INDIA
HAS BEEN INCREDIBLE! Everything from prostitute villages, to HIV
children homes, hospitals, slum medical camps, and Hindu street
evangelism, we have seen it all. Everything from slumdog millionaire
children, poverty, and more. We’ve seen desperate children with knife
wounds, missing limbs, etc pulling on our clothes at an outdoor Hillsong
concert, on street corners, and in the markets. We have played criket
and other games in the slums as children (pillalu) come running and
touching our hair and skin, wanting hugs and kisses.
We have been
hands and feet of Jesus as we are laying hands on the sick and seeing
healing, touching the heads of children and adults and seeing
deliverance, infilling of the holy spirit, and healings. We have been to
youth camps where we have led worship in front of 500 bible students,
in churches from the slums to the ritz, and villages where the women
wear traditional dress that reflect tribal ware to keep snakes and
tigers from injury. We’ve been in traffic that is life and death, and
have seen things that people would have nightmares about. Children in
apparent hopeless situations desperate for a touch of life. We have
given out medicine in the slums, huts made of trash. Cows do not graze
in fields but in dumps. Rickshaw getaways from fights on the streets,
and living in a city with 8.3 million people.
The food keeps our
stomach alive and the extreme heat of both the sun (115 degrees) and
food kept sweat dripping from every crevis of our bodies. We have gotten
used to eating with our right hand, wiping with the left, and being
barefoot almost all the time except in dirt. We sleep in a beautiful
place with a rooftop view of the city as well as the constant running of
the blue train that graces our house multiple times a day. Our power in
our house is unpredicable and showers are buckets filled up and poured
over us. This place is incredible. Our time here has been phenomenal.
We
have truly seen restoration in people in ways that contradict western
culture and western church theology. We have heard and spoken to
countless people who have walked years in Islam and Hinduism and finally
found Jesus… their lives forever transformed. Testimonies of lives
and trials that bring tears to our team, realizing that we as Americans
have no concept of true honor, sacrifice, and adversity.
Jesus lives
here. He is working and making himself so visible to his children here
in India. I wish that Jesus would show himself in the US in the ways he
does here. We have a new understanding of the power of praying in the
holy spirit. We have new revelation of prayer and the importance of it,
due to finding ourselves in situations where truly the only way out must
have been created by the Lord. We have had team members in hospitals,
found ourselves in hiding, and pulling late late nights in prayer and
worship. We seriously live in a city where even mapquest and google
earth have no reign. We navigate by the sun and spend most our days
driving to ministry sites no less than 1 hour away. Our team is close,
and have bonded well. Vulnerability and prayer keep our hearts as one,
ministry happens daily among our team, and contacts. The enemy has tried
to tear our team apart through sickness, unpredicatable flexibility,
and life threatening situations. But as always… he has failed. The
enemy has been defeated and Jesus is reigning in INDIA!! GOD IS SO
FAITHFUL!
We have 3 days left here. Today concluded our last
“ministry day.” Tomorrow begins resort day one… we have saved our free
day money the entire trip to allocate to debreif days… we are all
getting massages and staying at a phenomenal place… and it is
deserved. We leave the night of the 10th and travel all day on the 11th,
arriving in Tulsa that night. We look forward to seeing all of you!
Continue to pray as all teams begin debriefing in their respected
countries. Also pray for FIJI… they start their 2nd month on our
return. Jesus’ name is being exalted in nations around the world.
Peoples lives will never be the same and on the other side of eternity
we will see slum children, the sick made well, the HIV+ restored and
whole. Jesus gets all the praise here in India.
Make His name glorious. You have 3 days left… ministry and missions is lifestyle and the best is yet to come!!
Love you and thinking about you as well!
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