Three seemingly short days ago, I was in New Delhi, India. I
went with four other great people from my church in Powhatan. In our time
there, we were able to reach out to 5 slum camps through hosting about 100 youth and over 250
children for Bible Clubs in a tiny room. Each child received a snack and a
coloring book that told the story of the Gospel through illustrations and
Hindi. We sang praise songs, discussed the Good News with colors from the
wordless book and reviewed it with Gospel bracelets. We were able to have
prayer and share testimony with believers, as well as, people whom have never
heard.
A few things stuck out to me during my time there. One is that we asked
God for big things. We spent a lot of time in prayer asking for things that
only God could do. The pastor we were working with had a neighbor whom someone
had put an evil spirit of voodoo over her home; she was afraid for her family.
We were asked to come pray with her and share the Good News of Jesus. Feeling
the darkness of India, it was easy to feel overwhelmed.
Last night, I received an e-mail that 12 youth came to church on Sunday,
the day after we had left. Praise God! He has changed the world with about 12
people before. Please join me in praying for the next youth meeting planned for
August 15 and that those youth would become multiplying believers. The e-mail
also said that the woman we had the privilege to share the Gospel with and pray
for had sensed peace in her home and attributed that peace to Jesus. She now
wants to begin reading the Bible and coming to church. There is so much to
celebrate and thank God for doing. He is so faithful.
Never have I been in a place so unreached by the Gospel. In
the summertime in Virginia, I can drive down the street and see 3 or 4
children’s Bible camps at churches (VBS’s). We have churches here who pray that
God would grow their numbers and while we were in India, we almost had the
opposite problem. We sent a 50 passenger bus to pick up kids from various slum
camps and each day about 100 children arrived on that bus. Dozens of children
had to be turned away. In our team’s lack of understanding of their language
and culture, God still used us (and translators) to communicate His great love.
The picture above shows our team standing in an empty space
in the center of one slum camp that was donated to the pastor we worked with as
a space for a future church. I would guess that the space was about the size of
an average American bedroom and they hoped to fill that church with 50-60
people. It has two trees growing in the center and most homes surrounding it
seemed to be around 6 or 7 feet tall. Many are built with mud but stones had
been donated for this church. In the black shirt in the center is Gotham who is
a little younger than me and will be the future pastor of this church.
Join me in praying for God to use this humble space as a
light for His glory in a dark and hopeless place. Many people in this slum camp
wear a string around their waist to ward off evil spirits. Pray that they would
come to know the one true God, that He would save their souls, and use them for
His purposes. Pray that this place would become awake and free in Christ.
