JUNE AND JULY UPDATE

Hello!

Well it has been a two months since my last letter to you. I will attempt now to bring you up to date on all that have experienced over the course of these last two months and am currently doing.

It is hard to believe that it has now been exactly one year and seven months since I have moved to Southern California! This time has flown by! It does not seem that to long ago I was packing up in Northwest Arkansas preparing for my adventures out here. Looking back then I would have had no idea of all that I would experience and learn. Nonetheless it has been an incredible time made very much possible by your generous gifts and support to me both financially and through prayer. Thank you! I am so grateful to have you apart of this season of my life.

Looking now on these last two months let me fill you in what I have been doing and have experienced. Summer at Saddleback means a season when most ministries slow down, except for the mission’s team. This is our high season if you will with many people going on global P.E.A.C.E. trips and getting involved in some local P.E.A.C.E. ministries. Transitioning onto our Local Missions Team in April I spent the last part of May and the first several weeks of June creating some opportunities for Saddleback members to be involved in urban ministry in Los Angeles on Skid Row. God opened some great doors for Saddleback members to go down to Los Angeles and partner with some local churches doing some incredible ministry to the homeless. I was able to see many eyes opened and new passions develop in people as they served the least of these on Skid Row on a couple of different ministry outings. I love this!

While I was focusing my attention on local missions I was also balancing my time preparing a team of nine college and high school students for a month long P.E.A.C.E. trip to India. This had been a long five months of preparation. Thus, I was grateful when the day of our departure had come. On June 19 the team and I boarded a plane headed for Delhi, India. For some of the team this was their first time to leave the country on a missions trip! For all of us, this was our first time to India, thus, I had no idea what to expect. However, God had some amazing things in store for us.


We arrived in Delhi June 20 tired but excited to be on the ground from a long journey across the world. Our first two weeks of the trip were spent in Delhi weaving in and out of traffic to visit different ministries around the city. We spent our time working with local Hindu university students, encouraging new believers in house churches in the slums of Delhi and visiting ministries in the slums that exist to both teach work skills to young men and women as well as to teach them about Christ. This proved to be an incredible time.


Moving into our third week in India we boarded a train in Delhi and traveled north. In the North we were introduced to some young pastors, and I mean young, who would better be described as modern apostles. We partnered with these pastors in their ministry in the rural villages of the north and were able to see and experience only what could be described as the gospel stories happening right before us. We were truly apart of the New Testament Church during our time in the North of India. God is doing great and mighty things through some young men and women who are sold on making the message of the gospel known to all in the small part of the world that He has placed them in.


Our last day in the North we traveled to Nepal were we spent the day in a village tucked beneath the foothills of the Himalayas that had never heard the gospel before. We truly had no idea what to expect (the we included the young pastors who went with us). Arriving into the village we stepped out of our SUV’s, prayed, and began walking throughout the village stopping and engaging in conversation with those we came across. These conversations led to invitations into homes where once inside we were able to pull out the Jesus Film and show to the household. The Nepalese villagers welcomed us with open arms as well as the gospel that we came to proclaim. The Lord opened up a great opportunity that day for the local pastors in North India to continue the work in this village freshly introduced to the truth of the gospel. Praise the Lord!


Leaving the North after a fruitful week of ministry we headed back down to Delhi were we would spend the night and the next morning board a plane for Kashmir for a time of rest and debriefing from our three intense weeks of ministry. In Kashmir which is primarily a Muslim region, we were able to connect with a true hero of the faith who is working among the Muslims in Kashmir. We were introduced to some young men who have chosen to follow Jesus after spending their early life as Muslims. I will forever be changed by hearing these men, who many were my age, tell their stories about how they came to follow Christ. Truly amazing! Persecution is very much a part of these men’s lives. What an inspiration they were to a crew of young western Christians.


My time in India was marked with many difficulties and failures, yet, with many learning’s and victories. The Lord reminded me of the power of prayer, the powers that seek to oppose us, and the power of the gospel that we are called to unrelentingly proclaim to those around us. Indeed my team and I had quite the adventure in India. Returning home on July 19 I quickly acclimated back to life in Orange County yet I have brought home a fresh perspective on life and the ministry the Lord has called me to. Thank you for your prayers while we were there!