Greetings Friends and Family!
We have returned from our 2 month outreach to Southern India and are so excited to share with you what God has done in and through us! We would like to start by thanking you for your prayer and support for our family these past 5 months. It hasn’t always been easy, but God is good and He gave us the strength to continue moving forward when we were tired.
Our outreach began in the city of Trichy where it was hotter than blazes and the mosquitoes were constantly hungry. We were able to teach English to a local Christian university and we also tutored some children in a nearby slum. We were beginning to start new ministries when a call from a radical Hindu group threatened persecution to our team and the YWAM base in Trichy if we didn’t leave within 24hrs. After much prayer and consultation with local authorities and YWAM leaders, our group decided to flee Trichy and travel through the night to Bangalore, India.
We spent a good month in Bangalore doing a wide variety of ministries. Shane preached at a church in the slums and a youth event, I gave my testimony at a local Bible College, we both helped distribute food to children in the slums, Shane helped to tear down and rebuild a church in the slums, I spent time playing with children at an AIDS home, we both spent a day cleaning and gardening at a catholic home for the aged, and our whole family spent a week at a Christian orphanage playing and worshiping with the children. Our time in Bangalore was phenomenal.
Our last 2 weeks of outreach were spent in Chennai, India. Our ministries in Chennai mainly consisted of prayer walks and open air evangelism through Hindu & Muslim neighborhoods and villages. Open air evangelism is where you literally walk into the streets and begin sharing your testimony, preaching a message, and praying for people who want to be prayed over. We were able to share the Good News, witness healings, and lead a few Hindu’s to salvation thru Christ. It was amazing!
We returned on Nov. 6 to the YWAM Salem base where we graduated from our Crossroads Discipleship Training School (CDTS) and were commissioned as YWAM missionaries. We are now getting ready to head back to Michigan where we will begin to raise our support. We are feeling led to return to YWAM Salem for a period of time to apprentice under the leadership of the YWAM base and help staff the next CDTS class. We are still moving towards ministering overseas working with orphans, but we have felt that God is telling us that our next step in our incredible journey is to get more experience in leadership and in missions before heading to another country. We are excited to come back to YWAM Salem to train & equip staff and students, work in the CDTS Department, and help in other roles on base as needed.
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Wearing Indian Saree's
Team Worship & Intercession under the laundry on the roof of the place we were staying
Orphanage
Shane tutoring children from the slums in English & Math
Signing with the kids at the Orphanage. I love hearing their Indian accents in this song. We loved these kids!
