Sunday was a good day. :) We left early that morning to travel two hours to Chennai to be able to go to church. It is so neat to think that even though our cultures and our lives are very much different than the people in India's, but that we can still come together and be able to learn about this wonderful gospel and that we are all children of our Heavenly Father! This is just the neatest experience! The people here are amazing! All the church meetings were awesome and the people in it are amazing! I am so so so grateful that I have had this opportunity to be here with so many amazing people! I am so amazingly blessed and I don't even know why! But I am so grateful! I love you all!!! :)

Here are the pictures of the beautiful church building! :)

Oh boy! Today was such a good day! Since it was the weekend we got to go out and be "tourists". We woke up early this morning and drove to a town called Mamallapuram. It is just a neat town and there were lots of places to shop and sites to see. Luckily for me I got a lot of my shopping done that I've been wanting to get done for a while so that was just one of the great things. :) After we got done shopping we took a rikshaw up to a beach resort called Ideal Beach! Oh goodness I wish I would have taken more pictures to show you how beautiful this resort is! It cost us 400 rupees to enter the facility but it was completely worth it! We got to sit in this gazebo made of leaves right next to the see shore and they brought us a menu and we chowed down on Chinese food!!! (My favorite) Then we got to swim in the pool and it was all just completely gorgeous! On our way back to campus we stopped to eat some parotta. :) It's this delicious flat bread they have here in India that you can dip into a sort of curie sauce and it is wonderful!
We made it back to the campus just in time for movie night with the kids! We watched Nanny McPhee returns! Movie night is just great because you get to be with the kids and you can cuddle them and love them as much as you want! It is just the best thing in the world! Not only do I love being with these kids and doing this amazing work, but I also have come to love all the people that I work with and that I see everyday! These are just some of the most amazing people I have met and I will never forget the things they have taught me! Thank you all for your wonderful friendships in India and also back at home. You have no idea the influence you can have on another person! I love this life!!! :)

Pictures of Mamallapuram. :)

 Isn't she adorable???

 Shopping!!!

 Our view of the beach. :)

 Chinese!

 The very pretty pool!

 Eating parotta!!

So we had a construction rotation today. We stayed on the Rising Star Campus and we were basically told to sweep the jungle... ;) Haha no they told us to rake up all the leaves in the mango orchard and put them in a big pile at the end of the lot. Lots of lizards, lots of bugs, lots and lots of spiders....... Yeah I got grossed out a couple of times. :) But it was actually fun to be able to do this work. I have so much fun with the people in my group! We like to have little dance parties while we work and we just have a blast! :) Here are some pictures of our day. :)

 So excited to be picking up leaves with our hands......

 Emmalee is tired.

 Krissy, always ready for a photo shoot. ;)

 Our fearless leader, Carl.

 The group!

 The machete we got to cut weeds down with. :)

 The gross dirt tan-line I got..... ;)

Also, today is a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best brother in the whole world!!! I love you Chance! With my whole heart and soul! Basha and Go Go wanted to be part of this love! :)

I thought I would share some cute videos of the kids today! I just can't get enough of them they are so adorable! I can't believe I'm already halfway done with this trip! It will be so hard to leave these kids!

 

This cute little girl was trying to teach me how to dance! :) ... As you can see it didn't work out too well.;)

And this is Ruthish! The cutest little boy on this Campus!!! I love him! :)

Such a good day today! So it was medical day today where we are supposed to go out to the colonies and wash the lepers feet and everything. But today instead of actually going and washing and cleaning, we took the patients to the hospital to have checkups and get everything they needed. We were each assigned one patient and we had to stay with them the whole time and take them wherever they were supposed to go. It was a little challenging because none of the patients speak even a little bit of English so it was really hard to communicate. I had this cute little old lady whose name is Asiya.:) So going into this day I was already super nervous because I didn't know exactly what we were supposed to do, so I start walking with Asiya and we get inside the hospital and it is huge! But it is also REALLY dingy. So I'm looking around at all the other volunteers with their patients and they are holding each others hands and making hand motions to each other and I look over at Asiya and she doesn't even want to look at me or touch me. :) I was fine with that because that's kind of how I am too. But we are walking down the hall and then she all of a sudden starts taking off down this hallway in the complete opposite direction than all of the other volunteers. So I start to have a full on panic attack! I try to get her to come back down the way the other volunteers where going but she was very headstrong and of course she couldn't understand me either and so I just kept following her down all of these different hallways and I though for sure I was lost forever with this cute little woman in this hospital! Haha but she led me to this room where we waited for a long time to see the doctor only to have him tell us we were in the wrong place and to go up to the second floor. I was actually kind of glad that happened because then I knew where we were supposed to be going. :) So we made it to the second floor and found some other volunteers and were waiting in the room for the doctor to call us back. So it was our job as the volunteers the make sure that our patients were being taken care of because at these public hospitals they don't really like to work on the people with leprosy so they bump them back as far as they can so they don't have to work on them. So all of us had to keep going up to the desk to make sure our patients were going to be helped. We finally made it into the doctor and everything went great. We were told when we were done with our checkups that we were supposed to meet back down on the ground floor in the lobby. As we start walking down that way Asiya suddenly grabs my hand in, what if feel like is a death grip, and we just start walking down the hallway. I looked down at her hand, it being stricken because of her leprosy, and I was just filled with love for this woman who can't even speak to me. I looked at the other peoples faces as we walked down the hall and they almost looked confused because they look at these people who have leprosy almost as if they were monsters and I think it was surprising to them to see this white person (who they treat like celebrities) to be hand-in-hand with this older lady with leprosy. It was just a big eye-opener to me and I loved spending every minute with this wonderful lady. :)

This is the only picture I got of her because it was a pretty busy day...

When we got done at the hospital we thought that we were on our way back to campus because it was a 2 hour drive back and we were already late. But our bus driver, Anon, drove us down this back alley and all of a sudden stopped and tells us, "Get out". We were all confused and we found out that he took us to this church he wanted to show us. :) Haha so we got a tour of a church even though we were super late getting back. :) Haha it was really fun though, I love Anon! He is the coolest driver ever! :) Here are some pictures from our little detour.

And one more great thing that happened today! I got bracelets from all three of my favorite boys today! Ruthish made me the blue and red one, Go-go gave me the white one and told me to never take it off, and basha bought me the beads at the star store! I love these kids!

Basha also drew me this BEAUTIFUL picture today! I love this place with my whole heart! :)