This is one of three international trips I am taking in four months. Nancy is great about this stuff. Her heart beats as strongly for the world as mine does. Still, she gets stuck at home dealing with the crises of teenaged girls and house projects that never seem to end.

I’ve arrived in India (by way of some meetings in Nepal). I’ll be travelling to 11 sites in 4 provinces around the country to meet with indigenous Christian leaders. I am developing relationships with effective, experienced believers whose ministries Worldlink can partner with in order to reach more people.

India is a huge land, about one-third the size of the US. It has over 1.2 billion inhabitants. There are hundreds of thousands villages spread out across the rural areas, most with no Christian witness. Worldlink would like to help change that.

At the moment I’m in Kerala State, on the southwestern point of the nation. Exiting the airport, I am overwhelmed by the crowds. There are people in motion everywhere. Everyone who visits India says that. I expected it. But hearing about it and experiencing it are two very different things. Even New York City does not have crowds like this. However, New York’s population has easier access to my standards of hygiene.

In the heat and humidity men are laboring in what appear to be giant diapers of various colors. I find out they are wearing a traditional cloth wrap called either dhothi (if it’s white) or a (lungi if it’s colored). The cloth is wrapped around a man’s waist and legs, and would resemble a skirt in the US. When they need more freedom of movement or get really hot, they wrap it between their legs.

I try not to stare too much, but I duck my head and smile as I imagine the construction worker stereotypes in a beer commercial back home: They climb out of their massive pickups, toss their hard hats on the seat and head into a local bar wearing construction boots, a flannel shirt, and a dhothi-diaper.

At one point I check into a hotel where Indian construction workers are moving bricks one at a time. One worker on a floor below tosses a single brick up a stairwell to someone waiting on the floor above. That man then tosses it down the hall to the next man in the chain, who whips it past my head and down the next hall. I’m not in Kansas anymore, Toto.