do on this trip, but every day I wake up with less energy than the day before.”

On the drive from my hotel to our Battambang campus, I experienced a very real sense of the presence of God, and felt a fresh infusion of joy and anticipation for the days ahead. I can’t explain it, but I feel like God really did give me a “reset.” When I arrived at the Battambang 1 children’s home, it was pouring down rain, but I felt unusually light and refreshed. 

Between then and now I’ve had a number of stressful emails to write and difficult logistical problems to address. I also found out that I had misunderstood the conference schedule – I’m giving a three-part, three hour talk, not giving the same one-hour talk three times as I had mistakenly believed. And right now, I’m dead tired. But I really do have high hopes for the next few days, and I feel encouraged, like I’ve gotten an extra infusion of mercy and grace.

Tomorrow all of the Asia’s Hope kids age 14 and older are gathering in Battambang for a youth conference. We’ve also invited some other Christian teens from the area. We expect more than 250 people to cram into Hope Fellowship Church to hear encouragement from Cambodian, Australian and American pastors. I’m speaking on false labels and true identity, borrowing more than a few themes from my friend Kary Oberbrunner’s book, “Your Secret Name.”

I’m tired. I’m not quite ready for tomorrow morning or for the weeks ahead. But I’m getting there.