Southward

Our time in the North ended this morning. (This picture was a perfect last shot of the sort of thing you find every moment on an Indian rode? I just love it.) We had a bit of a sad goodbye to our friends. We have truly come to love these two people.

We are one our final flight on our way to Ongole. We really grew in affection for the people in Ludhiana. I think we both struggle in our leaving feeling like we testified of Christ often in weakness and timidity. Many times struggling with whether we communicated clearly enough the urgency of the gospel. It was a constant battle to follow the Spirit. Stephanie sent me this passage this week and it has been such a comfort many times:

12 “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord,

13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,

16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?

17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.”

2 Corinthians 2:12-17

And so He does lead us in joyful defeat, He has conquered our sin! We gleaned an enormous amount from the time there and we are asking the Lord what He wants us to do with this experience. We are sincerely thankful for it. And we praise the Lord for laying it on our friend’s heart to sponsor this entire trip for all 7 of us. We praise God for your investment in the gospel friend! Thank you!!

To our Basswood family, we are praying that the Lord would use our local body in this city and the He would burden our hearts as a unit for the gospel to take root there. Please pray with us how we can continue to work toward that. We asked the Lord to connect us with a work being done in that city if there was one, but made no connection with any believers this trip. This city has about 1.8 million people and very little access to the gospel. Continue to pray with us that the Lord would bring us to a believer/believers that we can join in the laboring there or that our local body would be used to start one.

We met Simpson at the airport this afternoon and we are on the same flight heading toward Ongole. We have a full 3 1/2 weeks remaining. Jeremi will be doing a lot of training with programmers that will work to fund translations and Simpson has asked me to do some training with the ladies that do gospel ministry in the villages. I feel very weak for this task, please pray for me!!

We are looking forward to seeing Stephanie, Hannah, Shere and Janie in a few weeks!