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!
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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