Welcome to Manali Missives, the weblog for the next 3 and a bit years of Lena and David Reichardt.
In two or three months we intend to relocate from our beautiful home at Epping, in suburban Sydney, Australia to Manali, 2,000 metres up in the Himalayas, in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. We shall leave jobs, Lena as a general practitioner in a medical practice in the suburb of Pennant Hills, and David as a Presbytery Minister in the Uniting Church in Australia’s Parramatta-Nepean Presbytery, to be seconded by UnitingWorld, the Uniting Church’s overseas agency, (www.unitingworld.org.au) to the Church of North India’s Amritsar Diocese (www.amritsardiocesecni.org) for a period of three years. Lena will work in the 55 bed Lady Willingdon Hospital (www.manalihospital.com), on which compound we shall also live. David, who has a PhD in ecotheology, has been asked to work as an educator with an emphasis on ecology across the whole Amritsar Diocese and beyond. Perhaps most importantly, we shall be tangible expressions of Australian and Swedish cooperation and friendship with India, and the Uniting Church’s cooperation and unity with the Church of North India.
Swedish? This story has a long genesis! Lena was born in India, the daughter of Swedish missionaries. We met in India and married while working for The Leprosy Mission during the early 1980s. We have lived both in Australia and Sweden, so these 3 countries have powerfully affected who we are. Not surprisingly, then, we shall represent not only the Uniting Church, which will send us and substantially support us, but the Church of Sweden of which we are both members. More specifically we have been members of a lay movement within the Church of Sweden called Evangeliska Fosterlands Stiftelsen (Swedish Church Relief) that has a long history of sending workers to India and Africa, and David is doubly (and episcopally, with the laying on of hands) ordained as a pastor within the Church of Sweden. This has two consequences. To work within a Church that exercises personal episcope (ie. that has bishops) will not be strange for either of us. And later this month Lena will fly home to Sweden for her sister’s 60th birthday, but also to seek support from the communities of Swedish Church Relief and the wider Church of Sweden.
Those most likely to be significant in our lives during these three years are the medical superintendent of Lady Willingdon Hospital Dr Philip Alexander, his wife Dr Anna; and Pradeep Kumar (“Bunu”) Samantaroy, Bishop of the Amritsar Diocese, and his wife Lily, who is also a “presbyter” (minister) in the Church of North India. Philip, a surgeon specialising in gastroenterology, hails from the southern Indian state of Kerala. He did some of his specialist training at Sydney’s Westmead hospital, and spent six months in Broken Hill experiencing how Australians do regional and remote medicine, but also picking up the Aussie sense of humour! Anna is from the southern American state of Louisiana. A specialist in emergency medicine, she held a senior position in the U.S., but doing annual medical camps in Ladakh, then meeting Philip changed all that. Bunu and Lily come from the state of Orissa on India’s eastern seaboard. Like Philip and many other Indians they are internal migrants, and have had to learn new languages to be able to function in north-western India. But function they do, highly effectively. They are held in enormous regard by their presbyters and parishioners alike. All four are highly competent, dedicated to providing good health and pastoral care, and are devout Christians with nuanced understandings of living out and relating their faith in cross-cultural, multi-faith milieux. They are humble, which, in a highly hierarchical society is rare, and contributes to the love and esteem in which they are held. So does their commitment to the poor and the needy. Ironically, Manali is both India’s most popular honeymoon destination, attracting many young, newly wealthy middle class Indians, and it is on the main road to Ladakh, a poor, remote region high in the Himalayas, where medical attention is non-existent through the snowed-in winter months.
The Uniting Church has strong connections with the Amritsar Diocese. The UCA and the CNI are “partner churches” and, largely due to Bunu’s leadership personal relationships are starting to flourish within this framework. When David paid his first visit to the Diocese 18 months ago Bunu virtually rose from his sickbed (he was recuperating from dengue fever!) to include him in what they were doing. David was shown around for most of one day by a presbyter called Prakash William. Last month he was able to repay the favour when Rev Neil Smith, a regular visitor to the Diocese, left “Omprakash”, as he is known, and a colleague, Deepak Lal, who specialises in microfinancing, with David one sparkling Saturday morning.
