India began for me  at  4:00 am in a Chennai Hotel.  At that early hour I tried to figure out how to use the shower. Pull up on the bar, right? It didn't work, so, towel in hand, I went out into the hallway to knock on the
next door where Tim and Jan were staying.. Slam! The door shut behind me. There I was, a modern day Ghandhi,  nearly loin-cloth clad, trying to figure out how to spend the rest of the night nearly nude.
Fortunately, after several tries,  the Davises  were finally able to raise an attendant from downstairs to come to my aid. Welcome to India.

The Davises, Dr. Catlin Goss, and I were commissioned to visit Salem, Tamil Nadu, as part of a delegation from the Lake Forest Park Rotary Club, and I, in addition, the Presbyterian church where it meets. From the start
India represents stark contrasts. Road travel resembles nothing so much as a real-life game of "chicken" . Vehicles drive on the left side, of course, and careen in an out of situations scaringly like video games for teens. One becomes a believer de pronto and realizes that this part of India travels as fast as in the US, cars darting in an out to avoid pedestrians and ox carts. After arriving in Chennai, we  took the train   to Salem, where Dr. Jay
Krishnan and half a dozen teachers greeted us with soft drinks and garlands and took us to The Promised Land Orphanage. Here some 2,200 children, mostly orphaned and all Dalits or of the  Untouchable class, are housed, fed, and educated.

Dr. Jay's own story bears telling. Many years before, as a young man he  stopped at a corner to catch a bus, en route to a college interview .  He spied a woman stepping before a bus,   dropping an infant before its  front
wheels. He lunged forward to grab the child  and took him home to his wife. "We are going to raise this infant," he proclaimed. "No, we're not,"  said his wife Christy. . But when on the next day on their doorstep appeared five
more infants,  Dr. Jay believed  this was a sign from God, and it  sealed his decision to abandon college and begin the orphanage. He and  Christy started with twelve infants. Work expanded, and now the enterprise comprises not only the Promised Land but also a Teacher's College and Missionary Center, the Timothy School. The complex is known as the ICMC, the International Christian Mission Center, and is the largest such center in
south India.

Hearing Dr. Jay is an invitation to intensive listening. He is a non-stop talker, even when on hikes, in classrooms or at meals. We were warned about his accent, typically Indian, and his rapid-fire speech. We learned about
the progress of the orphanage and shared on several occasions handing out packets of  cookies to literally a thousand  children at a time. The four of us were able to interact with children, who all rushed forward to meet us with  beaming smiles on all of their faces.. Their   fingers and hands picked at our own so much that  frankly, after long spells inter-acting with them, we were actually happy to find ourselves alone. .  The children are
all well-fed and cared for medfically and in most other ways.  We were glad to be able to bring enough funds from the Lake Forest church to purchase a television set for them.

I had the privilege of giving several lectures and a sermon for the Timothy School, composed of students from at least eight different areas of India, many from Nagaland in the northeast.  We were overjoyed to
participate in the graduation. Dr. Jay and a guest speaker spoke long before handing out the certificates, and then a prayer was given and graduates filled up balloons and popped them in glee. During our stay in Salem we
trekked out about a kilometer to a dam which had been built and saw the construction site for a new dormitory. We also visited Eden Land, where a very capable young director marshalled about 80 young boys for a
presentation for us, including a kind of break-dance performance.

From Salem we took the train north to Vellore. For me personally this had a special meaning. I had heard the name of Ida Scudder, founder and director of the famed Christian Medical Center, for many years. In 1899 Ida
was forced to witness the needless death of three young women in childbirth on a single night because no male doctor would attend to them. She came back to the U.S. and became the first graduate of the Cornell Medical School in 1901 before returning to India. She opened the  CMC with a single bed. We learned that she often  motored out into the country in a single- pistoned Peugeot automobile to assist in medical care for rural Indian women. By 1910 the CMC had 30 beds, and in 1927 the medical school admitted men as well as
women.

