Beauty Unimagined: The weekly // 28

We started out this week with monsoon season in full swing. Actually, it pretty much rained all week. The rain is nice because it cools everything down, but when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, the streets flood, which makes for some interesting walks and auto rides.

Some sweet nationals invited us into their home where we were able to chat and have some snacks. Oh and chai, of course.

I love seeing the Lord orchestrate events so that people can hear the truth and process it without being distracted by other people. It is a sweet reminder to my heart that while there are spiritual forces of evil in this world, He is greater and stronger than any obstacle the enemy may have in store.

In the same stream of thought, Michaela and I met this precious girl in one of my favorite spots and have hung out with her a few times since then. She is so interested in the truth, yet seemingly far from surrendering to it. Hopefully we can meet with her a few more times before we leave!

In other miscellaneous news…

One night the girls watched 3 Idiots, which is a Bollywood movie that has quickly become one of my favorite movies. This was my second time seeing it, and, much to my delight, the girls loved it.

I would highly recommend it…all three hours of it ;)

I think I found the biggest cow in India (note the cars as a reference).

We bought some mahendi cones, and I did this design on Megan's hand.

I think I'm starting to get a hold of the whole mahendi thing.

We had a team dinner at Waffle House. There are several things that India does way, way better than America does, and Waffle House is one of those things. Michaela and I split a Nutella Belgian Waffle, and let me just say, it was heavenly.

While we waited for our food, we played truth or dare Jenga. Sadly the questions and tasks were pretty lame, but it was hilarious regardless, because with these people, it's always a hilarious time.

The craziest thing that happened this week was that we sort of crashed an Indian wedding.

The weddings here last days, and this particular wedding was being held right outside of our hotel. Consequently, all of the wedding guests were staying here, and since the party was right outside our window, we could hear the music and drums well into the late hours of the night.

I have been dying to go to an Indian wedding. It's up there on my India bucket list with riding an elephant and a camel (which has yet to happen…). One afternoon it was raining and we looked out our window to see a group of people dancing and playing loud music with a guy on a horse.

Thankfully some of our national friends were with us and were able to explain it was the procession for the groom. Since it was literally right outside of our hotel, we quickly threw on rain jackets and ran down to take some pictures with high hopes that we would also be able to go to the wedding.

Before we knew what was happening, we were surrounded by said processional, being encouraged to dance while nationals snapped as many pictures and videos of us as they possibly could. We were then ushered next to the horse the groom was sitting on so that the wedding photographers could take pictures of us with the groom.

Let me just put this moment into perspective. In America, even if you are invited to the wedding, it's pretty rare you get a picture with the groom. We were a bunch of strangers that literally just walked up, and now we're in this guy's wedding photos because they ushered us beside him in order to get pictures with him. This would never ever happen in America which is why it's so awesome to me.

This was such a crazy experience, and I loved it.

Saturday we had another team adventure day.

We went to a beautiful waterfall here where we saw super adorable baby monkeys (whose parents are a bit viscous) and explored the surrounding area for a couple of hours.

Oh and of course we took awesome team pictures on railroad tracks.