Another Answer to Prayer

At the mission here we have been praying for Neil Armstrong and his wife Jansi. They were Indian missionaries to Malaysia but had to return to India because of visa problems. Jansi has had a very difficult pregnancy. She has been on bed rest since I arrived to India and in a lot of pain. Jansi has been in the hospital for the last couple of weeks so they could monitor her condition. Finally the did a c section and delivered a healthy baby girl! We are so thankful that God has given us so many healthy babies in the last couple of months. We truly have reasons to rejoice.
I have not written much this week because I have not felt well. I think I was trying to do a little too much after Moriah was born so I laid low the last couple of days and just focused on Moriah:) She can be tiring enough on her own. She is still growing fast and enjoying Indian life!
This week there was a VBS meeting. It was very confusing because the method of getting VBS started over here is way different than I am used to and the Tamil thing has made communication difficult. It is part of my job description to help with VBS because in America VBS is typically a womens thing but the male pastors are the ones that are on the committee here. At this point in India women are not equal in any way. Make pastors here would rather do it themselves and not consult a woman... So it has been a little crazy. I believe even the Christian view of women here is a cultural sin and does need confronted but I do not know if forcing myself as a part of their VBS thing is the way to do it. Christian men here treat their wives better than Hindu men but both are still not good. For example, Immanuel bought us chocolate on his recent trip. When Rob thanked him he said something about LIndsey being happy for the chocolate. Immanuel asked if Rob allowed me to have chocolate as a part of my diet... ummmm can you imagine an American man not allowing his wife to have chocolate. We would call that abusive! That is a very small example. The plight of the woman here goes much farther than that. Many girl babies are even murdered at birth because families only want boys. For poor families a girl is a burden because they will have to pay a large sum of money as a dowry when she gets married however a male baby brings in lots of money at a wedding. In some places there are only 900 girl babies to every 1000 boy babies. This is also why finding out the gender of the baby is illegal. Marriages are aranged and the dowry plays a large part. If the family cannot pay completely the dowry many times the wife is murdered so that the man can get married again and receive another dowry. The police force is not to great here so many times they get away with it. When the woman goes to live with her husband she usually lives with her in laws and becomes somewhat of a slave to the in laws. She is usually treated horibbly by the family. So these are some of the issues the women here face and that is what I want to deal with. I am working on meeting with pastors wives and learning how I can support and encourage them. Rob will continue to work on meeting with pastors and encouraging healthy families that way. We will continue to pray that God give us wisdom on how to handle these immense issues.