Here is an e-mail to one of our volunteer coordinators….

David,

Although I was looking forward to visiting with the student you ‘hooked me up with’, I was not prepared for such a fabulous day!!

I picked San up at UTA at 11:30 so we could go visit a FW site, come back to my house for lunch (I live 1 mile from Bear Valley) and then take him back when ‘we were done’.  I think that if he had stayed until New Years Day, we still wouldn’t have been through talking, laughing and exchanging stories.  My whole family was taken with him.  San was outgoing and personable yet appropriate and respectful.

When he got into my car at UTA I complimented him on his bravery for agreeing to go home with some unknown woman and told him that I had 900 questions for him but to ‘please let me know if my question is inappropriate or offensive’.  He agreed and asked me to do the same.  That is where the fun began.

We went to the Stock Yards, where naturally we talked about cows, the eating of beef, what would happen to you if you did eat beef, what if you converted to Muslim or Christianity, would you eat meat then- tons of real and hypothetical questions.

We got back to my house at 1:45 to eat and at 6:45 San said that he had read somewhere that he should have left our house after 2-3 hours and was afraid that he had over-stayed his welcome.  We talked about how that is probably true and with someone else ‘this is how you would bring up the subject of leaving, if you had your own car vs if you needed a ride home, etc’.   We then talked about because of my comments (I had scheduled the whole day for our visit, we have nothing planned for the rest of the day) and that it was obvious that we were truly enjoying our conversation that the 2-3 hour time limit was probably waived, etc….

We touched on every aspect of Indian life vs American life and ‘what-ifs’. My son is home from college for Christmas and opted to stay to talk with us rather than meet his friends at the mall as planned.  That is how comfortable and enjoyable our day was.

I got him back to UTA at 8:30 and could have talked in the car for 2 more hours.  We did mention going to the rodeo together.

Thank you for the introduction.  This experience was priceless.

Katie

ps.  I did learn that it is rude to point at him. I am going to have to work on that and the whole ‘talking with my hands’ thing.

From Katie a volunteer to who works with our ministry partner David Underwood at UTA. Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality