Thankful hearts

This week was filled with lots of opportunities for us to practice our preaching skills.  For the first few days (Tuesday through Friday), we went to different slum houses and churches and preached a message that one person in our group switched off preparing.  We preached and worshipped and prayed for the individuals who took part in these services.  This was an amazing blessing to have a week break from hard manual labor that we had done so much last week.  These houses that we spoke in were the size of a pretty small bedroom and they fit their beds, kitchens and living rooms all in the same room.  Even though these rooms were small we still fit close to 30 people all with our knees to our chest trying to take up as little space as possible.  The cool thing about the people who were in these homes was that often there were women there who did not even consider themselves Christian's, yet had rough home lives with their husbands who beat them and drank away all the little money that was earned.  They came because they were desperate for their house life to be changed and wanted prayer for it.  We were able to pray for healing and protection and whatever else they asked us to lift up in prayer.  It was truly humbling and broke most of our hearts just hearing about what these beautiful women were going through. 

On Saturday our team had a break from all the preaching that had been going on during the week and while our staff took their staff day, us students drove 2 hours away from our house to an Aids orphanage where there were 26 kids who lived their were HIV positive.  Almost all of these children's parents had died and many of the kids even watched their parents die.  Immediately when we got there, the man who ran the orphanage briefed us on his mission for these children of bringing them the true love and joy of Jesus, regardless of their circumstances.  Boy had he accomplished this!  These children, even though were terminally ill, were SO excited to see us and extremely joyful!  All of us were so moved by the way that these kids looked at life!  We had an hour and a half to play games, sing songs, do skits and just make them laugh.  Most of us had so much fun that when we got back home and were talking to Joshua we were begging him to allow us to go back and spend more time with these incredible children! 

Sunday may have been the longest day of all of our lives! haha We started at 7:30am when we left for our first church service, which was so neat because we got to preach, sing worship songs and do our savior drama for this church which was actually Joshua's church that we had worked so hard to build during the last week.  During this 3 /2 hour church service they worshipped and prayed for around 2 1/12 hours.  Most of us had never experienced this kind of dedication until we got to India.  Such love and devotion to God and wanting to see Him move.  After this we went to another church that we did the Savior drama, sang worship songs and preached at.  Many of the individuals here we had heard were not christian but still came.  This was another long service and we had zero time to rest in between.  As you can probably imagine we were all looking to God for our strength because our human selves were extremely tired.  When this was finished, the church had made everyone lunch.  We were all extremely thankful for this because it was now 3pm haha.  After lunch we headed back to the house for about a half hour rest before we off to our next church service.  This church was called City Rock Church and we had already done a couple other ministries with them, so it was so nice to be able to recognize faces at the service.  Another blessing was that the church was entirely in English!  It felt like we were back home in the states!  They were all our age and just had such fun personalities for us to play games, worship and preach to.  We also did the Savior Drama for the third time that day!  The pastor of this church has such an amazing apostle's heart and every student there adores him.  It was such a nice way to end the day because most of us felt extremely refreshed after this service.  Thank you Lord for filling up throughout these crazy days!

As for prayer requests for this past week, we have a praise that no one on our team was sick this week!  But one of our leaders, Fleur last week may have broken her toe and is wobbling around.  So prayer for her comfort.  Also, we would like to pray for our neighbor Nazir and his family who live in the same building that all of us live in and Bethany and Luke have really been pouring into.  They are a Muslim family, but the father Nazir is very open to talking and speaks English very well.  During this past week Nazir got very sick and was not able to go to work at all.  One day Luke and Bethany walked into the house and asked if they could pray for him and he agreed.  The next day that Luke and Bethany walked by his house Nazir came out and said that he was almost completely 100 percent better.  We were all amazed and he said, "Yes I pray to Jesus now because there is power in his name."   What this statement actually means, none of us our sure but all we know is that God is pursuing his heart!  Yesterday when Luke and Beth walked by Nazir came out to them and said that he had been at the hospital an hour away all day because his daughters best friend had been in a car accident and is in CRITICAL condition.  Her face is completely smashed and is getting air into her brain and he said that he had been praying for her.  He also asked all of us to begin praying and that is why I am asking you guys who read this to pray as well.  Thank you so much for keeping up with our lives and praying through our journey with us!  We are continually thankful!  Only a week and a half left here!