India Summary Video

I love my mom's Ice Tea

Well, we made it home safe and sound after a four day journey across 3 continents. Besides coming down the escalator in Winnipeg the highlight would have to be the hotel that Gulf Air put us up in during our 14 hour layover in Bahrain. Besides the occupied rooms that they checked us into and the unchanged beds, the hotel was probably the nicest one any of us had ever stayed in (see picture at left). Morale was high and we were living it up in the middle east. The flights were uneventful and Air Canada even went up a few notches in my mind with their helpful service. As we landed in Winnipeg I could hardly keep my eyes open, but I was overcome by an incredible sense of thankfulness to God for having His hand in every part of our adventure. I will never view missions and life the same. My previous ideas and conceptions of ministry have been transformed. Seeing God move so blatantly and so dramatically is something that I will never forget. Thank you for your constant prayers. God has used India and the experiences there to change everyone of us. I'm glad to be home drinking my mom's famous ice tea.

Change of Flights

Hello everyone, during our stay in India it seemed that everyday plans would change at the last minute.  One second we'd be heading to the camp, the next second we'd be off to a pastors meeting.  Today's adventure was no different.  We got out of the bus in front of the Chennai airport with flight #67 ready and scheduled to leave in 2 hours.  Five minutes later flight #67 is sporting the cancelled label.  So here we are sitting in Chennai presently missing all of our previously scheduled flights.  We've got new flights scheduled and a fancy hotel to stay in courtesy of Gulf Air.  Here are our new flights:

 

May 13 - 7:35 Am leaving Chennai to Bahrain (11:15 am)

May 14 - 1:15 Am leaving Bahrain to London (6:25 am)

May 14 - 8:30 Am leaving London to Toronto (11:05 am)

May 14 - 17:55 leaving Toronto to Winnipeg (19:28)

So we should be arriving in Winnipeg at 7:28 pm on Monday night (May 14) on flight AC 263Q.

Seya then!

 

I (heart) Apollo

So we've now successfully navigated the health care system in India. A short 1 hour surgery and one appendix later, Jen's feeling much better. Even before we had left Canada Jen had been feeling poorly and so when the discomfort increased during our stay in India, we decided to take her to the hospital. Since there is an advanced health care system here (some would say similar quality to Canada) we felt the best option was to have the prescribed surgery in India. Within a few hours she was recovering nicely from this minor surgery. She had been missing out of some of the ministry opporutnities over the past week, but it didn't stop her from showing God's love to the doctors and nurses in the hospital. She had every reason to complain, but that didn't stop her from continually being postive, even making friends with the nurse that was on duty during the night. She had a great doctor and the Apollo Hosptial took great care of Jen. She has never stopped smiling and God has worked through Jenn in amazing ways to bless our team and our hosts here in India. Kudos to Jen for her attitude, kudos to Apollo Hospital, and kudos to God for watching over her.

Challenge from Rachean

Right now I'm sitting in an Internet Cafe, in a tourist city. Right across the street is a school for American missionary kids and there are white people everywhere. It feels like I'm in Canada right now. It's been great to relax a little and encourage the students. An intresting thing happened to me two days ago. We went on our one and only Hindu temple visit. We spent some time in prayer before hand and really tried to prepare the students for what they would be seeing as they entered this place of hindu worship. We decided that we would go and look into the inner most room where the idol worship was taking place but we would not enter it. Since I'm taller I was able to see into the room no problem, this I found to be very moving witnessing real idol worship. We were taking some pictures of the city from the high vantage point the temple gave us and a small boy who was 12 years old walked up. We started to talk and he asked me if I had seen the god and I said I had from the outside but I had not entered the room. I explained that I was a Christian and I lived by a different standard. We exchanged names and he said his name was Rachean. Turns out his Dad was one of the Hindu priests that was right inside performing the hindu worship! He brought me over to the door of the inner most room and as I looked in he called out to his dad. His dad smiled and waved from the front of the stone face of the elephant, I smiled and waved back, and then his dad called out, "please come inside". Not only was God giving me an opportunity to speak to a priests son, but it seemed that God was leading me to the center of the hindu worship to meet the priest himself. Here was where the inner struggle began. That stone face is no match for Jesus Christ, what do I have to fear? It would be a great opportunity to show that a Christian can stand his ground right infront of this god. But would it look like I was paying my respects to this stone face? The moment seemed like an eternity, but it was only half a second. Everything inside of me screamed "go!" but part of me held fast, "I will be different. I will be different. I will not acknowledge that elephant. I will not even enter." So there I stood shaking my head. As I walked down from that temple high on the rock, I started to wonder did I do the right thing? I feel that I did.

I will always remember the time when a Hindu priest invited me into the innermost room.

Thanks for your constant support and encouragement.

Counselor Training: 1180 down, 280 to go.

Yesterday we split the team into two groups, one headed to the camp to spend time with the kids and the other travelled four hours to a different town to speak at a counselor training session.  I joined the group to the counselor training place and boy was it fun.  We woke at 5am to get ready to leave since we had such a long drive ahead of us.  I'll try and post a new highway driving video tomorrow so that you'll get to see the fun at higher speeds!  Within the first hour Andy is doubled over out the window.  I was alarmed at first since you don't want to stick anything out the window, let alone half your body.  But breakfast was coming to visit him again, so it was best that he did that out the window.  When we arrived at the training site we were whisked inside and up onto the stage where all 360 counselors could see us.  They asked us to share our testimonies and sing some songs.  The most impacting thing about the time was watching the churches leave the training session.  Each church sent four counselors (many pastors said that lots more wanted to come, but IBCM limits it to four so that they can have room for all the people in the training sessions) and the pastor comes to pick them up at the end of the 3 day training.  This is the time where IBCM distributes the funding for the camps and the material to be used.  This camping concept is so streamlined and simple.  It's a surreal picture seeing four counselors and a pastor walking away carrying the bags of material and sports equipment as they prepare to run a camp for 50 kids that next week.

The team is doing well.  We're taking some time to rest tonight and tomorrow morning before we head to another counselor training for another 280 counselors in Trichy.  We're going hard, so please pray that God will sustain our strength.

I continue to update the photo's, so feel free to view those to see more of what we're doing.