Hey everyone! This is going to be my last blog post before I go to India and I am going to try to kind of sum up some of it so that it doesn’t take three days to read. While I am in Inida I will try my best to post a blog or two, depending on how often I am able to have internet access but please, it I do not get a chance to, please don’t hold it against me. I will write heaps about the entire trip when I get back from India, so don’t worry about never finding out what happened. Here is what has happened these last two weeks before outreach.
The Sunday following Patrick Dodson’s teachings I co-led the older children’s Sunday school service at the Maungaturoto church. That sunday night, instead of our normal lectures, we had an Indian couple come and speak to us about India and what is going on there concerning missions. On Monday we started our normal lectures for the week. The speaker was named Teki. He spoke to us on Cross-Cultural Introduction. It was very interesting and he taught us a lot about Muslims and their beliefs that I did not know before. One of the main things for the week that Teki was trying convey to us was about how we should act in different cultures. One question that really got me thinking was “What makes you an American?” Besides the fact that I was born there I couldn't really give an answer. Teki told us, “while you are in India be an Indian,” and that is what I am going to strive for while I am there, to be as one of the natives in how I relate to them. That weekend we got to go camping as our last adventure as a school. We went to Pahi and camped near the beach. It was amazing, the sunset that was there the first night was so beautiful. At the beach there is a huge rock called Lion Rock and it really looks like a lion sitting at the waters edge. On the way home from camping we stopped at the airport to pick up two Mission Builders and while we were waiting I got to eat Dunkin Donuts. It was amazing! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, I had no idea that New Zealand would have Dunkin Donuts. It made my day.
Jono Turner was the speaker for the last week of lectures. His topic was on the Holy Spirit. The whole week was one of the best weeks that we had. It was just what we needed to finish off the Lecture Phase with. One amazing story from the week was that on Tuesday during lectures we decided to pray for healing in a few different people so we started praying very fervently. One of the girls we prayed for had some pretty severe Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in her wrists and all throughout her forearms from playing the piano and drawing (she’s pretty artistic). While we were praying for her she was healed and she had absolutely no pain in either of her wrists. It was definitely God performing a miracle. It was truly amazing to see God work in such real ways and I know that this was only a small taste of what will be happening while we are in India. The rest of lectures wasn’t quite as exciting as Tuesday but it was still a really good week and I think that Jono was one of my favorite speakers overall. On Friday we had a fancy dinner as an “End of Lectures” dinner. After that we had a Talent show that was pretty awesome. As the end performance me and two other guys got up, dressed in tights and danced to the Cotton Eye Joe song, it was so much fun.
This past Monday morning we had a pancake breakfast as a final breakfast with everyone from both outreach teams. On Tuesday we said goodbye to the Chennai outreach team. It was so sad, I may have cried, I don’t remember, it was probably just that dirt unfortunately got in my eye the whole time the Chennai team was saying goodbye and driving away. What bad luck I have with dirt, that it would happen when I don’t want it to. After they left we went to the beach to help get our minds off of the other team and to stop us from skulking around. It was a really nice way to get us to not think about being sad. I realized that after this I will probably only see the people from the other team for another three weeks and then most likely never again after that and that made me really sad.
I leave tomorrow the 26th of November which will be the 25th for all of you. I am extremely excited and only a little nervous. We have a twelve hour flight to India. Here is a rough itinerary of what I will be doing and when so that you have an idea about what I will be doing when I am there.
MY ITINERARY:
November 26: Leave New Zealand for Calcutta
November 27-30: Orientation on culture by YWAM Calcutta
December 1: Travel north to Darjeeling (hopefully see Mt. Everest :] )
December 2-10: Partner witth YWAM Darjeeling ministries
December 11: Travel back to Calcutta
December 12-16: Partner with YWAM Calcutta ministries
December 17: Travel south to Orissa
December 18-
January 9: Partner with John Bridges’ ministry
January 9: Travel north to Calcutta
January 12: Depart India and arrive in Thailand
January 12-14: Debrief and relax in Thailand
January 14: Leave Thailand for New Zealand.
January 16 or 17: Travel south to Tauranga for the week and serve at YWAM ‘Jubilee
Celebration’ followed by ‘Call to All’
January 24: Return for report back week
I have some pictures that you can look at in a second but first I would really like to thank you all for your continued support through prayer and I implore you to continue praying for me and my entire team as we are in this foreign country that is very dangerous. I ask that you would pray for our health while we are there, some of our team is not feeling well and have been in bed resting and it would be terrible if anyone were to get that sick it would be very disastrous for our team and ministry. We need everyone to be in full health. I would also ask that you keep our safety in your prayers. We have many long train rides and many trips that we require us traveling great distances and traveling can be very dangerous. Some of the leaders who have been to India before have told us that on trains anything that is not secure on your person can easily get stolen and we do not want anyone to lose anything. Again I want to thank you all so very much for all the prayers and support that you have given me during this entire adventure that I am on. Your prayers mean so much to me, it truly is an encouragement to me to know that I have people back home who are interceding for me. This school so far has been amazing and I know that God only has more amazing things in store for India. God sure knew what he was doing when he led me to this place. I love you all. May God bless you all richly and may he reveal himself to you in new ways everyday.
This is 'Lion Rock' and see, I told you that it looked like a lion.
Here are just a few random pictures that I took at Mangawhai on Tuesday.
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