Coimbatore Ground Level and Skies

Before we look to the skies, we will begin on the ground level. This week has been a slower week. Missionary transfers took place this week, so that seems to make things a bit slower for them, and that seems to filter down to us for some reason. This week also follows a busy weekend from the Coimbatore District Conference, so many people are catching up from that. Not all the missionaries made their transfers. Elder Kumar has to remain in Coimbatore until the new American elders can get their visas for India. The expectation is that Elder Kumar will leave Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. Before the transfers took place, we all went to KFC for lunch on Tuesday of this week. Our eyes were directed upward, but they stopped at the KFC sign.


We went out for lunch with Elder Kumar and the 1st branch missionaries this week (August 3) to Adavaas Restaurant. After lunch, our eyes were directed upward to the sky. We saw a strange phenonemon. Rainbow colours encircled the sun. It was a bit eery. The space between the ring and the sun was a grey type colour. All the people we spoke to said they had never seen anything like it before. Of course, we looked it up on the internet, and the coloured ring was simply the result of the sun shining through the ice crystals that make up a particular type of cloud. We have a hard time thinking of ice crystals in India, but high up in the air, ice crystals form.

At the ground level, we don't notice the skies a lot because the ground level is so busy. We are constantly watching ahead and behind us for traffice, so the skies are often neglected. We are grateful that the restaurant is on a quieter street  so we had the opportunity to see this.

Our eyes began to go upward to the sky here, but they stopped when we noticed the name of this apartment building - Ram Apartments. We had to take the opportunity to take Elder Ram's picture in front of it. He must be famous to have a building named after him!

Coimbatore doesn't have many tall buildings, so we don't often have the opportunity to lift our eyes up very far. We mostly see the homes of the people here. This is the Alexander family with a friend (standing on the right). We are amazed that a family of 5 or 6 can live in a small house like this. The house basically has one small room about 9 ft. x 9 ft. Once inside the door, there is room for a bed on either side of the door. This building contains several houses. The Alexander family is taking the missionary discussions, and the younger sister (in front) and her friend (on the right) are also attending our English class.

Thursday was some kind of celebration or holiday. We think it is called Raksha Bandhan, which has to do with the tradition where sisters tie a piece of thread around their brother's wrist, and the brothers give their sisters a present to show that they will protect their sisters throughout their lives. The local Hindu temple was busy all day long. We could hear drums and chanting from early morning to about 3:00 in the afternoon. We were busy in the apartment, so we couldn't go out to see what was going on until 3:00. When we arrived at the temple, all the drumming, etc. stopped, but all the people at the temple joined together for some food.

We moved on to a different temple, but we found no evidence that any celebrations had occurred there. We were lifting our gaze up to look at the temple, and we saw the elephant in the front of this temple. Everyone here calls this the elephant temple.








With our gaze on the temple, slightly above ground level, we almost missed seeing these two women sleeping at the bottom of the temple steps. We were very close to them before we noticed them. They were not necessarily homeless people; they may be women who are hired to do cleaning at the temple, and they were simply taking an afternoon nap. We have seen this before at our church building. Two women are employed to keep the grounds at the church; we have seen them stop in the afternoon to take a nap on the steps at the back entrance. This reminds us that because so much is going on in the streets and because everything is so crowed together, we can easily miss many things.



In order to truly lift our eyes toward the skies, we must completely leave the ground level where we can be free from distractions - well almost free from distractions. This the the view we have of the sky from the top of our apartment building. This is 5 levels above the ground. Looking at this view, one would never suspect the constant business and distractions found at ground level. This view is facing south as the sun began to set.





If we turn slightly to the right of the above picture (to the west), we see an entirely different view. We would never see this at ground level. We see mountains when we walk on the Sungum By-pass, but the view is not so spectacular as this. From up here, we see a much larger mountain chain than when we walk on the street. We never knew so many mountains surrounded Coimbatore. When the sun sets, it becomes dark very quickly, which is very different from home. The colours of the sunset may not as spectacular as at home, but the view is still inspiring. We can understand why the prophets of old went to the mountain tops to receive revelation and inspiration, for there they could be in a different world above the commotion and noise at ground level.