We met the CMC Director, Dr. Chandri, who graciously granted us half an hour, during which time   Tim and Catlin presented the case of a young woman from Salem, Gracie, whose misshapen left leg forced her to walk with one
side about two feet higher than the other. Dr. Chandri said his staff could operate on her. We toured the entire facility, including chapel, surgical units, the emergency ward, and even an under ground prosthetic center which 
produces artificial limbs for patients. Every where we saw scriptures and photos of Dr. Ida, whose name is legend throughout the country. In 2000 the Indian government even issued a postage stamp in her honor, and several
photos picture her with Gandhi.

For two days we were privileged to visit with Dr. B. J. Prashantham, Founder and Director of the Christian Counseling Center. The facility itself was the building started as the Vellore Hospital by Dr. Scudder, and the CCC
is an outgrowth of this hospital. Dr. Prashantham is am incredibly gifted  and versatile man, full of energy, yet calm and poised and most able to get across his ideas. We attended several classes and were honored to take part in the graduation exercises for nine graduates, coming from various parts of India and Sri Lanka.He presented us with beautiful shawls and a copy of his book on counseling.

The same day we were driven out to nearby Karagiri, where Paul and Margaret  Brand made themselves famous for surgery for lepers. Its director,   Dr. Abraham Joseph was most happy us and also to receive a book which
Karagiri's co-founder Margaret Brand haad given me.  "Living for God"  written about  life of the Brands  in India and Carville, Louisiana. We saw the cornerstone where, on Feb. 18, 1987, exactly 20 years ago, Paul and
Margaret dedicated the center.The leprosy center, while modest by standards of the West is impressive, and the Christian care can be seen in every ward.

Catlin snapped pictures of  nurses changing bandages of patients with stumps for arms and legs and spoke of even volunteering in the clinic. Honored by all, Paul became the leading leprosy expert in the entire world, studying its  origins as a virus, generally not contageous, and devising not only operations but utensils for the New Life Center to rehabilitate lepers.

Margaret did eye surgery for years and found a way to join a cheek muscle to the eyelid, sparing lepers needless blindness. The Brands, like Dr. Ida, are national figures in India, and it has been Phyllis'and my honor to meet Paul
and Margaret and even attend his two funeral services  in the summer of 2003.

While Catlin and Tim stayed in Vellore at a hotel, I went out to visit Rev. John and Mrs. Lily Abu Bakker and arrange to visit their own orphanage, the St. Joseph School. The Abu Bakkers receive no outside aid, yet they have managed, over some 20 years, to establish a fine, small orphanage in Jollarpattai, halfway between Salem and Vellore. I was baptised to India train travel, pushing my way onto a second class train, wedged in standing
between two toilets, which, alas, were being used the whole  two hour trip.

However, I was very impressed at the school to see on a  lower kindergarten classroom blackboard numbers from one to a hundred both in English and in Tamil. About forty children gathered to hear me speak about American life, and afterward some of the older children queried me on not just my view on India but about the American presence in Iraq, my views on Saddam Hussein and on terrorism in the U.S. and the world. Our last evening in Vellore introduced me to Peter and Michelle Nthumba from Nairobi, and Peter told me about his work in plastics at the Vellore Hospital, where he has a two-year internship.

Our last two days were spent in Pondichery, a small former French enclave (one of four) on the coast, which, surprisingly, became one of India's seven special districts in 1955. The French influence, while waning, was still to be found, and I ran onto several locals who spoke surprisingly good French.

The coast itself is very picturesque, and although we saw nary a soul braving the waves to swim, we felt close to nature amid the rocky coast. Both coming to Pondicherry and returning to Chennai we were treated to
special cars, which, accommodated us well, and we spent our last day in that city before leaving Catlin and boarding the British Air flight home.

