The eighth and final entry in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who traveled to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood. + Click here to read previous posts
Our final stop is Mussoorie, an hour's harrowing taxi ride up into the Himalayan foothills from Dehradun. And it's dazzling. The town spreads across the hilltops, often seeming to float above the clouds. A short walk over the hillcrest reveals a 180-degree view of snowcapped Himalayas. Beyond them lies Tibet.
Mussoorie is the opposite of Mumbai: serene, beautiful, quiet. Though we all loved our time in the cities this comes as a relief. There's a well-regarded Hindi-language school here, so the town hosts a lot of expats. (It also hosts a lot of monkeys, who tend to swoop down and steal the expats' food off the café table.) Some of them (the expats) attend the tiny church run by our friends, a couple we'll call Fred and Ethel.
Fred grew up in one of the villages that lie in the shadows of those aforementioned Himalayas. No power, running water, or driveable roads, if I remember correctly. His family's faith, while technically Hindu, might be more accurately described as animist. They worshipped household gods. They kept homemade idols.
As a teenager Fred was recruited by some missionaries to assist at a school and it was there that he came to believe in Jesus. (They thought he was already a believer. Oh, that wacky cross-cultural communication thing
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