Glory to God - Ephesians 3:20 Style

Thinking back, so much has happened since my last post. We spent an incredible three weeks in Rayakatta, a marvelous mountain encircled village, two hours south of Bangalore. We were so blessed with wonderful accommodations and even hot water! Though we had been warned that Rayakatta would require much spiritual warfare, nothing could have prepared us for what we experienced. We worked mostly with Pastor Johnly, a wonderful servant of the Lord who moved to the village 30 years ago when no one there had even heard of Jesus. Since that time, his church has grown to over 400 members. During our stay, we did a lot of village ministry – house visits and open air meetings, visited a reformatory school, two private Christian schools, preached the gospel in front of a couple of Hindu temples and performed/gave messages and testimonies at several churches. We witnessed many salvations, saw an entire village come to Christ (!) and prayed for and saw a demon possessed woman delivered. Praise God!

I admit that I am fairly sensitive and, if you went to Sri Lanka with me a couple of years ago you know that the poverty brought quite a few tears to my eyes. I mentally prepared myself before coming to India and, though I have seen conditions worse than I imagined possible, I have been holding it together quite well. However, my heart finally broke one night as we prayed for a 90 year old man – lying on his death bed, a dirt floor with a pile of old clothing as a pillow – to receive healing. He received salvation. This man was the head of the village. I don’t know what moved me more – the fact that he had waited so long and lived almost his entire life without knowing the Lord or the hope that his last dying wishes and words to the village people would be that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

After a smelly, 16 hour train ride, we are now in the state of Goa (a.k.a. God’s one acre!). Our initial accommodations were not exactly five star – a roach infested kitchen, two bedrooms (no beds), a hall and one squatty potty for eleven people and a baby. But, once again, God has been faithful and provided us with a much better set up, real toilet and all. We are positioned very close to the orphanage where we have been and will be working during the majority of our remaining time in India. One of our responsibilities is to help the children with their studies so yesterday I was going through this ABC type book with Hancee, a precious twelve year old girl. I asked one of the older orphans what we should be studying for school and was informed that Hancee is not going to school. She came from a bad family and was never been enrolled as a small child. Now, neither the public nor private schools will take her because she is too old. This absolutely kills me. I am going to do everything in my God given power to try to rectify this situation. The sad fact is that there are countless numbers of children just like her all over this world. Please pray for Hancee and the many other children who do not have the opportunity to have an education.