Spending three days in the hospital of the 14 days we’ll be here in Mumbai pretty much tossed the schedule our daughter Heather had planned for our visit. As a result, we spent the day today in different parts of Mumbai. We had lunch in Chili’s where the menu items were generally western, but didn’t have anything on the menu I recognized from our last visit to Chili’s a couple of weeks ago. However for my lunch, the chicken tenders were good, the “Peach Breezer” was a delicious drink, and the french fries were very tasty. Nina had a chicken salad with french fries and our daughter Heather had a chicken burger (I’m not sure you can buy a hamburger made with real beef anywhere in Mumbai). The total bill for the three of us was 2,286 Rupees ($36.40), very comparable to a lunch in the US.

Mumbai is definitely a place of enormous contrasts. For instance, the area where our daughter and her husband live is very modern. Their apartment is on the top floor of a 36 story high-rise in a circle with several other high-rises enclosing a nice garden. It’s a block away from the slums. All of the significant western brands are here including Häagen-Dazs, Louis Vinton, CitiBank, McDonalds (but there’s no beef), and Krispy Kreme and many, many more.

On the other hand, traffic is horrendous. I had a hard time looking out the windshield as our driver took us around the city today. For instance, there are 128,000 auto-rickshaws prowling the streets along with another 100,000 yellow and black taxi’s, all trying to coexist on the roads with close to a million private automobiles, public buses and what seems to be a gazillion motorcycles. Horns are mandatory and there is a distinct and unique horn-honking language of the road. We haven’t seen a single accident; I’m sure the legendary Indian passive/aggressive mannerisms were born on the roadways.

We visited four beautiful and elaborate Hindu temples, drove past a Zoroastrian Fire Temple, and a couple of Jain temples. We drove by the vegetable and flower markets (absolutely jammed with people … a good place to get a thorough body massage). We walked through a couple of shopping areas. It was all a lovely combination of scents, sounds, and colors. And here in Mumbai, the scents, sounds, and colors are never subdued!

I walked through an electronics section of a supermarket. Everything that I could buy in the US is available to buy here in India. The prices looked to be anywhere from 15% to 25% cheaper than in the US. There were a number of items for sale that I haven’t seen on sale in the US, all with Japanese names. The number of handsets, tablets, and phablets available for sale was amazing. I watched a demo for a few minutes on the curved ultra-HD tv from Samsung (a tidy $6,800). The detail and clarity of the picture was breathtaking.

We also spent an hour at a migrant worker children school. This school is one of several sponsored by an NGO called Mumbai Mobile Creches. These are children of migrant construction workers whose parents can’t afford to send them to public schools and who would get no education at all otherwise.

Our daughter volunteers at this school each week. When we got there she exclaimed, “Oh my! They now have doors on the rooms!” We spent the hour helping them make hand puppets. I thoroughly enjoyed our time there and the happiness and enthusiasm of the children. The tag line for the NGO is “Futures Under Construction” … a delicious play on words while emphasizing that, for these children in destitute families, the way out of poverty is certainly through education.

The four LDS missionaries here in Mumbai came over for dinner last evening. All four of them are Indian. One is the first person in his family to join the Church, two were baptized along with their parents, and one is a 2nd generation member. The discussion was very interesting. All of them are in their mid to late 20’s. Three of them are college graduates. One has an MBA in accounting and finance. Apparently it is normal to finish with schooling before going on a mission as the colleges and universities don’t have a provision for interrupting the education for a religious sabbatical. Taking a break between secondary school and college causes government funding for education to be lost.

The New Dehli Mission covers all of India and Pakistan. Most of the missionaries are natives. The Pakistani missionaries are not allowed to come to India and the Indian missionaries can’t serve in Pakistan for political reasons. Foreign missionaries can get a visa for about six to nine months and then must leave the country for at least 90 days before returning. Consequently, foreign missionaries (say from the United States) will serve up to half of their mission assignment to the India New Dehli mission in a mission in the Philippines. Also, the Indian and Pakistani missionaries go to the MTC in Manila, Philippines. They are there for two weeks, go to the Temple twice while they are there, and probably won’t be able to return to the Temple again until they are going to be sealed. The mission sees around 300 baptisms a year in India and twice that in Pakistan. There are about 4,000 members in total in both countries.

We’re having fun! I’ll get my pictures downloaded and put together a gallery in the next couple of days. I’ve managed to stay out of the hospital for 30 hours….