SURREAL..........

That's pretty much the only way to describe this entire week!!  It has truly been surreal.  We've had many conversations starting with, "how often does this happen?"

The past 3 days have included the following:

Wednesday - visited the Taj Mahal, which was absolutely amazing!  Even the 2nd time seeing it, it was incredible.

Thursday - we spent the afternoon with the kids at the orphanage, took them to a biodiversity park that's run by the University here in Delhi (which, is approximately .5 miles from their house and they had never been), and played with the kids.  I had a great conversation with Pastor Raju, who cares for the children (Raju comes from a Hindu family and his wife is from a Muslim background).  The sweetest thing that we saw with their interaction with the children is that they call Raju and his wife "mom" and "dad" (of course, in Hindi, not English) and they don't make any distinction between the kids that are orphans and their biological children.  It was incredible to spend the afternoon with the kids that we met in September and that some of us are sponsoring.  AMAZING!!!  Raju introduced me to Ankit as his Aunt.....which was pretty incredible!!  They sang songs for us and recited scripture too.  The story that Raju shared with us about praying for salvation for his family was amazing......he prayed for 6 years for them and finally one came to Christ, then another.  This is after his family had told him that he could live any type of lifestyle that he wanted (indulge in drinking, smoking, etc.....) and they would take him back, but not if he followed Christ.  He said, "I wanted Christ that badly."  Now, he has been redeemed and because of his prayers, his mom and 2 sisters are also part of the body of Christ.  After this, we visited a mall in the city and then went to eat an Indian dinner.

Friday - let's see.....where do we start?  Well, we all decided to wear our sarees/suits today, which definitely opened many hearts to us throughout the day.  Our first stop of the day was at the Sikh temple of Gurudwara and we learned more about their beliefs.  When we started to leave, the elders asked if we could stay and have some chai with them and we took a few pictures with them as well.  Seriously, how often does that happen?!?!?!  Next, Shayna and I got lessons in how to appropriately wrap our sarees by the ladies at the first training center we visited and we all had henna applied.  We were able to talk a little with the ladies there, but most of them speak no English.  We went from there to eat lunch at a side-shop/cafe/road restaurant (we are not sure what to actually call it) and ate lunch, which was delicious!!  It's a place where the locals would eat regularly and to feed 6 people was 350 Rs, which comes to be about $8......CRAZY!!  Then, we headed to the other training center operated by COI and we were greeted by a very excited teacher who seemed overwhelmed that we were wearing our sarees. She said many times how happy she was that we were wearing clothing that reflected the culture.....she said, "my culture, my culture."  They then did some eyebrow threading, applied more henna and fixed our hair.  Vijay tells us that most of them are from strict Hindu families and have not accepted Christ, although, the main instructor has become a Christ follower.  It's very difficult for them to follow Christ as there is much family pressure and persecution for those who do.  But, today, while we were there they were able to have fun and by happy for a few minutes.  They even taught us a few Bollywood dance moves, which Shayna and I enjoyed thoroughly.  :-)  After that, we went to Pastor BN's house where we visited with him and his family.  I asked Cara at one point, "isn't it interesting that the same word we've used to describe this whole week, surreal, is probably exactly what BN is feeling right now too."  It's just so amazing that they invited us into their home, we had "crunchies" and visited with his wife and children.  Pastor BN has never been a part of a visit with a short-term team until this week and Vijay said that BN was incredibly honored to have the opportunity to visit with us.  It's been so hard to communicate to everyone that there is absolutely nothing special about us at all with words, but I really feel like that we have shown it with our actions.

Please join us in praying for our day on Saturday as it's our last day here and we are all very sad to be leaving, but know that we have to get back to work/school/life in the US.  We will be leaving early, early, early Sunday morning (around 1:00 am-ish local time is when our flight leaves) and should be back in Birmingham around 4:45 pm on Sunday.  Also, please join us in praying for the people of Japan as we got word about the Tsunami earlier in the day today.  We know that God is in complete control and will be glorified through this disaster and we know that He has a plan that we can't understand and this will further His kingdom, according to His plan.

Slums, Sarees, and Sharing........

