India,
You have been filled with many adventures for the first 5 days of being here. 42 hours of travel from leaving Washington, D.C. on July 6th and reaching our destination. We traveled by shuttle, plane, car, bus and tuk tuks. It was wonderful and filled with lots of memories already just trying to reach you! Hours of flying, hours of waiting in the airport, intense airport security searches, honking horns, lots of people, super star feelings, close encounters on the road with other vehicles, people and animals, monsoon rains, and many opportunities to be joyful amongst the long hours and exhaustion.
We spent a few days with the squad before we broke up into our teams and split to meet up with our different ministry hosts. My team was so blessed! We were sent onto a bus to travel to a village 3 hours away from the squad. After spending a few days here, this is a haven to us. We spend the later part of the day going out to different villages praying for people.
It has been a bit of a challenge for us to all adjust to the ministry host’s way of ministering to the villages because we go from house to house praying for the needs of people. This has made us all question, “Why do they want us to pray for them?” Do they really believe that God will heal them or do they only think that because we are white and from America that they will be healed and have prayers answered? This has been tough for all of us and if you could keep us in your prayers and send encouragement, we would greatly appreciate it. We do know that God has called each one of us to be a part of this ministry and to help bring Life to these people.
A lot of challenges have risen doing life in India but it has been huge living life with the ministry family and with my World Race family. We have been blessed with wonderful Indian food every meal, a place to come together and fellowship with one another, a safe place to challenge one another in order to become the sons and daughters that God created us to be, a place to serve and love on people and a home. India has been a love hate relationship but is being showered in God’s gracious love.
For more updates on what we have been doing check out my Team Leader Sam’s blog at samfrancart.theworldrace.org. She has been doing a really good job at setting aside time to write up blogs so that when we do have the opportunity to find internet cafes, that she can post them. I will try harder to work on that so that you all can stay updated on what is going on.
Prayers: Pray for India and the beautiful people that are here. Pray for the people that we are ministering to, that relationships are being built and that in the short visits that we have with some of them, that they all are planting seeds. Pray for our team. We are all learning how to live life together, and there have been some difficulties (surprise surprise!) but there has been a lot more joy and growth together in this short amount of time.
