Sri Lanka 2

A lot has happened since I last wrote. I've had two trips to other parts of Sri Lanka, both were hot and long (4 and 10 hrs), but rewarding. In Kandy, I got a chance to stay two nights on a campus in a tropical setting, where they have students from both Tamil and Sinhalise langauges, so their chapel services are a series of prayers alternating languages and then singing in English, with a sermon traslated into one or the other. I also got to eat Sri Lankan style, scooping rice mixed with curry in your hands after you've mashed it up a bit... One of the most interesting dishes was a stack of crepe like things that were formed into a bread bowl with an egg fried in the base. Then curry and fish soup is poured in and the whole thing is eaten. They also have noodle patties that go well with the different types of curry dishes (pretty spicey).

Also in Kandy, I went to the Temple of the Tooth, where the Buddha's left tooth relic is kept. It was interesting, but was under heavy security as the country has a lot of ethnic tensions these days...

Next I took an overnight train to Trincomalee on the East coast of the island. There I saw some of the devestating effects of the Tsunami and civil strife. Things are more safe in this area now, but there is a lot of work to be done still. There are many Tsunami vicitim village developments around, but some are left empty because they never got power and water, and are too far from the coast. The seminary that I visited was quite passionate and committed to training pastors to serve this needy part of the country and I was welcomed very warmly and given lots of useful insight into contextualization of theological education. A big theme from this seminary was to send the pastors out to their villages with sound theological training, but also other skills to be a multi-resource for the community.

The overnight train ride back to Colombo turned out to be all the adventure I could hope for. There was a problem with the tracks because of heavy rain, so I had to get off the train in the middle of the night, get on a packed train with standing room only for several hours, get back off the train and take a 3 hour ride in a covered mo-ped cab in the pouring rain, but I got back to a Colombo after 12 hours of travel... Things that suprised me on the trip were so many monkeys, rice fields, and some peacocks...