EOE Missions

Day Four – Mumbai Project (27th)

Diwakar picked us up at our hotel and ferried the team to his home for a lovely breakfast of pancakes, Indian bread and a spicy vegetable dip…(Yum Yum!). We spent the morning getting to know the Pastor’s family quite well. Stuti, his eldest daughter was educated in the UK. She formally worked for the International Justice Mission, a group that would “stake out” and “raid” houses of ill repute and in the course of their sting operations, they would rescue minor girls from slavery in the sex-trade. Stuti has a real heart for Jesus and for women and wants to see them freed! Jesus bought them with His own blood and she wants to make sure that these young women know that! Sami, is the youngest daughter and she is very shy. She has such a wonderful smile that puts you at ease the minute she enters into the room! We have not spent as much time with her as she is always busy seeing to the family needs! Mrs. Wankhede, is a lovely woman, generous and a great host.

We took a coffee at the new shopping mall in town, to see the contrast between the poor, middle classes and the rich. The mall is a spectacular shrine to western Idolatry with major brand stores and a four story McDonalds “Fine Dinning” facility. I had a certain sense of shame about the mall. I felt that it was as much a shrine or temple to a false god as the road side shrines to one of the 360,000,000 Hindu gods that dot the landscape. I will never look at the malls in the States the same way again. The empty promise of satisfaction from the gods of commercialism is not different that the poor Hindu praying to a ceramic statue of a Hindu god. The Holy Spirit really worked on my heart about this.

That afternoon, Sean and I walked the neighborhood for about an hour. We did not realize that school had just gotten out! The kids were very curios about the two big white guys! So many came up to introduce themselves and have a handshake. We met over 20 children on our walk! When we finished we stopped in front of the Church complex to sip our Maaza Mango drinks and see if we could strike up a conversation. Within a 15 minute period we where surrounded by a group of children and young adults from 6 to 18 years old. They all wanted to practice their English and impresses us with their stories…some claimed to be in a gang, some were going to go play cricket, others just wanted to see what the other kids were surrounding and giggling about. We spent as much time as we could engaging them before heading back into the house to prepare for the night service.

After an impactful and extended time of worship, the Reverend Diwakar asked me to go first this evening in providing testimony. I had worked on a prepared thing that morning, but felt the Spirit leading to give a talk from Romans. I started with the end of Romans 6, reading only the verses I highlighted, and ended in Romans 8 with the verse “There is no condemnation in Christ”. It was a talk on faith, on sin’s conquered power in Jesus Christ, how while we will struggle with sin we have been assured final victory and that is solely through Jesus and by grace.

Ken had prepared a word that after noon bases on John 10:7-1 that dovetailed into my talk like we had planned it! God is so good! I don’t think my whole talk was much more than 6 minutes, and Ken expounded and worked through the full Gospel message over the following 25 minutes. We later found out that 5 seekers were there and that they promised to return tomorrow for our talks. Sean will be bringing his Testimony followed by Ken’s teaching. I am praying about asking to do the closing and invitation. I have a message of forgiveness, freedom, unconditional acceptance and Love to share with these people.

Pray for me!

We walked back around 10:30 from the Wankhede home, alone with no fear but complete peace about what the Lord has planned for us over the course of the next several days!

posted by Chainsaw Weasel @ 9:18 AM