Our time in Sri Lanka with Vinodh, our friend from our Las
Vegas days, went very well. He is such a godly and kind man and it was a joy to
be reunited with him. At the last minute, he was asked to come and preach at
the local Baptist church, which was in the same town where we were training. Instead,
he suggested I preach and I thought it went well. The passage I chose greatly
encouraged the people, who unbeknownst to me are going through a very hard time
as a church. Because of a land dispute, their pastor of 20 years was falsely
accused of molesting a retarded girl in their orphanage and as a result was
sent to jail. I never cease to be amazed how God can somehow lead me to a
passage that helps without my knowing ahead of time how it will work. The
president of the Baptist Union joined us there and became eager to see how our
training might be used with his pastors. We rode back to Colombo, about 7
hours, with him and Vinodh and then had dinner with Vinodh. He really caught
our vision and we began to strategize how we could coordinate with the seminary
he teaches at to train many pastors in the region. We both felt it was no
coincidence that we would meet in such a way in Sri Lanka, and that God must
have a plan for us to work together on this.
We came the next day to Ahmadabad, through Delhi, a long
travel day. Here we met with a wonderful Indian couple, Johnny and Koki, and
strategized about doing a pre-conference for seven Pentecostal denominations
next Fall. Our meeting went so well and Edie was greatly encouraged by Koki who
shares her heart for training women in the Word of God. We all were really of
the same mind and enjoyed our time together.
Tomorrow morning we head to Delhi and then on to Bangkok
which will make for another long day of travel. We stay overnight there,
getting up at 4 am to fly on to Tokyo and then San Diego. We stay there one
night with a friend and then head home on July 10th. Two more long days and then
some rest as we readjust to our time zone. We feel this has been one of our best
trips and are so thankful for those who prayed for us about all the connections
we were trying to make for future training. Every stop seemed to go very well. We
are blessed.
Al
No comments:
Post a Comment