2010 February

This will be the last email as we are catching the plane home today at 4.30. It has been a wonderful and amazing experience that has really changed me, and I think coming back home will be a bit of a shock at first.

Tuesday was a good day, in the morning we were able to visit the students in the Rural Theological Institute. In the their third year of study students have to live outside of the college in a rural setting to help them to get used to ministry in a countryside as oppose to the city, as this is where a lot of them will begin their ministry. They have all their services and lectures here and don’t return to TTS all year. The feel of this site seems to be like a retreat centre and felt very peaceful. Their chapel is outside and their is a great sense of the Spirit of God here. However, it is fairly near to Madurai airport, and the government have plans to turn this into an internation airport, and they have laid claims to their land for this purpose, and notice to move out in 6months time, and though they will recieve compension – it will probably not be as much as it is worth. This is a valuable experience for all students and TTS are looking to purchase another site so it can continue so do pray as they look into this.
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Sorry to hear about more snow and cold weather…it’s really lovely weather here I’m afraid to say!

Here’s my latest ramblings…Well we’ve all really settled in to life here in India and at TTS. I am really loving the food, but then I like spicy curries. The Guest House is such a great place and we have been so well looked after. Since my last email we have done so much! We have had a good variety of integration with general college life including morning worship in the chapel, Sunday evening service and community meal, meeting with faculty members, preaching feedback sessions with the TTS students, etc. Also, we have visited a number of projects with which TTS is linked…Centre for Social analysis, Dalit Resource centre, an organisation which works with underprivileged young men teaching them skills in electronics, mechanics (and other ‘man’ type jobs…! No sexism intended of course!) Also, we visited an amazing old peoples home where though the accomodation and facilities were very basic, the residents (commomly referred to as ‘grannies’!) were clearly very happy and well cared for by some wonderful staff. Also, we visited a hospice for children and adults who have HIV/AIDS. This was an incredibly humbling yet inspiring experience. Students from TTS are regularly involved with these projects through placement experience.
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Greetings from Madurai in South India. Along with Sue, Esther, and four people from Queens Birmingham, I am enjoying two stimulating weeks in the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary (TTS), watching how engaged theological education takes place in a large, needy city. This has already been a fascinating experience, exploring a range of projects which the seminary runs, from hospices to study centres, taking on board questions of theology, society, context, culture, tradition, caste, and so on. It’s an impressive seminary, on a delightful campus, just off a main (and manic) road.

My first experience of India has been good: smells, sights, sounds – very much a sensory overload. I will be delighted to bore anyone who asks with long tales of what life is like here. For now I will leave you with a report that the church service this morning included a karaoke rendition of ‘Between Jesus and John Wayne’, which was a little … odd… for a contextual learning experience.

We are all well, more or less coping with heat and mosquitos, and will be here another 5 days until Friday, arriving back on Saturday.

Regards to all

Richard Briggs

On Wednesday we enjoyed a visit to the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, enjoying the opportunity to travel by rickshaw, or what they call “auto’s” here. At least most of us enjoyed it – driving on India’s roads is something of an experience! They are very busy and have no rules – only honk your horn and hope they move out of the way, however they drive much slower than we do and I think despite appearances it may be safer over here! Anyway i love it and it’s very exhilarating.

The temple was amazing, very bright and colourful everywhere, there is an elephant in the temple who can take your coins and will give you a blessing, they also have a section of hindu art displayed in the temple with an image of the hindu God ’shiva’ dancing on a baby, among other things! It was a very interesting and amazing visit. When we go out, we always attract a lot of attention and stares at the ‘white’ people, and today in particular people wanted to sell us things or to give them money, but I don’t think it was as bad as we had expected, and we truly enjoyed the visit to madurai, enjoying the shops and the people. Samuel who is in his fourth year training at TTS, is our guide and interpreter, and does a wonderful job answering our questions and helping us to barter when we want to buy things!
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