Ready, Set, GO!!!

We are all settled into our apartment (which is also the West Beng.al Office). We love fellowshipping with the office staff everyday and it has been a blessing to live here! We have finalized a plan for the next several months and we are very excited with it! Due to some unfortunate change of plans as many of you know, we are now staying in Kolkata for our entire trip (except for a month in the North teaching at ELES). But God had a plan for us here and it is amazing to see it unfold. We therefore developed a schedule that would be the MOST effective with our time. Our focus once again is to teach the basics of youth ministry to the local pastors of National Fellowship as well as the pastors in the surrounding areas of Kolkata. There are approximately 20 church planters in the surrounding areas of Kolkata and we knew the best way to help them develop a lasting youth ministry for their church was to give them a personal one-on-one training. We are therefore bringing each of the church planters and their wives to our Kolkata apartment and giving them a 4 hour training on the basics of youth ministry, reasons for youth ministry, and developing WITH them a program that works for their specific area and church body.
In order to meet personally with all the pastors we needed to be strategic, so we are meeting with 6 couples per week: 2 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The first Pastor and his wife come from 9am-1pm, the second couple from 2pm-6pm. This schedule worked best in leaving us Tuesdays and Thursdays for our own youth group we are starting in Kolkata (and a food shopping day!). On the weekends we are visiting different churches to encourage them in their ministry as well as plan for the next week. This plan will be complete by the end of February, where the HOPE in March is to then travel to each of those churches and see how their newly started youth groups are going and follow up with them. This is a great chance for them to tell us what areas they are having trouble in so we can re-adjust their program if need be. We just completed our very first training sessions today! They were amazing and after meeting with both couples we are so excited to see their enthusiasm to take this back to their church and getting started! We are really excited about this plan and feel that it will greatly impact the local community by changing the youth in India for Christ.
What this does mean is a little adjustment of our financial situation. Nat.ional Fell.owship (funded mainly by Glo.bal Fello.wship) is at a low and does not have any extra funds to pay for the travel expenses of bringing these pastors and their wives in for training. Nat.ional Fe.llowship is barely getting the regular funding out to all its church planters so we did not feel right about asking them to pay for this training. After prayer, we told them that we have support money raised for our trip for living expenses and that we could use some of those expenses to pay for the travel of the pastors. So we have decided to use our funding to bring these workers in because we really believe it will make a big difference in their community and ministry where there is currently NO ministry for the youth. We are hopeful that in March we can follow up with the churches by visiting them but know that that all depends on what funding we have left ! In early April we are heading up to ELES in the North of India to teach in the school as well as do this training all over again for the church planters there!!! We will return to Kolkata in early May and stay for several weeks before heading to Tha.iland. We are VERY excited about the many things beginning this month and ask for your prayer for the church planters as they begin their very first youth groups!
` We are also starting a youth group in Kolkata with the students here. As we mentioned last time, there are no youth in the church so we needed prayer in finding them! God was faithful and we had a great first meeting with the youth! We told one of the Nat.ional Fello.wship kids to invite all his friends to pizza on Friday night and we would pay. We just wanted to meet them and hear about their lives. We had 12 students show up, 2 Chri.stians and the rest Hin.du. We had some great conversations, although it is difficult due to what we are allowed to share and what we aren’t. We are allowed to share our faith if we are asked, but not allowed to openly speak about it. Please pray as this group develops; that it will reach many as well as mature the believers already there. We are each starting Bible studies for the Christians (boys with Jeremy, girls with me) to disciple them and mature them in their faith!
There is a LOT going on!! We are so very excited about all of it and how at peace we feel with all these plans! Please pray for a good response to each of our training sessions as well as for additional funding so that we can get each worker and his wife here (and still remain in India till June!). We trust God to provide and are so thankful for your prayers! We had the privilege of hearing Ravi Zacharias speak last week and one thing he really encouraged us in was that each individual needs to honor that burden which the Lord has placed on his heart; and complete it to the fullest with all their energy. It is so easy to become overcome just walking the streets of Kolkata and seeing the many, many great needs here. But we know that if we carry out the burden for the youth that God has placed on our heart, he will do amazing things through them in this City. This is India’s time! And we believe that through this new generation of Christian youth, India will come to know Christ!