OK, so you wouldn't believe the past 2 days if you had lived them with us!!!  There is so very much to share, but so little time to share it as it's already after 12:15 am here and we will be leaving early for the Taj Mahal on Wednesday.  But, I'm going to try to sum it all up as best I can.

On Monday, our group was privileged to visit with some of the women and some of the men that live in the Shaihabad Dairy (please excuse spelling as I'm pretty sure that this is incorrect) and discuss community issues that they face on a daily basis.  Shayna, Jamie and Bethany visited with the women and played with the children and Cara and I were able to visit with the 6 men that came.  Amongst the challenges they discussed were lack of respect from children toward their parents, alcoholism in the community (80,000 people who live in 15,000 houses and approximately 80% of the men in the community are alcoholics), gambling, and access to healthcare and post offices.  It was a great time for a little bit of conversation and to begin to develop a relationship with the local church there in the dairy, which is pastored by Naresh.  After these sessions, we took a break to talk with Vijay about many topics, one in particular being the impact of short-term missions from the point of view of the local church and specifically his experiences.  We were so happy to have his open and honest responses to these questions and to hear how uplifting it is for him to be able to share his culture with others and for the relationships that do develop because we come to their city and specifically these communities.  After this long and very encouraging conversation (if you want to know specifics about it, please ask any one of us and we'll be happy to tell you), we headed out to the slums in the dairy.  This was an experience like I hadn't seen.....I had seen poverty like this and people living in "houses" like this, but not on this grand a scale.  To hear the stories of the ladies who lived there, specifically the story of the mother of one Muslim family who lives there was such an amazing experience.  After this, we had lunch, rode the metro to try to get a glimpse of these size of the city and it is absolutely huge!!!!!!  After the metro ride, we visited a saree shop where we each picked out at least 1 traditional set of clothing, which we are all very excited about!!  We visited a shop that Vijay had been to only once before and since we were able to purchase a few items from them, have them fitted and stitched them up for us while we are here.  Since we bought a few things from them and we are white Americans, they also began to beg Vijay for us to come and join them in their home for dinner.  Vijay told them repeatedly no, but.......

We ended Monday late and were a little excited to start Tuesday a little later in the morning.  This morning, we participated in a service at one of the churches in honor of International Women's Day.  We were able to share testimonies of God in our lives - everything from our salvation to carrying out good works, by God's grace, in hard times, and even the great commission.  They seemed to understand very well what we were talking about, which is always a blessing.  They also had questions for us.....of course, the kind that we hate answering, like, "are you married?" "how old are you?" "why aren't you married, you don't want to be?"........oh the cultural barriers that make us smile, right?  :-)  After the women's day celebration, we went to KFC for a little "snack" and then to a monument in Delhi, called Humayun's Tomb, and walked around a bit to see that structure.

You remember my mentioning the family from the saree shop and their persistence, WELL, we headed to their house for dinner and to pick up our sarees.  We met at the shop at 7:00 pm (we also met with Vijay's wife, Marie, there) and they had been preparing the whole day for us to visit and the whole community was aware that we were coming and helping to prepare......most of the community is their family.  They fed us a 4-curry meal (typical in India is 7 curries) and dessert and kept trying to feed us more and more and more.  We were miserably full and ready to try on our sarees and head back to the hotel.  But, some alterations were needed, so we couldn't leave right away.  They were able to make the alterations right there.  During the visiting time, we learned about the hindu god that they worship as well as more information about their family.  This opened an opportunity for us to leave a gift with them.....it was a gift of a book of Bible stories for their children, then the family told us that they had a gift for us.  Before we were able to leave, they presented us with our gifts, which, were small replicas of hindu gods.  Please be in prayer for this family, Garg is their family name, as they have such great dispositions and want so desperately to work hard, be honest and share their possessions, but they don't have Christ.

There are so many, many, many prayer requests from yesterday and today that I can't mention them all here and they range from health-related concerns to persecution of women by their families because of their conversion to Christianity.  Please remember these women, men, and children that we've come into contact with over the past few days and the ones that we will encounter during the remainder of our journey here.  God has done some amazing things......I can't share them all through this message, but just wanted you to have a glimpse of them.  Tomorrow, we will visit the Taj Mahal and Thursday and Friday, we plan to take part in more meetings of women and children.

