Last night . . .

So much for my faith - let's get my numbers right. There are 150 pastors of churches whom Tim has ordained. Some of these men, so I understand, pastor more than one church. But, of the men who have attended Tim's training seminars who are pastoring churches: there are over 2,000 of them, from this area in Andra Pradesh, to south to the Chennai area. Let's hope I have it right this time!

Last night we drove about a half hour to a small village church where, as usual, the service was in progess when we arrived. The picture above gives you a feel for the size of the church and those worshipers attending. We were told that this church is primarily of Indians from the perviously higher castes and interestingly enough, the pastor is from a lower caste who felt nonetheless that God called him to this village where he is obviously doing a very impressive work. As always, we all introuduced ourselves, I spoke briefly from the Gospel of John re: Jesus' emphasizing love for each other and unity and Tim preached his message on God's provision for us to live the Christian life. At the end of the service we prayed for about 7 of those present who, we were told, responded to Victor Samuel's invitation to become Christians. We thenm prayed for those who requested prayer and Tim paryed for two woman who were HIV infected; HIV being something that we understand can be a real issue here as well as in our part of the world. We found out something interesting as we were leaving; evidently there had been a death in the village earlier that day but the Hindu folks did not ask the Christians to cancel their/our meeting as sometimes is the case. A generous gesture on their part, much appreaciated by us.

Yesterday afternoon we attended a service dedicating the start of a new chruch building where Tim laid the cornerstone. It was pretty pleasant ceremony as the temperture had dropped and there was a nice breeze. Today we have a baptismal service and an open air meeting later tonight, so more later! God bless ya big time!