India
14 June 2008
So, thinking about all the stuff that’s going on, perhaps it’s for the best India has not worked out so well. Alone in a strange country with depression? Not sure that would be the ideal situation!
21 April 2008
I had an interview with Oasis regarding their professional placements. Somehow I’d not twigged this was an official interview. Like a job interview. And after a particularly stressful day at work, was completely unprepared.
Still, I’ve not been entirely sure about them in this plan I had. As I’m not entirely sure about this plan I had in general now.
Still, doors will open if they’re meant to. And doors will close if they’re meant to. And I’ll always have a choice at open doors - to go through or not.
10 April 2008
After an email conversation, have now established that the position at Deep Griha is not what I thought it was (and they’ve updated their website to reflect that), and that accommodation/food costs would not be covered, as was implied through the ad. I had said that without that, I would not be able to afford to spend six months at that project, and this morning emailed them to say that.
2 March 2008
Sent off application to Deep Griha, in Pune, for their volunteer research assistant’s position.
1 March 2008
In November 2006 I went to India with 6 guys (yes, that’s the masculine guy) from my church to help run an Alpha conference for churches in the Andra Pradesh region. It was the first time I’d been out of Europe and the first time I’d done anything like that, and it touched me in ways that should have made a greater impact on my life.
Last summer I started exploring the options of short-term mission, either in India or Eastern Europe, perhaps working with those who’d been trafficked, but, as with most bright ideas in my life, it soon faded into the background. Until…
Just before the New Year I decided I was going to take matters of life out of my hands and put them into God’s; but would push at every door I came across. In early January I received an email from a job website (I’d forgotten I’d signed up to it) advertising a volunteer position in Pune (3 hours by train from Mumbai) for an Aids charity. The position was as a Research Assistant, which is something I am interested in, and the ‘pay’ would be bed and board for the time I was there. I made a deal with a friend I would apply. And didn’t.
And then… suddenly it became an imperative to push at these doors. When else would I get the chance to up sticks and move to the other side of the world? I’m single, I have no husband, boyfriend, children, mortgage, pets: nothing to keep me here. If I don’t at least try, I’ll always wonder, and would I rather regret having tried and found out it was not the right thing, or not tried at all.
So I asked friends for references for this role (I’ve just got the second reference). In the meantime I found out that Oasis Trust has Indian partners: and will be meeting them in April to talk about their (potentially financially expensive) options. I also wrote to the guy from Hyderabad who headed up the Alpha conferences when we were out there, and he recently told me he’d heard of a project in Mumbai: and would find out more.
This weekend (1 & 2 March) I’m going to send off the application for the project in Pune, and will chase up my man in Hyderabad. I will keep this updated as and when things happen. In the meantime, I would be grateful if you could spare a prayer once in a while for this very scary bout of door pushing I am doing.
[...] India [...]