WOW!!! What a Day!!!

Hi all!!  I hope that this message finds you doing well and enjoying your Sunday!  I just wanted to let you know what our Sunday here, in Delhi, included and leave you with a few prayer requests for tomorrow.

First, we started the morning with a wonderful Indian breakfast, which, after only 3 hours of sleep was just what we needed to get us moving this morning.  Then, our team of 5 split into 2 groups to visit house churches. Shayna and Bethany went with Vijay to one house church in Delhi and Cara, Jamie and I went with Pastor BN to another house church.  It was such a GREAT experience for all of us and each of us left with very valuable lessons from this first day.  One was simply to see the church, a body of believers, worshipping in very tiny rooms and on rooftops......anywhere they had room and to see their freedom in worship.  You'll have to ask us for our individual stories when we get back home.....I'm certain that none of us will decline an invitation to talk about it.  :-)  After a time of worship and a lesson from the Word, we met back up at McDonald's (only, this McD's has no "Big Mac" on their menu) and had our chicken sandwiches and veggie burgers.

After lunch, we visited for a few more minutes with BN and with Vijay, then we set out to visit a Hindu temple.  The best word that I can think of to describe what was saw was simply disheartening.  It's such a HUGE place with beautiful parks and a very nice building, but it's occupied with so many false gods that so many people come to worship.  They also had lots of pictures and sayings from the Gita around and it really did make it far more easy to understand how false doctrine has crept into the church.  Vijay also pointed out to us a group of people that he said was a bride's family and groom's family meeting to plan a wedding for an arranged marriage.  Quite interesting to think about, isn't it?

A few prayer requests for tomorrow are for the women and kids that we will encounter in the slums and for the words to say when we visit with them. We also ask for a restful night's sleep for our team and for continued prayer for our partners here.

MEMORY OF INDIA

“You are leaving with memory of India” the gentleman at the passport control desk says to me.  Of course (as happens most of the time when people talk to me), I didn’t get it all the first time, so I asked him to repeat himself.  He said again, “you are leaving with memory of India” and then pointed to the henna (on my hands and arms) that the girls had done just before we got ready to head to the airport for our flights back to the US.

A note about the trip, the time in India was absolutely incredible!  It was definitely a time to completely rely on the LORD and His Spirit to work - no television, no phone calls, very few e-mails, and no work for 10 days.  Of course, the compromise to that was cold showers, nominal AC at times and hot, humid weather.  This was my 5th time out of the United States and it definitely had the most impact on me.  The LORD revealed to me time and again how I am so inadequate to do anything in this life apart from His grace and mercy and strength.  I realized that, at that point, I had never brought a biblical truth to a guy over the age of 18 years old (sure I’ve taught younger boys and girls and I’m honored to lead an amazing group of young ladies in Bible study each week, but I had never led men in any study of the Word - always felt that was the job of another godly man).  I realized that I spend more time by myself than I had ever thought - these things become apparent when you are literally always with someone else for 10 days.  I realized how amazing the people are that the LORD brought together to be a part of this particular team and I so enjoyed getting to know everyone better.  It only took me an hour after getting home to start to miss all of these people with whom I had spent the previous 10 days. I found that I liked the fact that someone else got to make all of the decisions!  And, I was amazed at the beauty of the people there, a natural beauty, and their wonderful, servant hearts.  There are so many personal stories about this trip and the ways that LORD stretched me, in particular, but I won’t go into those details right now.

