Quick love note to Keri-Beautiful Angel, I love you so much, and miss your amazing touch. Thank you for supporting and encouraging me on this trip. I look forward to seeing your grace and love on my return. Can you send me your phone number ( I promise to memorize it)? I would love to talk to you in the evening (your morning). :)
This is part of the trip from Tony Craig's perspective-
After a 30 minute nap it was time to start the second part of our journey to Raxaul. We arrive in the airport with plenty of time to spare, so far so good. God has showed us much today and the most revealing part has yet to come. On this part of the trip we will be taking a shorter flight (1 1/2 hours), and then a 4 hour car ride to arrive at Albert's house. It doesn't seam easy, but well worth the reward to see what God is doing in Raxual.
As we enter the plane for this leg of the trip, the crowd is much different than the original flight to Dehli. In the row in front of us there was a group of 6-7 Buddhist Monks most likely headed to Nepal. They had a nice quiet way about themselves, although any communication with them was unlikely. I couldn't help myself as 20 questions raced through my head thinking about how their faith in Buddhism came to be. Was their father a monk? Did the grow up there? Once again so many questions, but so few answers. By looking at the rest of the crowd you could tell that we were on a trip into the deepest darkest part of India. Nothing was said about it, but you could just tell what was coming around the corner. It was one of those moments that you immediately took to prayer. God be with us, and be with those that will soon hear your word through Albert's hard work!
With great excitement we greet Albert knowing that now we are in good hands. We pack up two SUV's looking vehicles called "Tatis", which after our luggage was packed there were two rows of bench seats to seat 6 people. The seats were just a bit smaller than a Ford Explorer. Imagine Marty, Mike, and myself (Tony) in a bench seat that size? It's only for two hours right? We can do this, so on our way we went. The city was filled with music, colorful lights, streamers, the whole works. The festival of the sun is amongst us, and the people of India are celebrating like it was New Years. After about two hours of city driving watching all the celebrations we then entered the rural part of the journey. There are no lanes, no street lights, and plenty of big trucks traveling the road trying to get supplies to market. It seams that everyone drives down the center of the road until they see a car coming. At which point each vehicle flashes it's bright lights until the final moment of passing, and then each vehicle swerves to the opposite edge of the road, and then back to the middle. Repeat, repeat, repeat for about another two hours. As it turns out we are still two hours away. We've gone this far what's another two hours right? Two more hours was not the hard part. The hard part was that now we were entering the pothole part of the journey. Left, right, up, down, left, right, up, down, repeat! All of this effort to find the "sweet spot" in the road. At least we weren't facing trucks head on anymore! After a total of 6hrs diving we arrive at Albert's sometime around 3am, by this time Mike has taught me everything I will need to ever know about the soccer and how it originated. Phew... time for bed!
Aaron Guyett
Tony Craig is a champion. If anyone knows his story, they would be amazed to see the way he has so humbly travelled the hardest trip The Crossing's Go ministry has ever experienced. Not only swerving from trucks, dodging, potholes, but inhaling dust on this "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" as Ian would say. The journey did end, and one would think sleep would be immediate; however, it was intermittent at best (for most of us). I slept as I always do, but it wasn't the best sleep i have ever received. I will say that the day today was filled with a lot of rest, whether in sleep or just in relaxation and recovery. Much needed, and now we look forward to tomorrow with great anticipation. Trudy was excited to be able to create a sort of menagerie of gifts, representative of our nation's Christmas or birthdays. The Das family received their great gifts so well, as did the young pastors-in-training, and orphanage children. Thank you to all who donated their time, money, items, and energy to this moment for us all to enjoy. They are well pleased and grateful for their presents.
The presents to the young students at Albert Das's school for pastors created the most memorable and moving moments on this trip to date.
There are two Nepalese students, five mid-Indian students, and five students from Orissa, which is where there is great troubles from the other religions and terrorists from that region. Much to our suprise and hope the sacrifices of the missionaries and the ministry is stronger than ever. Modern day martyrs for sure.
Ian is such an inspirational leader and speaker. He does an incredible job of conveying our aspirations of missionary work and inspriations provided by these young leaders with Christ. We prayed for them and will continue to pray for them, as we know you will all do the same as the Lord our God will lead you. We ask God to give them strength, wisdom and opportunities as they share Christ our savior with their friends, family, and community. They have all been given a great story, and we started getting into these wonderful stories.
Ian began with the story of Paul and how he journaled God's moving in his life, and that can be found now in the New Testament. We then gave them journals with their names written on them. Right now they are blamk, but we know the will be filled before long with God's great gifts and blessings. Their smiles told it all--they will love and cherish these gifts. Tony Craig then provided the basis of our praise to God with his guitar playing and we all attempted to sing, but fully praising with our hearts. It was good, but our singing had much to be desired. :)
Then there were a few of us that shared our testimonies. Ian first with his impacting message that put new meaning to the word Lord, saved by our Lord's Son, Jesus Christ, but now fully serving the Lord every day. Philip Das a student from Orissa, not related to Albert shared he was saved by one of the Albert Das pastors and now his family is saved too! Prakesh, a young man from Nepal shared he was saved by an evangelist paper handed to him (I always wondered if those things worked), and now his 18 family members are saved as well. Marty Whitecotton's spoke next and he shared his story of pain and change. His humility was then related by Ian, and how this action of his truly changes people's lives (including my own). A lutheran boy from Orissa spoke about his new quest to more thoroughly serve the Lord, and that was followed perfectly by tony Craig's ever-changing story of life, pain, and forgiveness.
Jesus IS the way, the truth, and the life as I read in my studies today, I was incredibly moved by the story about Cornelius in Acts when Peter, reluctantly but willingly through the Lord went into this Gentile's home, and gave him the message about Christ. Just as we are here in India the words from Acts 10:34-3(five) (the five does not work on this keyboard, sorry) and Acts 10:43. It doesn't have to stop there for all of us believers, through the Lord's refinement and our fellowship's accountability we can find the treasures God has inside of us.
In His Love,
The India Team
