God did big things with my team in Myanmar as we were finishing up debrief. The last day of debrief God gave us the opportunity to start a church in the park. We saw six give their lives to Christ that day, after church in the park, leadership opened it up to the squad that some should stay back and disciple this new church. The girls on my team felt that they should stay back with this new church. They have seen great growth and discipleship in the last two week of staying back, so we praise God for the opportunity for them to disciple the new believers in a country they love.
Myself and the three other guys left for India with the rest of the squad to Calcutta India. In Calcutta we were to be there for five days to meet new contacts for future partnerships with the world race. When we were not meeting contacts we were to just ask the lord where he wants us to minister. The four of us went all in and did not reserve a hostel we just showed up. It was was not a huge deal since we arrived at 1am the first night. We actually got a decent night’s sleep in the airport, even though we almost lost one of our guys when he went outside of a single exit building. But after apologizing and asking to be let back in they finally said it was okay.
We ended up getting a nice apartment through a contact we had in the United States. It was very nice to have our own place and not be surrounded by other tourists, but to be in an indian neighborhood. Calcutta is hot, has a lot of people and some cab drivers that like to charge high for white Americans. But there are also really nice friendly people and good street food, that so far despite the warnings has not caused us any problems.
Calcutta is also the home of Mother Teresa so we were able to visit her house where she is now buried. Saturday we were even able to go and serve at one of her care home for the destitute and dying. We were able to bring the Joy of the Lord to the men that were there and pray over them.
One cool story from our time of asking the lord for ministry, he revealed to me to turn left out of our apartment and look for black, while Drew got soccer so we paired up and headed out. Right away we came upon a soccer game and made friends with two young men. Both wearing black, we prayed for one with a broken hand and no healing took place. We ended up hanging out with these two as they took us around the neighborhood. After leaving a house the man with the broken hand was in shock he no longer had pain in his hand. So cool to see how God works through relationships as we stop to interact with his children. We were able to talk to these two about Jesus and who he is and what he has done for them.
Please continue to pray for our team as we minister in a spiritually dark place that we can see lasting breakthrough. It is very easy for a Hindu to accept Jesus because they have 1.3 million Gods so they just throw him with the rest. It is very hard to for them to accept only one God. Pray for safety so that we do not endanger future world race teams or ministries that are already in place as there are some who do not like the name of Jesus being preached.
