Silver And Gold

I sent out one of my general emails yesterday and in it I said I’d write an entry for my blog about a woman who came by yesterday and who I got a chance to talk to about Jesus.

Yesterday was the second time she came to my house. The first time she was found near the train station by a woman whose son works in our ministry and she brought her to our house. The woman was obviously very poor, destitute and someone had given her the name of our ministry. That day I directed her to our offices down the road where the people (she had some names) she was looking for could be found. No one was there that day.

She had walked then and yesterday from the other side of the city in the hot son with her two year old son. When she came yesterday I knew everyone was at a large program at our school so I invited her in and called the pastor to my house. He was also involved in the program yesterday and could barely stay and talk with her. I had already put on some lunch for her and her son, so after the pastor left I sat down and got her story.

Her husband left her with four children ages 8 to 2. Three girls and then the 2 year old son. A man she called “Bhiyah” (brother), told her about Jesus and about our ministry. *

After our pastor left I was thinking about Peter and John at the gate in Jerusalem in Acts 3. (I like the KJV for this) “Silver and gold have I none but what I have give I thee.”** Peter said. I can’t give money (or even clothes and food items like I gave to the woman yesterday) to every destitute person who comes along. I can and will give them Jesus.

So I spoke to her about Jesus and she said Bhiyah told her about Him that that she had faith on Jesus and she’d never forget Him. I then explained about Jesus being a God who does not tolerate worship of other gods alongside of Him. She answered, “No I only have faith on Jesus, I’ll never forget Him.”

I left it for a while, went and brought her lunch, came back. Tried again ( Since Hindi is not my first language I generally repeat myself a few different ways to make sure I am clear, this is good for sharing the gospel.) This time I told her that, yes, we must have faith on Jesus but we must also confess our sins and leave our sinful ways. She said she had done that and that she “only has faith on Jesus, I’ll never forget Him.” Sound familiar, yeah, me too.

She promised to come to church today. She didn’t. She does live far and has 4 small children, but I had the impression even as she left that she had rehearsed her part. She sat for a while, not leaving, waiting for me to give her money, I didn’t, then she left.

* Have a look at the next entry called Poverty And Religion
* *Acts 3:6

Poverty And Religion

Here is where I take a moment aside to talk about the huge social issues in India. They are so great that they can actually distract from the ministry of reaching people for Christ. The abandoned and widowed women, the orphans or street children, the lepers, beggars… the list goes on and on. Poverty is the common denominator and you’d think that these people would be the easiest to reach for Jesus, think again.

Most of these people have been downtrodden so long that they are left with no – what’s a good word – shame? Here’s an example that I am taking from O. He worked in a leper colony for two years so he would know. Many lepers (not all) who profess Christ only profess when they are receiving something from Christians. They transform into Muslims or Hindus or whatever, according to the next wave of charity that comes through and who is sponsoring it.

Safely Home

I just finished reading a book that, frankly, exhausted me. As I write this entry to post, I can barely keep my eyes open my lids are so heavy. I feel a little dizzy, too. Yet, even as I started reading the book, I think I knew then that I would write an entry about it. The book is, Safely Home by Randy Alcorn. It’s a novel about the persecuted church, mainly in China but the scope of the book is much bigger than that.

One of the members of the team who came to visit last week gave this book to me as a gift. He was reading it at that time and it had been highly recommended to him. He considers himself “not a reader” but he devoured this book as no other in his life (to my knowledge - that was the impression I got from him). I, however, am a reader and I was interested to see what my thoughts on the book would be. Devouring books is what I do, it’s what I’m best at, always has been ever since 2nd grade.

This book is devour-able, although I would not consider it among the most devourable books I have ever read. I would consider this a MUST READ for every Christian AND non-Christian – especially us Americans.

More than anything else, this book draws you near to God’s own heart. His love for His children, especially those suffering for His name. Do you pray for them? The persecuted? Do you memorize scripture and hide it in your heart with the idea that one day, maybe it will no longer be available to you in written form?

I cried from page 359 onward. Sorrow. Joy. Pain. Compassion. It was all mixed together. If you lack a heavenly perspective - read this book. Even if you don’t, Read This Book.

I think my favorite part of Safely Home was the spiritual aspect that is clearly depicted in the novel. The world beyond our own that we so often ignore, forget about, pretend isn’t there. It is. And I’m sure glad about that.

Buy a copy for yourself and someone else – all proceeds go to the persecuted church. You can’t lose!

I highly highly recommend this book – even for non-readers.

