Saturday, July 11, 2009

Blessed

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:17

Praise the L-rd for His continued faithfulness! His love is refreshing. This has been an incredible week full of G-d's blessings and grace. One that has not gone by without making new friends, experiencing more culture, and celebrating the relationships that have been bonded through J-sus Chr-st.

As I sit here and reflect over the past four months that we have spent in this nation I can think of nothing to do but give praise to our Father for His presence, blessings, and grace. Today was a day for celebrating despite the mixed feelings of saying goodbye to people that have greatly impacted our lives over the short time we have been here. We leave in less than 36 hours and yet we are still being invited to homes to fellowship with them one last time.

On Sunday, Shane, Natasha, and I had the opportunity to make new friends from Maryland and Northern Ireland, and share with them about our experiences. Who knew that we would be able to invest in the lives of new people during our last week here? It was such a blessing to be able to do that.

As the week went on we began to have requests to fellowship with believers over meals. Before we knew it, we were packed, so many invitations to spend time with individual families. It was such a blessing to hear their stories, see their photos and learn more about them. We even discovered the Menn. game of Npl. among the Tamang tribe. Great memories.

We visited two temples with uncle. One famous buddhist temple commonly called the monkey temple and another temple with the idol of kali where hindus come to make sacrifices. We witnessed the prayer time of the buddhist monks and had opportunity to say our own prayers for them. At the hindu temple we witnessed a goat sacrifice and was also able to offer silent prayers for those who come and go through rituals for the sake of the ritual. During those days uncle shared with us his passion for prayer and the ways in which we can pray for these people. It was a powerful time spent with him, learning from him and being a witness to the anointing he has. It was an encouraging time.

Finally on Saturday we had the opportunity to share during fellowship. It was a blessed time, enjoyed by all. We each shared from our experiences over the last four months, Austin and I sang a Npali song, and I had the opportunity to give the message. I really enjoyed the stories that the team shared with the congregation - such unique and inspiring experiences. We have really been blessed by the people here. That evening we hosted a drop-in fellowship at the ch-rch. We enjoyed it immensely.

God has really blessed us with these opportunities this week and for that, we give him praise!

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
Isaiah 55:12a

Praises:
Fellowship with our friends
Safety in travels to various locations
Austins' 20th birthday
Time spent with our host family
Celebration of G-d's work in this nation

Requests:
For those who do not know the truth, that walls will be broken down and that when they hear the truth that they may come to believe
For our flight and travels on Monday - returning to India
For final farewells - both here and in India
Team unity
Continued desire for each of us to spend time with our Father - to not become distracted in these busy days


May you be richly blessed!

Jess

Saturday, July 4, 2009

End of June Beginning of July

Indipali Y_S Team newsletter #30

Kush Lengacher

July 4, 2009

Dear family and friends,

Here are some adventures we had this past week. I just finished ten days in the village and enjoyed the time to think about my life, it was good to see the people we had met again and spend time getting to know them better. I had fun carrying water from the tap to people’s houses, and harvesting rice by hand-I didn’t know all the work it takes to make rice.

Then we had team time-it was good to be back together and share about the last ten days together, reading the Word together, praying together, worshiping together. It was a good time of fellowship. You can learn so much from each other.

One morning we had pancakes-a great way to start the day. Later that day we walked to a place with lots of tourist shops-like a town, and had some things to do. The 1st was to sell shane’s speakers, we went to couple of stores and they said to much money we were asking. So us three were walking down the sidewalk and shane saw some young guys and asked if they want speakers and he sold them, and shane got the price he wanted, what a blessing.

Then us guys went to a café-it was nice to talk and eat a chocolate chip cookie and a mango smoothie. Then in the evening we had a house fellowship, I enjoy listening to locals signing. Another night some of us watched the Passion of the Christ, it is an awesome movie-a good reminder of all He did for us.

One day we had to renew our visas, so we went to the place around 8:30 and they don’t open till 10, there was a couple there from Australia, it was so much fun talking with him about life and what he believes. Then as a team went somewhere to eat for lunch-had Chinese, then after 1pm got our passports. Us guys decided to go see a movie, it took us awhile to find the cinema-had to ask lots of people on the way, found the place but then had to go to another one. We found it and watched Transformers 2-an awesome movie. When you watch a movie in another country-it makes you feel like you are in another world, then you go outside and reality comes back.

Another day we went into the same town and went to a music concert-with rock music from believers. It is awesome to see how good clean music bands are rising here-to help young people. Here is how we celebrated july 4th, we were burning the trash, and decided to put in an aerosol can into the fire-it was an amazing fire and sound. This made our july 4th awesome, and it brought back lots of memories of the past.

I hope you got a glimpse of some of the adventures we had this week. Here are some things to keep in mind as you think of us.

Praises:

Travel safety, visa renewal

Request:

Stay focused these last weeks, draw closer to Him,