How do we assess such a prominent sub-continent as India after a mere nearly three weeks? I knew a fair amount about the nation beforehand, so I was not surprised by too much. An immediate reaction on all our parts  was to see bright colors everywhere. India is  possibly the most  "colorful" nation I 've ever visited. I also  thought I would see monkeys, rats, and cows on the streets. I did see some of the latter but not  many. As reported in the modern media, India really does deserve a reputation for being both more modern and more ancient than many places. We did not get to visit some of the more historic places, but Catlin and Tim did get to visit a fortress in Vellore which is home to Christian, Muslim, and Hindu forms of worship.

The presence of Mahatma Gandhi permeates all the nation. Impressive statues of him are to be seen in city centers, on the beach in Pondichery, on the sides of roads in rural Tamil Nadu, and elsewhere, and his portrait is found on one side of every bill of currency. Dalits (Untouchables)  have a mixed view of him. While he spoke strongly against discrimination against   the Untouchables, Harijans (  "children of God" he called them, naming his weekly newspaper after them), he never advocated abandoning the five-caste system which has dominated India for several thousand years.A bigger figure in the eyes of many Indians, though almost unknown in the West, is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, himself an Untouchable, who worked, as a lawyer, with Gandhi [The Brahmins, priests and upper classes, are derived from God's head, Kshatrias, warriors come from His shoulders, Vaisyas, businessmen, come from His heart, Sudras, workers come from his stomach, while Dalits come from the souls of
His feet, warranting a status of "sub-human. ]

The Christian presence has been present, if often sub rosa  for centuries. Legend has it that the Apostle Thomas landed on the coast of Kerala, India's southwest state, in the first century and was responsible for the establishment  of the Mar Thoma ( Lord Thomasa) Christian group, which endures until today with "Thomist Christians "numbering about 30 million of Kerala's population. . Much later figures like Saint Francis Xavier and Robert De Nobili  (becoming a Brahmin himself) established the Catholic church in India, Very recently Sonja Gandhi, widow of Sanji, a Catholic, was Premier for a brief time and remains Chair of the Congress Party and the UPA, its larger coalition.

Later the figure of William Carey, the British shoemaker, along with  Joshua Marshaman and William Ward (The Serampore Trio) established a Protestant presence first in modern Bangladesh and translated the Bible  into Bengali and half a dozen languages. He was also instrumental in helping to ban suttee,   wife-burning throughout India.. In modern times E. Stanley Jones, a famous Methodist, helped to introduce ashrams, renewal movements into Christianity, D.T. Niles helped form the Church of South India, the very first Asian ecumenical missionary unit, and Lesslie Newbigin, a prominent theologian and reformer, also played a part in the CMC and Leprosy Hospitals. Several states in northeast India, namely Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram, have Christian majorities, and Tami Nadu has over a 10% Christian population. A majority of Indian schools have  a Christian basis, and so do many of its hospitals. Mission institutions  such as Kodaikanal and Woodstock, originally soley Christian, though secular, still have strong Christian presences. Roman Catholics and Protestants often work closely together in mission and social enterprises, and in specific states Christians play a very important role.

We wonder how we, as Western Christians, can be more supportive of our brothers and sisters in India.  We are blessed that English is the "sub-national" language (Hindi is the principal one though the instrument of mostly north India). Clearly prayer is a key, and it has been the rock basis of all the mission units we witnessed-the Vellore Hospital, the Christian Counseling Center, The Promised Land, the St. Joseph School, the Schiffilin Leprosy Center, and others. Indians hesitate to ask for financial aid, as in the past this has encouraged an unhealthy dependence on Western customs and decisions and undermined efforts by Indians to maintain their integrity as independent institutions. However, visitors to these centers are welcome, and all of us report being warmly received  everywhere. We hope that the Lake Forest Park Rotary will continue its  respective relationship  with the Promised Land and the Presbyterian church with institutions in southern India. We hope both will  continue to send future teams to Tamil Nadu to visit and participate in programs.