Back Home

After six flights spanning 46 hours, we are home. There were three flights to get from Nagpur to Chennai on Wednesday, then we started at 2:00 AM there on the way back. Since we gained 10.5 hours coming back, it seemed like the day that never ended. Upon boarding the flight in Frankfurt, they fed us lunch. Then, 7.5 hours later, we hit the ground at lunch time in Chicago.

On the way home, we ran into James, one of the board members at HBI. In Frankfurt, I met a lady from Portland, Oregon that also knew of HBI and the Guptas have stayed in her home. I guess it truly is a small world.

My takeaways from this trip:

1. God gave me a glimpse of His heart for the world in a way that would never have happened here.

2. I am very encouraged by the faith and commitment of the church in India and how it is mobilizing to do God's work there.

3. I believe God gave me a picture in my mind of what India could be if God swept over that nation. It can happen.

Thanks once again to everyone who supported me in going on this trip. I think it made a difference in the lives of the people I ministered to in Chennai and Nagpur, but I know it made a difference in me.

Correction to dates

I apologize for my mistake....the team does get home Thursday and not Friday!  Sorry for any confusion my former and deleted blog entry may have caused.

Day 2 in Nagpur

It's been an interesting day of travel on Wednesday. I tried to post some of this before we left Nagpur, but the Internet connection at the hotel went down. Connectivity has been spotty throughout the trip for what many consider a high-tech country.

The worship seminar on Tuesday was good. It was compressed due to the weather. It is difficult to travel here when it rains. We still had about 30 worship people, with a wide variety of ages, including some teenagers. It was at a nearby training center, which doubles as a church. What they consider a nice training center is different than what we would think of by western standards. During the morning delay, pigs and dogs were walking by the door, as well as the occasional cow. But facilities aside, the people came hungry to learn.

At the end, the facilitator, Abash, asked people to tell what they had learned. One young man said he learned that worship is not about how well he plays the guitar or sings, it is about the heart. Another pastor said that he realized that worship is sacrifice.

In the afternoon, both the worship and small group people met for a combined session. Bobby put me on the spot to speak to them. I talked to them briefly about the transfiguration of Jesus and asked them to consider how they see Him. Is He just a man? Or is he big and powerful?

We took a break and then there was a time of Marati worship. Bobby challenged the people to dance as they do in their culture. It was an amazing time of unrestrained worship. The people were so joyful and entered in deeply. I had this picture of Jesus there in the midst of us.

Then Steve gave a fantastic message about overcoming discouragement in ministry. Bobby gave a final challenge and a local pastor prayed for the combined group. At the end, the sang a worship song. The purity of their devotion to Jesus made it very sweet.

Several of the Bible women had completed their course of study and got certificates. Several of us asked for us to pray for them, which we did. Pastor Silas, the point person for the area, asked us to pray for his family. His wife got a certificate and his son was at the worship seminar and played guitar for us, very well I might add. Silas has such a burden for his state to bow its collective knee to Jesus.

I'm writing this sitting at HBI. We came by just to pick up some of our things and head back to the airport. It took all day to get from Nagpur back to Chennai, and we now face about 3o more hours of travel to get home. But to spend the time we spent with these pastors and worship leaders made it all worth it.

Torture Travel

Folks, Here is a summary of our travel plans for the next 2/3 days. This will give you an idea why we may be a little tired when you see us Thursday evening.

We leave for the airport here in Nagpur in less than 1/2 hour.
1) Flight From Nagpur to Pune leaves at 11:00 arrives at 12:15
2) Flight from Pune to Chennai leaves at 2:15pm arrives at 4:50pm
3) Drive to HBI campus and back
4) Flight from Chennai to Frankfurt leaves at 1:50am arrives Frankfurt 7:40am (10hr flight)
5) Flight from Frankfurt to Chicago leaves at 10:25am arrives Chicago 1:10PM (10hr flight)
6) Flight from Chicago to Columbus leaves at 6:50pm arrives Columbus 9:08pm

In Chicago we will try to get standby on an earlier flight to get home earlier. Looking forward to seeing all of you soon.

