St. Cuthbert’s Naremburn-Cammeray is the driving force behind the India Training Mission - an expedition to train southern Indian pastors and key leaders to teach Moore College’s PTC to in the south of India. Get up close and personal to the mission as Sydneyanglicans.net posts the experiences of first-time team members…

Day 1 " 13/02/06

Mike Southon

Wow, well we're here.

The trip was a fantastic experience in and of itself. The plane flight was pure luxury, little personal TV's with on demand movies and TV episodes (I watched The Simpsons, Family Guy and Frazier mostly), with a little lay-over and shopping spree in Changi Airport in Singapore.

A couple of us actually arrived a day earlier than most of the team, and toured around Chennai. We saw the church which was built on the site where St. Thomas was killed, we saw a massive Hindu temple, and we saw the biggest shopping plaza in the whole of Chennai (which is one of the four biggest cities in India), which was roughly the same size as Chatswood Westfield. This says something about Australia's shopping habits.

After that we met up with the rest of the team for a night in a hostel which I knocked down from 1 star to ½ after one of the air conditioners smelled like something had died in! it. It went back up to one star after we got newspapers delivered under our door. After an hour long struggle through Chennai's spectacular traffic, we made it to Central Station (which bears a scary resemblance to Sydney's Central Station) and struggled with our luggage (easily 10 times what any Indian was carrying) into the train. Six hours and one more battle with traffic later, we arrived at the IGL compound in Salem.

Now it's time for Bed

Joshua Glass (Age 13 months)

I Joshua typed this with my own hands. 

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The rest, I've dictated to my mum (Lesley Glass) coz she types faster.

Mum, dad and I made it all safely to Salem in India.

I had a really good plane trip to Singapore, the ladies in the plane were wonderful and I even got a little basinet to sleep in!

Singapore airport was fun, I got to run around in all the shops and smile at the shopkeepers and pull things from their shelves.

The plane to India had a lot of new people on it - they spoke funny and some of them wore very colourful dresses.  They were all very nice and I had a good sleep too.

Chennai smelled funny, but I loved standing up on my dads lap watching all the cars, buses and bikes play games on the road!!!

The train trip to Salem was fun, but I got very tired and couldn’t sleep, this made mum a bit sad.  Abraham (our guide and brother in christ - stu) showed me the view from the train door and I eventually fell asleep in dad’s arms.

Now that we’re in Salem, everyone is talking with God and reading things for the work tomorrow.  I don’t know what will happen, but everyone is excited.  The people here are really nice and pay me extra attention, I’m a bit uncertain of them at the moment but they are very nice to me.

Jackie Talsma

Well it was great that everyone arrived safely in Chennai and we were all so tired from jet lag that we slept through all the noise of the airplanes flying overhead (our hotel was very close to the airport) and we managed to ignore the smell coming out of the air conditioners in our room.

Although we westerners have such a high standard of living compared to the locals (who have bucket showers and squat toilets that sometimes do not flush) our accommodation in Salem is very comfortable and clean and we are being well looked after with food also.

Unfortunately though I got a stomach bug on the first night and wasn't able to eat and confined to my room and missed out on the first two days (5 out of 10 units) of teaching.

However it was encouraging to hear how the rest of the team went in their lectures and small groups and that the Indians are really keen and motivated to learn.

I am now feeling much better and really looking forward to being involved again tomorrow.

The time in bed also gave me additional time to do readings and review small group questions so it will be exciting to be leading the ladies OT small groups tomorrow.