We made it to India about 5 days ago after a 13 hour plane ride to Dubai, a 3 hour plane ride to Hydrobad and a 7 hour bus ride to another city. After a quick orientation and brief, we were assigned our ministry contacts and my team was the only team to break off from the rest of the squad late that night. At 1 am after another 3 hours of travel we finally arrived at the orphanage we would be staying at for the rest of the month. Initially I had thought we would be working mostly at this orphanage and doing our ministry there, however I learned that this would not be the case. After meeting with my contact the following morning I learned that we would actually be doing outreach in neighboring villages at night when people returned from the fields and came home from their jobs. Most of the villages we would be visiting did not have churches and many have barely heard the gospel if at all. I was extremely excited because evangelism is one of my strengths and this month looks to be an opportunity to work in my giftings.
That night our team meet with our contact Pastor Issac and his wife. They asked us to briefly introduce ourselves and share a little about our testimony and how we got started with The World Race organization. It was a good opportunity for me to hear more about my team and to here their hearts for the race. Two members of my team shared that they had both taken a 16 week class that had opened their eyes to world missions. Both of my teammates took this class at separate times and in separate colleges but the name of the class was the same. This led our contact to think we had all taken this class, and he asked "have you all received this 16 week course?" "No" I responded. "So what kind of training have you received?" he asked….
That is a very good question. Besides our training camp that was roughly 10 days long and nearly 6 months ago we hadn't received any formal training at all. I think we all sat there pondering for a bit, and the next day we all shared a mixture of our thoughts. Here we are in India, the country with a million gods, one of the worlds most spiritual countries, and we have no formal training and relatively no experience in a lot of areas and with a lot of things we'll be facing, especially as a team since we've only been together for 4 days! There was a mixture of "how did we get ourselves into this?" coupled with "what will all this look like?" "are we even qualified to do any of this?"
With our first night of ministry merely hours away we conducted our first team time. We shared in worship and then I asked the team about things God had put on my heart the very first night I became their team leader. "Why did you come on the world race, and what were you expected God to do?" For myself personally I came to see God do miraculous things in my life and in the lives of the people I came to love. From day 1 I fully expected to see miraculous signs, wonders, and healings, and I fully expect to see a dead person raised to live in the name of Jesus. The rest of the team shared their expectations or lack of setting expectations and we got real about the fact that some of us had experience in spiritual warfare and such but as a whole we are very under-qualified for any of these. However we are still called. So called in fact that we've named our team "chosen ones", a prophetic name that isn't mistakenly given.
We all decided that although we didn't know what to expect that night we'd be open to whatever God wanted to do and be willing to fight off whatever came against us. We headed 50 kilometers to a villages and entered a house of a young pastor and his family. There were about a dozen people in his home that wanted to hear the message of Christ and receive prayer. I spoke for about 2 minutes, we prayed for everyone and headed out to another village. As we got to this village we pull ip to a house and were greeted with children tossing rose petals in the air as we entered. We were honored and were lead around town to pray for various people. We ate at the last house and were once again ushered back into the SUV and headed into the heart of town.
Brad and I were sitting in the back of the SUV when we heard what sounded like a mosque. As you can imagine when the truck stopped we quickly realized that this was where we'd be conducting service that night. There were speakers set up in the middle of the towns square and there was a young girl singing a worship song. This village had no church, and most had never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and here we are getting ready to worship and share the gospel with them. It was an awesome set up!
We all got out of the truck and took our places on the only chairs that were there. Brad opened us up with 2 worship songs and people clapped and joined along although we sung and worshipped in english. After the worship Kirk stood up and shared his testimony and broke the ground and prepared peoples hearts for the Word. I wrapped up the service by sharing the gospel message from the perspective of what its all about, Gods love. The gospel isn't just getting people to say a prayer and getting them to heaven, it's A LOT more than that, and I spared no expensive and made sure I didn't sell the gospel cheap. I spoke of Gods love for us in redeeming us on the cross back to the way were we originally created for in the first place, intimacy and a loving relationship with our Father. I gave an altar call and 4 woman and 1 man responded and gave their lives to Jesus. I also called out all who were sick and hurting and told them we would pray for them all believing God would heal them. And He did. Many people that night were healed and we left the encounter filled up and full of faith. Praise God for the opportunity to be here amongst His people and to share His love across the globe.
We all look forward to more of what God is doing here in India and are blessed to be a part of it. Just this morning at an underground church here, we shared and spoke again and 14 people mostly hindus committed their lives to Christ and became christians today. Many of their families don't even know they came to church this morning, but it doesn't matter to them if they have to sneak out of the house to get here, they are hungry for the love of God and He showed up for all of us this morning. Be blessed and keep us in prayer!
