This is one of our many vendors that come by our door every day. Each one has a different chant but when you try to get a picture they stop and pose. Fred finally got this man and the music he makes as he pedals his way through the neighborhoods.

On a busy street right out side of a Hindu Temple was this man milking a cow. The cow was more of a holstien mix but not a Brahma. I have heard that the milk from a Brahma cow is sacred but I wondered if the milk from this cow might have been sacred also. I've seen nothing but the Brahmas here. We have been told that they wash all the statues with in the temple with cows milk each day.

From left to right--Borlans, Browns, Us, Zauggs, Ricks, and Tanners.
These are all the senior missionary couples in New Delhi. Except the first couple, the Borlans. They were headed to Nepal to join two other couples. President Ricks had us all over to his home for dinner and to meet this new couple.
The Ricks hire a man by the name of Raju Massey to put on the food whenever they have a group of people or a missionary conference. Raju really puts out some tasty meals and they are not too hot and spicy. Most people will tell you that their food is not hot and then when you try to eat it you catch your tonsils on fire. Even the little kids eat that hot food like it was nothing and we found that the McDonalds chicken burgers were hot too. But at the primary picnic the kids just gobbled theirs down. We like the McDonalds fish burger pretty well. Fred tries to order one every night if I will let him. We can get it delivered right to our door so it's very tempting to just order out every night instead of heating up the kitchen. We can get pizzas and subway sandwiches also, and it's so cheap.
Raju the cook wants to get me to order meat from him. He says he can get whatever I want. It might be safer than trying to get it ourselves. The last time I was taking pictures at the meat market and a guy told me to get out as he waved an ice pick at me.

We accompanied Amy our little friend from Meghalaya to the train station. Fred estimated that her bags weighed close to 200 lbs. The porter weighed a lot less than that. It is amazing how much they can carry on their heads. We followed him about a half mile through the station and we had to walk fast to keep up with him. The train station was an interesting experience but good practice for when we have to travel to the Taj Mahal next month.

The women in India are amazing. Their clothes are so bright and beautiful, and so many handsome men also. We are growing to love the members of the church so much. They are as beautiful on the inside as on the outside. Such kind, and loving souls. But we feel so sad for their lives. The majority of them have to work so hard they have absolutely no time for anything. We made a goal to visit all of the families in the Branch, but the only time that we can find the whole family home is at night and it is so scary to be out at night. If you are out past 10:00 pm the lorries (big cargo trucks) start rolling in to the city and that's a real nightmare we have heard. We tried to visit our Branch President but he said he never gets home until 11:00 pm, and his home is in a dangerous hard to find area. He spends all day on Saturday at the Church and Sunday also. I don't know when we will ever visit him. It seems just about everyone has the same problem. We wanted to start a family home evening for the Young Single Adults but the girls can't stay out after dark and the boys don't get off work until after dark. So it is so hard to get them together. No wonder very few marry within the Church. They just never get a chance to know each other or socialize together. Then the caste system is still very much alive and well in the Church. Our good little friend Dolly says she wants to marry a return missionary but when I suggest any of the return missionary boys she says she is of a lower caste so she won't marry them. She's a real beauty and a sweet sweet girl who would make any of them a good wife but there are such barriers. We hear more and more everyday of the complicated process it takes to get married. We are still trying to be match makers though. My good friends Lorna and Ken Jones would have so much fun here trying to match people up. The young people even hope that you will try to find someone for them. It's such an age old tradition to have an arranged marriage that they don't really understand how to go about finding a partner on their own.

We had a strange thing happen. When we were at the QuTab Minar, we met a girl from Afghanistan and her ailing mother. They had come to India for medical treatment for the mother and had been living here by themselves for several months. She spoke good English and she was deciphering some of the words carved in stone on the Minar for us. We told her to look us up and that we would love to have her over to our home for dinner and friendship. She said she would. About a week later we were at the Lodhi Gardens. We had just walked through the entrance and were reading the Bird Sign when who should we meet but our Afghany friends again. I said, "I think God wants us to be friends. Why else would we meet in another place so far away from the other and in this huge city of millions?" Just then as we were visiting with that girl and her mother, the girls from the apartment upstairs from us came up and started talking with us. We couldn't believe we knew so many people at Lodhi gardens. We met up with Dr. Rahan Chowdry (daughter to Mrs. Chowdry, owner of the Polytechnic where I teach music) at the gardens a little later on and the girls from upstairs knew her also. The younger girl had gone to school at the poly technic. You would think that in a city this size, you would never meet up with the same person twice.
We had a branch activity that I invited our upstairs neighbors to and Denu, the older sister, asked me if there would be any dignitaries there. She knows Dr. Chowdry is wealthy and an important person and she has seen the Mission President come to our house so she thinks we have connections I guess. It's been interesting how observant our little neighbors are.
The Lodhi Gardens are a favorite place for people to go for walking exercise and there were also quite a few romancing couples. The gardens are very old , designed by the English, they are the landscaping for at least ten ancient Muslim Tombs. You think you've seen it all and then there appears another structure. The fountain was also very beautiful. Many birds, flowers, palm trees and ancient structures, made this a most delightful outing. I really didn't think that I would be seeing this sort of thing right in the heart of the city.

