A Visit to the Colony

Today our work took us to the Vandelur leprosy colony in Chennai.

Abraham sat down to have his feet washed. He watched me as I fumbled around. One glove ripped. Then another. The towel slipped off my leg. He smiled as he watched and then he started singing. 

Hopefully you gave yourself time to watch it to the end. I'm not sure if the song or the prayer was my favorite part. The words are praises and thanks to Jesus. I now have a human face I can put on the familiar scripture story. Abraham is not yet healed, yet he is the one who expresses his gratitude. Freely. Every day.

Words never can do an experience like this justice. I'll let the pictures of the people and the colony do the speaking. I would have loved to document more of it on film, but I felt like I was violating a certain sacred ritual every time I pulled the camera out of my bag. Here's a glimpse:

Right next to the colony happens to be the zoo. Of course we couldn't come all that way and not check it out. It didn't take us long to notice there were two main attractions for the Indians today-

AND WHITE PEOPLE. 

We seriously couldn't get 10 feet before we were pointed at, gawked at, or begged to pose with them so they could take our pictures. Jaxon got caught with a group of ladies that couldn't stop squeezing his cheeks. Too bad I missed that moment with my camera!

All in all we had a fun experience. We rented bikes to ride through the zoo...

I saw one of my favorite animals...

And thankfully none of us had to spend our hard earned rupees on urination or "defaecation".