Happy 4th!

Hello friends back home!

This is Andrew with your 4th of July India team entry. We are just wrapping up the festivities here while back home things are just getting started. The team definitely wishes they could be home celebrating but we had a nice celebration of our own with good old American KFC buckets.

Today was we went to 4 villages. The first 2 villages we spent most of our time going door to door. The first village, Ashapur, had not yet been visited by anyone from our team. We were able to cover most of the homes there and we moved on to the second village, Rakhamjote. Pastor Sanjay had been through before and we were able to cover all of the homes in the village (as far as we could tell).

Ashapur has a Roman Catholic church in it that meets regularly. Several team members, including myself, spoke with members of that church. In the past, most Catholics we meet in the village do not want to talk to us but these people were friendly and were excited to hear about new churches being planted.

Rakhamjote was very different. It was only about 2 miles down the road but the people had a very different attitude. Many people did not want to talk. Jarrod was getting frustrated because many people villagers seemed apathetic and did not want to listen when he shared the Gospel with them. I spoke with a young man there who became more and more interested in the story as I shared the cube with him. He asked good questions and it was obvious to me the Spirit was working in him. I wish we could have spent more time with him but he had to go to work. Fortunately, Sanjay lives only 10 minutes walk from his house and he invited the young man to come over and they could discuss his questions there. We finished out that village with a mini village program. About 60 villagers were present and we were able to introduce them to Pastor Sanjay publicly.

Although both of those villages were difficult, the people that did listen took the message seriously. People who did not choose to follow Jesus today expressed genuine interest but were not ready to change their whole world just yet. but, many seeds were planted today, Sanjay will water, and the Lord will cause them to grow.

On the way back to the hotel we visited 2 villages (don’t remember the names) where the “Cows and Sows” project is in motion. It was encouraging to see that the pastors are working hard at home as well as in the mission field and to see God provide for them.

Please pray for Gary he was not feeling well today and has a bit of a fever. Please keep the whole team in your prayers; that we would be encouraged and filled with love and compassion for the lost. We are still coming across a lot of people who have never heard of Jesus before and we have a great task before us!

Oh, everyone else saw people riding elephants through the village today. Hopefully we can get those pictures up soon, Marcia got some good ones.

Adios amigos.