India Update

Yesterday we worshipped with the believers at the church here in Siliguri.  I was able to give the message and the pastor translated to Nepalese.  Jeff led the communion part of the service.  It was a special experience to remember the sacrifice Jesus made with fellow believers right in the middle of a land filled with idolatry.  Many of the homes here have mini-temples out front with Hindu idols.  I don't recall ever seeing such visible idolatry before. 

We are staying at a children's home that Pastor Jiwan and his wife Esther run.  They have a school behind the home and are starting to reach out to the community through the school.  There are presently 13 children and two women who live at the home.  Many of these children either do not have parents that are living or who are able to care for them.  Here they are loved and taught.  They are also taught about the love of Jesus Christ.  The ministry here truly is a light shining in a dark place. 

Today we are headed up into the mountains to Balusan to visit the church and have fellowship with the believers there.

As an aside, I am reading "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey.  I highly recommend it.

Thank you for praying for me.

In Christ,

Mike

Leaving Today

Dear Friends, I am leaving today.  To say I would appreciate your prayers would be an understatement.  In many ways this trip is shaping up to be more about what God is doing in my heart than what I will actually be doing while I'm in India.  I have been meditating on James 4:1-3 lately, ¹ What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? ² You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures."  This is a bit of my continued realization that I am addicted to comfort.  Last Sunday we were reminded that "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." (Eph 2:10).  Please pray for me that I will be willing to do the things that God prepared beforehand for me.  Thank you for praying.