This month we’re in India, which is a semi-closed country, which means that you are allowed to be a Christian/Hindu/Muslim/etc BUT you are not allowed to convert. You can not convert to another religion or attempt to convert others to yours. Which means that ministry here looks a little different. We can love on people. We can teach them skills. We cannot evangelize like we did in Africa. There’s no door-to-door ministry or do you know Jesus? conversations, instead we’re SHOWING love to people and feeding life into them by building community.
Tomorrow we have the first of several Christmas events. We have invited women in the community to come celebrate with us. There will be skits, conversations, games, and music. Despite the warm weather, we may even teach them how to make paper snowflakes.
Christmas Eve and Christmas morning we will have similar celebrations, but both men and women will be invited and many of those that come will likely be from the church and Covenant Worship community. Am I bummed to miss Christmas in the U.S.? To not be able to celebrate with my family on Christmas morning, go to a candlelight service for the first time in my remembered life, or ring in the New Year with the friends I love? Absolutely. BUT this year I have had the opportunity to see another community, the community that comes from loving God and wanting to love others better because you know His love for you well. This is not to say my friends don’t get this, many of them do and they are amazing loving people, but I get the rare gift of seeing what it looks like globally.
We also had a chance this month to meet some World Race Alumni. Covenant Worship was hosting a WR Alumni and his wife when we got here and we were blessed to get to spend an evening playing games and getting to know them. They are amazing people and there is a crazy bond of knowing that they have lived a journey like the one we’re experiencing now. We were also blessed to cross paths with a Kingdom Journeys team; these men are Race Alumni who have chosen to continue the journey by going another 6 months to work building specific ministries in 3 countries. They were at the end of their journey and hearing them talk about everything God did was amazing. I was impressed by these men of vision and their stories. If you would like to check out Kingdom Journeys and what they did the past few months, their team page is http://kingdomjourneys.org/mens-team-two-2/
Some of them still need to raise more money to pay for all that they did over the past six months. AIM choose to let them remain on the field even if their goal wasn’t met but they are still responsible for the financial commitment. These men have done great things from helping to build and support the church community in India to jumping off a cliff while track bombing in China (it’s a good story- read it here: http://lukegeldmacher.kingdomjourneys.org/) If you are feeling generous, I would love for you to support them financially to lessen the amount they’ll need to repay as they begin their transition back home:
Kyle Hyche: kylehyche.kingdomjourneys.org
Luke Geldmacher: lukegeldmacher.kingdomjourneys.org
Pat Stiller: patstiller.kingdomjourneys.org
You can call it a Christmas gift to me if you wish to. 😉
Speaking of Christmas gifts… Covenant Worship has produced a worship CD (in Taligu, the local language in our part of India) and it’s beautiful. Consider getting a copy of it for yourself or as a gift and supporting their ministry. You can find it on iTunes here: https://itun.es/us/hZWb2
If you’d like to support other good causes- check out these organizations we’ve come across during our race and that we’re passionate about supporting:
The Hope Foundation/Manna Worldwide (Kenya-International): www.hopefoundation.co.ke/ We were blown away by how well loved these kids are. The school staff does everything it can to give the kids a good education, a sense of love, food, and anything else they can offer. The children there are impacted greatly by the school and what Manna is doing there. The Hope Foundation specifically works with the two schools my team worked with while in Kenya, so if you support this organization you will be supporting the kids and community we worked with.
Resue Pink (India): www.rescuepink.org/ Rescue Pink is doing amazing work with women in order to try to prevent female infantcide. This is a new partnership with the World Race so the team that was sent there is the first of what we hope to be a long partnership. Rescue Pink is part of India Christian Ministries, a long term partner of the World Race and the overhead agency for the Covenant Worship program my team is with this month.
Raising Hope (Uganda): raisinguphopeforuganda.org We had the chance to meet with Patrick, the founder of Raising Hope, while in Uganda and he has an amazing testimony. He grew up on the streets and was able to turn his life around. Now he spends his life ministering to boys and young men on the street and helping them to get off drugs, have a home, and get a skill set to help them to build a life. This is the first organization I found on the race which I knew immediately I wanted to come home and support. If you would like to see stories from the team that did ministry with this organization, the team name is Selah Vie and you can view their Uganda blogs here: http://www.theworldrace.org/?tab=blogs&subtab=blogsearch
Thank you and…
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.