The thing that has struck me the most since being back is how quickly we forget.  As the henna started to fade from my hands and arms, it was just a shocking visual reminder of how much information we take in on a regular basis and how quickly we forget it.  The scary part of that is that we take in God’s creation on a daily basis; by this, I mean, we see the beauty of the flowers, feel the heat of the sun and coolness of the wind, we see the starry hosts that He brings out one by one and He knows their names, and we forget that so quickly.  We forget that He created us and that He is the one who is giving us breath and life and money to pay our bills and the job that we have....even on the worst of the bad days, we are still His representative to the people who are around us.  It’s His grace that lets us be His ambassadors to those that are in the circle of influence that He has given us.  How do we think that we can ever give God anything?  It’s all His already!  We allow ourselves to get so distracted by television, music, work, computers, and, well, life in general that we sometimes don’t even make time to read the Word that He has given us so that we can know Him.  And, we justify it by saying things like, “well, God, I’m just too tired because I was out being that light in the world that you called me to be” or “God, I told somebody about you today, surely that’ll give me a pass on my time with You tonight.”  Or, maybe we’re not so bold to actually say that or think that, but we spend an extra hour watching that favorite show on TV, or playing on facebook a little longer than we planned or get caught up playing “angry birds” on our iPhone (oh wait, maybe that's just me that does that).  By doing that, we have totally looked God in the face and said, “I don’t have time for You, Creator of the universe, because I’m too busy worshiping the things that You’ve made.”  You might think that it sounds harsh.....it is harsh!  Because, the more time we spend making excuses, the less time we spend on our knees before Him in prayer and in His Word getting to know Him.  And, the easier it becomes to not make time for Him tomorrow.  But, scripture says that we are “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23).  How can we do that if we don’t spend time in His Word daily and spend time in prayer daily?  God knows that we are very temporal creatures, only interested in the “here and now,” and that we can’t retain a lot of information beyond that.  But, He is worthy of all of our time and all of our efforts and all of our thoughts should be nothing but praise and adoration for Him....for He is the one who gives us the time that we have and the ability to think thoughts of praise and honor toward Him.  Could you imagine getting to know a friend by maybe calling them only on Sundays when there are a lot of other people around you and you can’t really focus on what you needed to hear or say?  Or, maybe only calling them on holidays?  Yet, we don’t see anything wrong with someone claiming they are a Christian (someone who says that they want their lives to mirror Christ) when they only participate in corporate worship on Easter and Christmas and we see no fruit of their faith in their daily lives.....and we ask ourselves, what’s wrong with our culture?  Well, clearly we aren’t renewing our minds regularly with the scriptures AND we don’t know what scripture says.  We may read a verse like 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” and think, and maybe even say out loud, “Amen, amen.”  But, what do we think when we read verses like Matthew 8:19-22, which says, “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’  Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’  But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”  Or Matthew 19:21-22 which says, “Jesus answered, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.’  When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." (NIV)

Do we know these verses?  Do we memorize them and hide them in our heart so that we can always be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15)?  And, how active are we when we do work to memorize something?  It’s a constant process; a daily battle!  And, yes, it’s easy to forget that there’s a battle raging in the heavenly realms right now, for souls that we have no idea about.  Christ has won this battle for all eternity, but the enemy is still trying to draw souls away from Him and does a pretty good job when we who are weak justify to ourselves, “I went to church today, so I’m a good person; I’m on the right track” or “I read my Bible this week, so I’ve done better than Sally.”  We live in a culture that is so bent on competition that we don’t even know what the true standard is anymore.  The standard is Christ!  The only way that we can live a life honoring to Christ is by His grace and by faith in Him alone!  The way we get to know Christ is through constant prayer and staying in His Word daily!  It takes that daily renewal to keep our minds off of the temporal and fleeting things of this world and put our focus on the One who is eternal and who alone holds the reason that we live.  See, our minds are so distracted by so many external things that don’t matter that the truth seems to get mixed in somewhere and we either forget the truth, or we water it down because we want to be accepted and we end up giving a half-gospel, which is no gospel at all.  I mean, we live in a world that says, come to Christ and you can have (fill in the blank), when the Bible says, come to Christ and get persecution, no home, etc....  

So, I guess my point in all of this is that we cannot neglect the privilege we have to spend time with God daily!  He will teach us, love us, correct us, shelter us, provide for our needs, and, best of all, He will give us Himself!  He is more than enough to meet all our needs.  But, it’s easy to forget that, right??  Don’t let your memory fade so quickly.  Constantly renew your mind with His Word and stay in prayer and rely on Him and trust His Spirit.  Journal what He has done for you....go back and read your journal.  See how He’s proven His faithfulness (even when you haven’t been faithful).  I can’t seem to get the people that I spent that 10 days with, and the people that I met while I was there, off of my mind these days.  Keep your own “Memory of India” visible so that you don’t ever forget what a special privilege you have when you can call the God of the universe, Creator of all, your Father!!