Speechless

This blog started out with the words: ... let my words be few. I don't think it has quite turned out that way. But at present I am pretty speechless. And with good reason - I have laryngitis.

This week may have had something to do with is. To recap a wonderful set of events:

On Tuesday Sheba and I celebrated 10 years of God's faithfulness in our lives together. What better place than a lightning trip up to Matheran?


Ten years ago we would never have believed it if you would have shown us who we would be today - and what an amazing family we have become. We are very humbled and grateful - and especially thankful to all who have stood with us over the years.

The view from the toy train on the way back down (on Wednesday morning) was just superb. Worth the whole trip just to see the beauty of creation.

The week was spent preparing for out time with our JSK positive friends and church partners on Friday. The occasion was the annual Thanksgiving time that we hold at the end of each year.
It was a time of great rejoicing as we looked back at how good God has been to us this past year.

In the run up to the programme, we asked our friends to write down what they were thankful for during the year - on a smiley flower - which we then displayed on a mural sized poster at the Thanksgiving time.


Though so many of our Friends who have HIV have been through so much - and some who were part of last year's Thanksgiving time are not here with us this year - we still have seen so much goodness take place. In the midst of sorrow - there were so many testimonies about how God has been good to them. It is humbling to be part of this amazing process.

We finished off the evening with a joint meal. The 80 odd children were fed downstairs while the adults were served in the main hall of the Covenant Blessings Church which very generously hosted us for this time of Thanksgiving. It was also such a blessing to see members from various churches coming forward to help and serve our Positive Families.

Saturday was our final youth meeting of the year - and we wanted to do something special together - so a treasure-hunt hike was in order. The amazing hill that is just a stones throw from us - and which marks the beginning of Mumbai's 'green lung' - the Sanjay Gandhi National Park - was our playground.


Ryan and I had already done the whole circuit up the hill and around and down again from 1 - 3 PM - hiding the clues for the different stages when we started back up as a group at 3.15 PM.

At each stage we spent time reflecting on various parts of the year gone by - and sharing what we wanted to do differently in the next.

The clues then took the group up the trail, leading us to arrive on the top of the ridge in a new place - with a spectacular view of our booming city of Thane on one side - and ranges of forested hills on the other.

We gratefully bit into samosas on the top of the ridge (brought up by us of course) and soaked in the beauty while enjoying our fellowship together. It was great to look back on all that has happened this year - as well as deciding how we want to be different in 2010.

By the time we were able to see the spectacular sunset and started back down so that we would be back before dark - we had had a memorable day - and I had completely lost my voice to laryngitis.

That's the situation that I experienced today - not being able to sing in the Sunday worship at our house fellowship - and croaking out words most of the day.

So too at the wedding of Ruzbeh and Manjula which took place tonight in Ambernath. We went as a family - along with our fellow church leaders from Thane. I wanted to sing - but seemed to do more coughing instead!


Its been a great week - a memorable one for us all - and one that has left me speechless!