My Sweet C.

C., or CJ, as we often call her, is my 2 ½ year old. She calls Cows – “Moos” and Chickens – “Cockadoodles” in serious conversation. Her current favorite film is “Beauty and the Beast” which she insists on calling “Princess Lion.” (Beast, Baby, Beast.)

Last night she wandered into our room at 4:30 AM and wanted a drink of water. I started to bring her up on my bed and she said, “Wait, I have to get my bed.” She then walked over to the door where she had dropped a pillow (not even her own pillow, by the way) and brought it into our already overly crowded bed.

She’s a pistol, but we love her.
I have no idea why this is underlined and I wish I had a better picture to put up but my scanner is not working.

Some Pictures From Last Week

Here are some pictures taken by the team that was here. Some of you may have seen them already but most of you, probably, have not.

The Team
At the baptism last week ( I LOVE this photo)
Teaching the women

Update On Phoebe

She talks to me now.

Highlights Of The Past Week

I sent out a general email yesterday and then realized I forgot to mention some of the most important info from the past week. I just hate clogging up people’s mailboxes with continuous emails so I’ll write it here.

Last Monday five of our Bible Students were baptized. Praise the Lord. This came to mind last night (after I had already sent the email) when one of our church believers came by and said that he and 4 others wanted to be baptized. Again I say– Praise the Lord. His family and the others are coming out of a Hindu background and live as squatters in slum areas. God has been doing an amazing work in the lives of the first family that came to the Lord a few years ago and in the last year four more families have come to faith in Jesus Christ. And now they are asking to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

OK, back to last week: We had classes from 9AM to 1PM daily and occasionally in the evenings too. We were taught on “The Heart of a True Christian.” A book put together by the elders of my home church. There were also teachings on Servant Leadership, Paul, and the Sovereignty of God. All in all great teaching and the Lord moved in many hearts. Mine included.

Having teams here has gotten easier for me over the years. It was definitely more stressful five years ago. I enjoyed myself thoroughly this time and really was not at all stressed. It helped too, that I farmed out most of the cooking so that we were at a different person’s house for dinner and breakfast most days.

Now that the team is gone and the conference over, life should return to some kind of normalcy. Since we’ve returned from the US we’ve been in preparation for the conference and knowing we’d have guests here so there was always that – there – before us. Now that it’s over I hope to focus more deeply on the things that are important to me: ladies ministry, my writing, the Bible College. I’ll let you know how that goes.

What Do I Do Now?

I just found myself wandering around wondering what to do. This happens, I guess, after a time of intense busy-ness. I spent most of the morning washing mountains of dirty clothes and after four loads I’ve been forced to take a break because someone else asked to use the washing machine.

My house is a small disaster, I could spend quite a bit of time just cleaning everywhere but – oh so boring. I was supposed to teach English at the Bible College at 3PM today after a week’s hiatus but the students missed their music class at 2PM for some reason so they just moved that up and squished out English. O. made the decision, mainly because he wanted to spend some time with me, which is nice, but it did throw off the flow of my day.

So, now it is 4:20 and I’m not at all sure what to do – so I blog.

Where Am I?

I'm back. We dropped off the team a couple hours ago at the airport and now life will return to normal. Maybe. I guess. Lots of great stuff happening over here, but as I wrote before, I'm just too dang tired to write about it. So, I should be back in blogging full force in the next day or so, updating you on the weird, wacky and mundane soon enough.

One Person's Trash...

There is a girl who collects garbage for a living. She used to come by where we used to live because all the garbage was thrown behind the house. She and another girl would walk the line with their collection bags and pick up whatever was useful to them.

I’ve seen her recently at my new house. Here we have a woman who comes everyday to collect the garbage as do all the other house owners/renters in our neighborhood. I often wonder what this girl finds around here. She knows me so sometimes she asks for food or sometimes a drink of water, sometimes money, today she asked for my garbage.

There was a medium-sized piece of cardboard on top of our garbage can today because we had installed some fans yesterday. She saw it and asked for it. I called her inside and told her take whatever she wanted from our trashcan. Here there are no trash bags to pack everything in, it’s all loose and mixed together in the can, but she just stuck her hand in there. She pulled out the cardboard, and some other boxes, old cans, plastic water bottles, every single plastic bag and chip’s packets, old razors, toothbrushes and other things too disgusting to write here. She’ll take them and sell them getting paid by weight for the plastic, cardboard and everything else.

What a way to make a living. I wonder if it feels like a treasure hunt to her. Probably not.