Gospel Meetings and Close Encounters

   A three-day adventure on a Gospel crusade into the villages on the outskirts of my city led me to a very scary, but funny, situation.

   First of all, I was a humble guest of an evangelist who had set up open-air preaching dates and times. I was accompanying the team as the worship leader. I often take opportunities as an itinerant worship leader to raise a little support for the local outreach efforts of our church.

Two miracles happened on this crusade. In the beginning, I was only given one session to preach the Gospel; however, after hearing the teaching style I used, Calvary Chapel style, the evangelist insisted that I teach an additional 4 more sessions to proclaim the Word. Actually, the evangelist ended up saying to me that my teaching was better than my worship! I laughed and said “thank you.” I hope it was a compliment.

   The second miracle was the hand of the LORD upon me to rescue me. I was sitting casually enjoying a big, delicious plate of chicken curry and rice. A group of us were outside sitting in plastic chairs eating our lunches, and I was not paying much attention to anything except the tasty food. I noticed the feeling of a dog’s tail swiping against my foot. It is not at all unusual for stray dogs to lounge around us underfoot, especially when we are having chicken for lunch. I just assumed that my chair was providing shade for some scrappy dog who was happily wagging his tail and waiting for me to drop a bone. In my mind, the dog’s tail was tickling my foot — until I noticed my neighbor stiffened up and wide-eyed, staring down. He slowly and carefully retracted his feet up and away from the ground. I decided to inspect what was alarming him and interrupting our lunch…

   …the “dog’s tail” was a cobra! A cobra was slithering across my ankles and feet. It was swaying around and ready to attack.

   In case you don’t know, cobras are common to my country, and a very deadly species known as a King Cobra is what I was up against.

   My reaction was simply to lift my legs up slowly and I felt very scared, but I didn’t dare flinch. The people around me told me not to move, so I didn’t move. I was just stuck. The cobra slowly retreated and met his demise when a man with a big stick smashed its head.

   Praise God I didn’t die young eating my chicken lunch. We all had a good laugh and praised the Lord.

People witnessed that the snake didn’t attack me, and they were saying, “God didn’t give that snake permission to bite you!”

One of our families has been struggling since we met them many years ago. The husband is absent, the wife is emotionally broken and complains of knee pain as her excuse not to work. The eldest son is partially paralyzed on one side of his body from an accident. We have had to work patiently and consistently by way of prayer and helping with transportation to doctors’ appointments and groceries and holding prayer meetings in their small home. The family’s situation was incredibly challenging. We also had taught them how occupying our minds and working with our hands to serve others is beneficial and part of the new life in Christ. Then, we decided to put a plan into action.

   Our church decided to not give the family any cash, because they were not wise enough on their own yet to faithfully steward money freely given to them, but we did decide to buy wholesale food provisions, and helped them to open up a small shop from within their own home. Here in our city, it is not uncommon for people to set up snack points, tea houses, and small convenience shops right in the front room of their house. We decided if we supplied the basics, held the family accountable to work from home, and taught them budgeting and money management, we could encourage them and empower them. The response was incredibly powerful, and the woman and her son are working hard and feeling a new sense of hope. We can see that they are growing in their understanding of the Word and receiving more faith that the LORD does in fact provide — and we also have our parts to play.

 Please pray for this family to get back up on their feet, trust Jesus and stay plugged into our fellowship and grow more!

Please pray that our servant team would mature and be greatly satisfied in serving the Lord in our fellowship. If God would grow any number of these saints to join our ministry team one day, that would be awesome!

   One of our brothers in the fellowship had the brilliant idea to host a meal at his home and conduct a prayer meeting — but his aim was to invite all his unbelieving neighbors. Over 25 people came and enjoyed eating with us and joined in worship and listened to the Word of God. Everyone concluded to pray together, in Jesus’ name. We were so impressed with this brother’s heart to open up his home and cook a wonderful chicken meal and just love people. The neighbors enjoyed his hospitality and said they would like to visit our Sunday worship service to hear more. Many of the neighbors, therefore, have opened up to us and invited us to personally visit their homes and come pray and share about Jesus.

• Pray for our church ministry team & volunteers to grow more in the Word
  
• Pray for the local saints here to mature and trust God more.
• Our local missionary sister from the USA needs prayer for her father’s healing & salvation who is experiencing kidney-failure.
• Our landlord’s wife is gravely ill and in the hospital and we promised him that we would add her to our prayers.
• My sister is seeking proposals for a husband (arranged marriage) and our family would love to be prayed over for her desires in her future spouse and a blessed Christ-centered marriage.
• Please uphold me and my ministry team’s health always as conditions are harsh and outreach is not always safe.   I am so blessed by your prayer support and continued interest in what God is doing here in our church. We pray for our supporters to be blessed and that they would keep their hearts and eyes fixed on our beautiful Jesus.