Day 2 in Nagpur

Wow, what a joy and highlight today has been. All three of us have been involved in teaching the seminar here on small groups and Worship. It was a joy to watch the people worship in Marathi and to hear the other devotionals. For myself I really enjoyed sharing with them what God has taught me about small group ministry. I ended up tag-team teaching with Bobby for most of the day. Bobby teaches with such passion and enthusiasm, it is contagious. Together we tried to impart to the seminar guests a passion for multiplying their groups and for having their cell groups embody the "Gospel Community" that Pastor Steve taught about yesterday. Joe will write about his time leading the Worship Seminar. Pastor Steve wrapped up all the sessions with an exhortation to be encouraged ... "Do not loose heart".

We woke up to find that it had been raining all night and was still raining. We were concerned what we would do since our venue on Monday was in the yard beside a building with just some fabric sheets for a roof stretched from the building to the courtyard wall. We knew that these sheets are good for shielding us from the sun, but they would do nothing to protect us from the rain. We wondered if the sound equipment was in the rain, and what would we do. Of course the crew here had a plan B and we went to the basement where they had a room that we could assemble in. That room turned out to be a better fit for the seminar than the open-air tent had been. The venue was a great fit for the Seminar, so Bobby was working on making arrangements to use this venue for future seminars here in Maharastra.

This evening, we said goodbye to Bobby for a day. He is headed to a board meeting in Bangalore. We will fly down to Chennai tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, it will take 2 flights and a layover. We will leave the hotel tomorrow morning at 8:30 and get into Chennai at 4:30 --- assuming the flights are relatively on-time. We will say goodbye to all of our friends in Chennai then and return to the USA.

Sights & Sounds of India

Well, we've now spent time in Chennai, Mumbai, and Nagpur. We've met a lot of people and experienced a slice of life here. We are bombarded with new visual images every day. It takes a while for Westerners like us to process all that we see here.

Sights I'd only ever seen on PBS or TLC I'm now seeing with my own eyes... abject poverty; trash strewn everywhere; people sleeping under bridges with rats and dogs crawling over them; posh five-star hotels located right next to little shantytowns where hollow-eyed people sit crouching all day under the shade of makeshift tents; cows wandering across busy streets; a dozen different and strange kinds of vehicles all occupying the same narrow roads, jockeying for position with horns beeping incessantly (all the time, day and night); children with no apparent supervision hanging on shaky wooden scaffolding rising four stories high, dogs wandering around everywhere, people urinating alongside the road ... it's all a bit overwhelming.

And then there's the sheer volume of people--that's overwhelming too. The main city streets are teeming at all hours with tens of thousands of dark-skinned Indian people--coming and going, sitting and crouching, walking and talking, riding and biking. On the streets of America people are in their cars so we peer at them through tinted glass. Here, relatively few own cars so you can actually watch people as they travel, including (surprising to me) many women young and old in bright-colored saris motoring along the road on bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and other interesting contraptions, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic (the traffic lines here appear to be only suggestions). It's been interesting to look into the eyes of these people. Some sparkle with the joy of God, but many, many appear empty, dead, and lifeless. It's been a constant reminder of the need for Christ in India and the important work HBI and others are doing here to reach more than a billion people with the Gospel of Jesus.

To me India is a study in contrast. For example, while riding to our ministry location yesterday here in Nagpur I was struck by the sight of a huge state-of-the-art domed stadium looming above the landscape ... right behind a trash-filled, dirty shantytown with animals and naked children running around. I find myself constantly thinking, "Why does it have to be this way?"

Of course the prevailing Hindu religion that permeates India contributes to some of these conditions, with it's fatalistic, deterministic, cyclical worldview. I don't know exactly how the virtue of compassion plays out between the castes in that Hindu system, but I do know that the work of Christian ministries here--including HBI, IJM, World Vision and others--is vitally important in helping address some of the injustices and oppression we see here.

All in all, it's been an incredible time for me. I've never experienced anything quite like it before, and there have been a number of 'firsts' for me on this trip (including sanitizing my silverware at each meal :). Joe and Steve have been absolutely awesome teammates and ministry co-laborers, and our Lord is using them to help train Indian believers in vital discipleship skills.

Thanks again for your interest and prayers sent up on our behalf. Soon we return to the comforts of the U.S. but hopefully the lessons learned and expanded vision we've acquired on this mission will stay with us forever.

SB

Map of India to give perspective to those following the team