Exodus

Last Thursday at our weekly ladies meeting it was my turn to speak. I'm not much of a speaker, I leave all that up to O. And if it were up to me I wouldn't probably choose to speak at all, especially not in Hindi. But it was assigned to me and the fact is, I kind of knew it would be my turn even before our leader told me, I already had the message on my heart.

Last October I was reading through Exodus and I came to this verse, "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land." (14:21)

I have often read the story of the crossing of the Red Sea but last October three words jumped out at me that I had never noticed before. "All That Night."

Wow. For my whole life I had always pictured Moses holding his hand and staff out over the sea and the waters parting the way elevator doors open. Push the button and shooooop, the doors separate right before your eyes.

But it wasn't like that it all. There was a whole night involved and a strong east wind. Yet, the fact that the parting took longer than I had always imagined it had takes nothing away from the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea.

The story of Exodus chapter 14 was my message, with the emphasis on the fact that all of us have long and lingering problems of some sort in our personal lives and it may seem to us that God is not answer or taking too long.

I was able to give a very current example from our own life, so current that moments before I left for the ladies meeting O. shared with me that we were facing a big problem (part of a longer lingering problem) that had to be solved by the next day.

As I drove over to the meeting I thought, how can I give this message if I don't have faith myself in what I'm speaking. I did end up sharing our problem with the ladies, we all prayed and the next day many of us fasted and prayed some more. By Friday night, the deadline was up and O. called me over at the end of our regular Friday fasting prayer meeting and said that at around 7PM that night our problem had been solved. Praise the Lord! I admit I had faith that something would happen, but I was suspecting more of a postponement of the problem than a solution.

Wow, I can't wait to share during testimony time with the ladies this Thursday.

Stolen And Found

I promised you a story last week. Here it is.

Several of us were going to an out of town meeting last Wednesday and we were all going in our car. We were to meet at our school/church at 5:30 and go together. When I arrived at school I looked over from the car and saw people in the compound but no one was coming to the car. After a couple minutes I got out and walked over.

I asked where everyone was and was pointed up to the 2nd floor. As I reached the top of the steps I heard this voice say, "Everyone come up here fast, I found something!"

At that, several people (who were supposed to be getting in the car and going with me) went rushing past me up the stairs. I caught one of them who was lagging behind and blocked his way.

"Somethings disappeared hasn't it." I asked.

"Yes, Madam." And off he went.

It turns out our (very expensive) LCD projector was "missing." (think: stolen) Oh dear, that's not good.

But whoever took it, did it during the day and hid it on our school roof where construction was going on. It was hidden under some construction materials. The thief would return in the night to smuggle it away under cover of darkness.

By God's grace our Choir team was leaving on Thursday morning to sing at a conference and we were taking all our instruments and materials - including the LCD - with us. Our sound guys knew immediately that it was missing. It must have been spirited away during the school hours when the church was open and someone was working inside.

Needless to say, Everyone was VERY relieved. And our Ministry President, Mr. Praveen, was crowned hero of the day for the quick thinking to check the roof and actually find the projector.
Whew.

This entire situation was made worse since it came immediately on the heels of the court case, etc.