Our little Gecko pet was back this morning. I didn't know if we would ever see it again but after I snapped on the light, the water pump, and the geezer, I shuffled over to the sink and there it was. I must admit it scared me a little. It was frozen in fear also. I gave it a little nudge and it when darting around the sink and leaping up the slick sides but couldn't get a good enough grip to get out. I made an inclined plane with my bread board but the gecko couldn't figure it out. I finally remembered my old bee catching trick. I took two plastic cups and pushing his backside with one cup he ran headlong into the other and "Walla" I caught my gecko. I then let it go free under the refrigerater. I'm pretty sure it lives in the house all of the time because it is completely colorless. Or possibly it's an albino. We've seen some albino Indians here and some that look like pintos with large patches of white skin.

Remember Dave the church guard's favorite street dog? Well San San called her Vet friend and he took the dog and tried to help him but said he had something too bad to cure so he was put to sleep. Dave felt so bad but I think we made a good friend by trying to help his dog.
Dave comes to English class on a regular basis and tries really hard. He studies all day long in the guard shack. We sit close to the window with the curtains wide open so he can watch the gate from his seat in the classroom. Anyway he has started speaking English lately. My other students are starting to do spead also. They are all much younger than Dave so it is so exciting to hear him finally speaking English. I love teaching. It's so rewarding.

Fred was going out to buy a few items at our market behind the house when he came darting back in and yelling, get your camera. I went running out and down the street I could see a strange thing but I couldn't quite figure out what it was until it started heading toward our house. Then I could see it's legs and feet and realized it was a dressed up cow. Blow this up if you can. Anyway, this was an amazing trained cow. She did exactly as her master said, I think. Only Hindi was being spoken but it looked like she was behaving very well.

Dancing Monkey

You never would have thought....would you?

These are more sidewalk homes. Make the picture big to get the full effect. I was asking a friend the other day about the summer heat, which is supposed to be so horrible, and I asked her if there are a lot of deaths among the old people and babies. She said the street people suffer the worst.

A miracle happened the other day. We had been to Sister Barnes to a Church Educational meeting clear across town. After the meeting we went to look for an autorickshaw. We were walking down a busy street when a rickshaw driver suddenly pulls over and motions us to come get in. We could see that there was a young student already in the back seat where we would sit. We hesitated but the driver insisted that we get in so we did. After a short time the student got out and we directed the driver to go to the mission office. He waited for us while we made another stop and then we headed home. I was impressed with the man because he had his specs on the was reading the newspaper while he was driving. It reminded me of Fred driving back home. Anyway we finally got home. Sunday morning when we started to head out for church, I couldn't find my scriptures. I searched but just couldn't locate them. I was so scared to tell Fred because those scriptures are his most beloved set as our friend Richard Lounsbury had given them to him and they are also a very expensive and beautiful set of books. I was just sick about losing them. I tried to call Sister Barnes to see if I might have left them at her house but no answer and we had to leave for Church. We were at Church just a short while when Elder Hansen came up with our scriptures. What had happened was the rickshaw driver had found them in the back of his auto and had found the mission home and had returned them. Everyone says this never happens. There are 100,000 autorickshaw drivers in the city and it is very unlikely to ever get the same one twice and they never return forgotten items.

Here we are in our new Indian costumes. A lady who we are helping stitched Fred's and bought mine. We look pretty good don't we? I've worn mine already but Fred feels funny. We see men wearing this sort of garb everyday. I think he should wear it, especially now that the weather is getting hot. He could use it for his exercise outfit and nobody would care.

People seem to work until they are really old here in India. Most of them don't seem to have the pleasure of retirement. I liked the look of this old fellow.

Fred wanted a picture of this sign. I've completely given up on carrying a purse. I let Fred lug everything in his bag, but he carrys his money in his pocket and it's takes constant vigilance to keep other hands out of his pockets. I guess this sign made an impression on his already worried mind. Blow it up big for the full effect.