Praise Report from Goa India!
Thank you for your prayers and gifts that made another discipleship training trip possible, and I trust very fruitful.
The trip to Goa is very exhausting. For me it involved a 160 mile drive to the airport, then a 1 1/2 hour flight to New York, followed by a 15 hour and 30 minute flight non-stop from JFK to Mumbai India. Arriving at 10:15 pm, I then had to catch a shuttle to the domestic airport and wait until 5:00am to board the flight to Goa, arriving at 6:20am on Sunday morning! Then this whole process is repeated with the return flight for a total of 17,770 miles in the air and 320 miles to and from the airport, and basically two days without a bed to sleep on! Whew, no wonder I am bone-tired.
Nevertheless, the opportunity to teach the opening week at Dr. Ron Herrod’s sponsored RHEMA Bible Institute was worth all the monies and wear and tear on my old body. The monsoon rains had caused huge landslides in various parts of the country, washing out train tracks so that over one half of the students were unable to get to Goa. Yet, we started on Monday with those who were already there and Brother Jaison Job required his seminary students to attend the whole conference so that we had around 42 men in attendance. The average age was around 29 years. I began teaching on Jesus’ Standard for making world-visionary, world-impacting disciples at 9:00 am and continued until 5:30 pm, seven hours of teaching in English, Monday through Thursday. Then on Friday I taught until noon and then headed for the airport to start the journey back home. (This was a total of 31 hours of teaching!) I left Goa greatly humbled, honored, and extremely hopeful for the success of the gospel and the future of the Christian faith in India!
The men were excellent students, listening very attentively, taking vast amounts of notes, answering review questions with great memory skills and asking very pertinent and intelligent questions during Q&A times. Pray that some of these young men were captured by the vision and will spend the rest of their lives consumed by the Master’s Mandate in making disciples of all nations!
Brother Jaison Job, the 39 year old Indian pastor, does an excellent job as coordinator and administrator of these Bible Institutes. He and his wife make a great team and in the two times that I have been with them, they have treated me with such respect and gracious hospitality, that I was made feel like one of the family. Thanks Jaison and Melundah (not sure how she spells her name) for all your kindnesses and gifts. Thanks Dr. Ron Herrod for your vision and provision in sponsoring these training Institutes for better equipping national men in their callings and for allowing me to be a part of this work.
Your continued prayers are coveted as we prepare to leave for a week of teaching at another RHEMA Institute in Nicaragua, Central America on August 22nd.
May the God of all hope fill you all with joy and peace in believing by the Holy Spirit so that you abound in hope (Romans 15:13).
