Beautiful Brown Faces

Wow! What a power packed last couple of days! I have been attending the 3 day ministers conference for the ministers and their families here in Chittipatty. The focus has been from the 2 books of Timothy and I have heard so many good responses. Our American preachers have mentioned that this would be a good study for people back home and I definitely agree.
I have been getting to know the ladies and children and drinking lots and lots of tea! Between each session there is tea time and when I return home if I don't ever see tea again I will be happy! They drink it scalding hot. Yesterday one of the elderly ladies (my favorite) said something that sounded like "soothing tongue." I thought, "No scalding tongue." This particular lady was baptised yesterday afternoon. She is such a dear lady. I left all my jewelry at home except my watch. Well, Indian women like 2 thinks- jewelry and flowers. (My 2 favorite things as well.) She just couldn't understand why I didn't have flowers in my hair or a bangle bracelet. Before I knew what the ladies were doing, they had my wrist and gave me a gold bangle. They told me to never take it off and since it was given with such love I don't believe I will. When she (may favorite lady) left yesterday afternoon she pinched my cheek, rubbed my face and then kissed my cheek. Tears were very hard to fight back.
We have visited 3 orphanages thus far and later today I will leave for a few days to stay at the Eureka Children's Home. We briefly visited it Tues evening and it has got to be the most beautiful location I have ever seen. My guest room has a large balcony where I can't wait to read and pray and watch the sun rise over the mountains. We saw the location for the future Fair Haven Medical Clinic. It should be a great improvement from what they have already. I will be going w/ their mobile medical team in the next few days and saw their vitamins I will be giving out. I was quite impressed with their stock but all that I saw were at least 1 year out of date- something I hope I can rectify once I return home. I can't hardly wait to get to Eureka and get to work!
One last thing before going back to bed (it's 4:30 am and I just can't sleep, unfortunately I have no problem sleeping @ 4:30 pm). Last night Jamey and I went to the camp for refugees from Shi Lanka. We went with a Strict Baptist minister and one of the interpreters who is actually a missionary and refugee from Sri Lanka himself. I got swamped by the beautiful children but didn't mind in the slightest. They sang for us "If you're happy and you know it..." Jamey did an excellent job telling about the miracles of Jesus. The congregation was 95% children and they ate it up. One little boy could speak broken English so it was "super" and "excellent". He told me I was "very, very beautiful." I feel exactly the same way about him and all the other children there.