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happy new
year
We wish you a wonderful and fruitful New Year lived through God's
Grace and guidance!
We spent Christmas with our Christian
friends at Lighthouse Ministries, who are our family abroad.
We had a couple friends at home on Christmas Eve. We ate, played
cards, watched a good Christmas movie and had a gift exchange with
them. On Christmas day, we had our Christmas lunch at the YMCA
downtown. The day after Christmas, Sunday, we had our Christmas
program in the morning and a celebration for the whole church in the
afternoon. We had a lot of fun playing games and finished the
celebration with a pot-luck meal. We had something similar over the
New Year's Eve including a Watch Night service. The first thing we
knew, we had already entered into a New Year. New Challenges, New
Victories!
Nobody from our church was hurt by the
Tsunami. We heard a few stories about people who live in Hong Kong
though, some of them quite dramatic…
We are in our prayer and fasting week (Jan
9-16). One of our prayer requests is for guidance about how we can
help with the victims. We are very aware that the media will quickly
change their headlines for other “newer” major events. Then the
world will cease to send help. But the reality of the victims will
continue. It will take years of work and ministry to help so many
people. What a door of opportunity it is for many of these countries
who resist, ignore or oppose the Gospel, to be open through
receiving that help. Some of these areas will hear the Gospel and
receive a concrete revelation of God’s love.
We have a few church members working with
an International charitable organization. They are preparing
containers of food and goods to be distributed in four worst hit
countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India).
www.crossroads.org.hk
So we are looking at how and where we
should help. We need the Lord to guide us in this.
Talking with a friend who lives in Tianjin,
China, I learned that his wife and others from China flew to
Colombo, Sri Lanka, and are helping with the Evangelical Alliance of
Sri Lanka
The last news was that they are sending
her on the east coast- one of the worst hit area.
INSERT- from my friend's email
In this
location they want her to take a leadership role in managing the
distribution of aid and encouragement. Unfortunately there is no
power in this area, so I will probably not be hearing from her for a
while.
The
Evangelical Alliance would love to have more volunteers, but now
seem to have sufficient supplies for the people. The problem is
getting it to where it is most needed. The locals are charging
exorbitant prices to transport anything. So they are hoping to
lease some vehicles. (this is a $ need for prayer)
She has
been joined by about 40 Korean medical people, and a half a dozen
from China.
We sent
a large suitcase full of drugs with her; mostly purchased by our
local fellowship; enough for several hundred people with water-born
diseases.
For info
on EASL and their relief efforts, see:
http://216.218.195.29/eng/index.php/home/tsunami_response/nceasl_sri_lanka
If you
do a Google search on EASL Sri Lanka, you can find a number of
articles which tell of the growth of the church in Sri Lanka and of
its persecution by the Buddhist majority.
http://www.nceaslanka.com/
She says
the local believers are confident that good will come out of the
tsunami. She has been speaking with and providing help to
Buddhists.
Concerning our ministry to China, I am preparing to go in China
on Jan 24 for a week of training for pastors/leaders of the
underground Church in Henan
province. Please pray for the safety of these meetings and for my
preparation—I am preparing my notes in 2 languages.
We held a seminar in early December to
more than 100 house church leaders in Jiangsu province on a farm. We
lived on a farm during our stay. The temperature was around 0
Celsius /32 Fahrenheit and we had no heat at all. Nevertheless,
we are blessed to see how they
responded to the teaching of the Word of God. They are so thirsty.
The winter international conference to be
held in Tianjin in February has been forbidden officially by the
Chinese authorities. They claim that they have now a new law
forbidding people to meet in large group for religious activities if
they come from a province outside of the local gathering.
(Strange???) We are planning to change the format with
3 regional conferences (3 days instead of a week- Feb 3-5.).
I was asked to lead
the conference held in Shanghai along with
Pastor Jennifer Nolin,
co-pastor with me at Lighthouse Ministries.
I will travel from February 1 to 9 in order to minister to different
local groups before and after the conference. Please pray with us.
Brigitte and I are also praying for God's
abundant Grace about going
to India (first time) We are responding to an invitation to go train
and encourage 300 pastors during three days and at night will be
preaching openly to multitudes. We will leave on Tuesday February 15
to Sri Lanka where we will meet with local Christians who are
involved in helping the victims of the Tsunami. On the 18th, we will
leave for Hyderabad and change for another flight to Visakhapatnam.
There I will speak at the main church on Sunday. Monday we
will move to another
city for the crusade and training.
Please pray for our time to Sri Lanka to be fruitful. If in prayer,
you are led to send a contribution for the victims, please do and we
will bring different kinds of help when we go. Pray for our health
and security as we travel to both Sri Lanka and India.
As you can read, we need a lot of prayer!
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