February 2008 Team Letters and Photos
The Team Serves in Local Mission Centers
Saturday, February 23
Dear Friends,
Greetings from India!
What a joy our time has been with Pastor Isaac and the pastors working with him at IAM. This is our last day here and it will be hard to leave tomorrow morning.
During this week, we have spent two evenings at three of IAM's four mission centers participating in their family revival meetings. As I wrote last time, the schedule for the evenings remained the same. What was different each day was the villages we traveled to for the children's program. The number of children there to greet us with smiling voices and songs of joy and praise varied from the 65 at the first village to over 140 in another. Each one touched our hearts and blessed us with their genuine welcome.
Donna distributes toys
Her very own toy, from India Partners donors
Thursday's schedule was a little different. We traveled to a village church, held in a thatched prayer shed, in the morning to conduct the children's program.
Bablu, a ready interpreter
From there, we traveled to the second mission center and had lunch at the home of Pastor Sundar. More food was prepared than we could possibly eat and it was all so tasty! In the afternoon, 96 women of the church gathered and I led them in a Biblical study on the importance of spiritual dependency. The children were anxiously waiting for us to finish so they could come in for the children's program. Following the children's program, we had a couple of hours before the second evening of the family revival meetings, so Isaac took us for a drive to show us some of the sites around Kakinada. We enjoyed the time of seeing more of India. It is a beautiful country.
That was the first children's program that we conducted at a mission center so I had the children get up during the meeting that evening and sing "Jesus Loves Me" for the families there. They sang so beautifully!
The primary purpose of the family revival meetings this week is to encourage the whole family to be involved in the church, not just to come on Sunday mornings, to live their daily lives as witnesses to the love of Jesus Christ. This was the first time they have held these meetings and it is Pastor Isaac's vision to have them on an annual basis.
Daniel Victor joined us at IAM yesterday and we are glad to have him along. We will travel to Living Sacrifice Ministries tomorrow morning, getting there in time to join them in worship. Bill traveled to LSM when he was here in 2005 and is looking forward to seeing Pastor Eliezer and Sister Prema again.
Thank you for the prayers that blanket us as we travel. All of our travel has been safe and we are all staying healthy. God continues to shower His blessings upon us.
In Christ,
Donna, for the team Bill, Keith and Daniel
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