India is ........ Global Video Challenge

My son, Jonny has produced a video of his trip last year to Kashmir where he was involved in helping teach 90 India school kids to ski on a golf course!   They were all from CMS-founded Tyndale-Biscoe School in Srinagar (which celebrates its centenary this year). The invitation to help came when they visited the school, as part of a visit to the Diocese of Amritsar, following on from the SACYN conference in Nepal and the Asia CMS CoMP conference in Amritsar in 2010. Jonny came along as photographer and took pictures of all the CoMPs.

We also went with Bishop Samantaroy up to a Youth conference in Gulmarg run by the Diocese of Amritsar and visited the T-B school in Srinagar, near the famous Dal Lake.  A conversation with the principal’s son over a cup of tea, lead to Jonny being invited to return and help teach skiing to kids at the school.

You may also remember that the beautiful (wooden, Chalet style) daughter school in Tanmarg was also burnt to the ground by a mob in reaction to an alleged Koran burning by a pastor in the US. Ironically the only Korans burnt were those in the school library burnt as a result of the arson attack!   Kashmir remains a fragile, conflict torn region and peaceful encounters, like the ski school, are all the more necessary.

Jonny and Stefan had both served with Skiers for Christ (SfC)   - a specialized ministry to skiers and snowboarders. They desire to share their faith, in practical ways, by serving the skiing and snowboarding community.  So they undertook the trip as a joint AsiaCMS & SfC enterprise in Feb 2011.   

This was one of 3 AsiaCMS interchange projects in 2011, including Chuli teaching cricket to Nepali Girls and Frederica facilitating Community Art in Pakistan. All three trips found their origin as a by-product of the SACYN conference meeting in Nepal

Stephen, the CMS Coordinator for India helped to set it all up and to orientate them on their exchange trip.  They also visited Dr Lalita in Pune and made a video of her work   called Positive + Children

The video Jonny made of Kashmir is stunningly beautiful......    

He also entered a briefer version of the video into the India Is Global video challenge and got through to the final round - one of 30 finalists - the outcome all depends on social network voting.

His video can be found on the India Is website.  (or You can cut and paste in the following link...http://indiais.org/rateit_eachvideos.php?userid1=372&videoid=3   and then you have 5 votes ..... so make them count…  that's the Challenge...