But what will Lena and David do, and how shall we do it? It will be as simple as simply helping our Indian sisters and brothers. It will be as complex as having, from time to time, no idea how to do this! Lena is already in awe of Philip’s and Anna’s medical expertise, but at least she speaks Hindi! David has learnt and forgotten a southern Indian language called Telugu which, in the Punjab and the Himalayas, will be of less use than English! While he has taught for decades the prospect of educating people in the basic principles of ecology, in a language he doesn’t know yet, feels daunting. However, two things encourage us. One is the Bible passage David’s colleague Christine often quotes as she takes on jobs no one else seems to want: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13) The great value of cross-cultural exposure is that one is forced into situations outside of one’s comfort zone. That teaches one both to trust in God, and that with God’s help one has resources that are sufficient for the task. The other is that whatever we do, our being there, so long as we behave ourselves well, is the main thing. We will be symbols of solidarity, both Australian and western solidarity with India, and Christian solidarity, one part of the “body of Christ” with another. David has had the importance of this reinforced time and again by the sheer number of subcontinental Christians seeking his friendship via Facebook.
At present we are busy concluding the current phase of our lives and preparing for the next one. We have been greatly helped in this by Kathy Pereira, UnitingWorld’s Associate Director, Church Connections and Experience, and her assistant Laura McGilvray. We may not obtain paid employment in India for what we are being asked to do, and the Uniting Church no longer has enough money to completely fund overseas workers. Instead, UnitingWorld will pay, roughly speaking, to get us and our effects to and from India, and help set us up to live there, and we will have to see to our finances in Australia, such as house, insurance and superannuation payments. To raise funds for living expenses and the like Kathy and Laura are helping us find supporters. They have produced brochures promoting our cause, set up an account into which donations can be made, helped our West Epping Uniting Church (http://www.weppinguca.org.au) to stage a very successful Launch of our support-raising effort, and much more.
Kathy estimates that if another 30 families/people commit to pledge $1000 per year (that is less than $20 per week or less than that frequently used measure, the cost of a cup of coffee a day!) then our placements based in Manali will be guaranteed. If you would like to donate money to the Manali Project, as we are calling it, contact Kathy Pereira (kathyp@unitingworld.org.au, mob. +61 437 699 693, w +61 2 8267 4250) or Laura McGilvray (lauramc@unitingworld.org.au, mob. +61 406 857 222, w +61 2 8267 4411), or fill in a hard or soft copy of the support response page on our brochure.
Though dependent upon finance and grateful that a good proportion has already been pledged, as an old mathematician David would say that is necessary but not sufficient. For us to prosper in northern India we will need people’s interest, friendship, support and prayer as well. As expatriate workers with The Leprosy Mission during the 1980s we sent periodic general letters home to our supporters. We wrote these by hand, posted them by snail mail, and they were typed up, copied and sent out by TLM’s office in Melbourne. Telephone connections were abysmal and visitors few.
Today, information technology and the easy of intercontinental transport has revolutionised communications. Bunu and Philip joined and wow-ed the 120 people at the Launch last month via a Skype video connection! Text messaging by mobile phone is simple, effective and cheap. Facebook and other social media sites are very helpful communications tools. Emails come somewhere between text messaging and old fashioned letter-writing. And weblogs, so-called “blogs”, such as this one, enable a more considered discussion of ideas with a large audience. Populous developing countries such as India now have better mobile phone networks and wi-fi coverage than we have in Australia. And should anyone wish to visit us (the invitation is open!) Indian transport infrastructure has improved as well. Because of the proximity to Pakistan and Chinese Tibet, and the consequent presence of the Indian military the road to Manali is mostly good, though, because it passes through the Himalayas one is likely to negotiate the odd landslide!
We would love contact with you! Most of all we crave your prayers. Prayer is the sine qua non of the Christian life: nothing works without it. We would love you to join our “Manali Prayer Partnership”! If you would like to do that please contact us. You’ll receive a monthly prayer bulletin with news and suggestions for prayer, and a promise that we’ll pray for you too. So, for this month we would ask you to pray that:
- the necessary financial support target will be reached before August so we can plan when to leave;
- we will submit our visa applications within the next 2 weeks, and that they will be quickly approved;
- that the various completions at work and at home (including concreting the storage shed’s floor and re-building its roof) will be completed well before we leave.
- Lena’s trip to Sweden will go well.
We invite you to join us in our Manali adventure!
Grace and peace,
Lena and David Reichardt
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