We are completing the lecture phase of Birth Attendant School this week. In six days we’ll board a plane for Hyderabad, India, where we’ll spend our first seven weeks of outreach. Plane tickets and visas are in hand, luggage is strewn about the apartment, and we’re anticipating the sights, sounds, and smells of an entirely new culture. What an adventure!
Birth Attendant School has been serving and training in Hyderabad’s Government Maternity Hospital and Ghandi Hospital for 13 years. Mary will serve in the hospital antenatal clinics, labor ward, and recovery/neonatal units. All of us will do (home visit) delivery follow-ups, community health seminars and work in the HIV/AIDS clinic. BAS is established with several ministries in the city, and will undoubtedly have a variety of other activities.
PRAISE GOD WITH US
- despite the challenges of “community living”, it has been such a blessing to spend our every-day in the setting of a very extended family. We have felt so loved and supported, and have met so many people. Our family’s worldview and frame of reference continues to expand, and we are hungry for more! The global church is truly amazing to be a part of, and so worth knowing.
- our funds have come in to cover our trip to India, and then the Kimberley region of north Western Australia (outreach immediately following India)! The whole family is going, and we are so expectant of what God has to show us there.
- that God has historically and supernaturally revealed Himself to man, and we don’t have to wonder, doubt, or fear we’ve missed who God is, what life is about, or what’s worth spending it on. He is a good Creator and Father, a consistent God of holiness and love that wants to be known, and we are only more certain that He is worth pursuing. Living life by Jesus is Life.
PRAY WITH US
- for our final preparations and coming adjustments.
- for unity and good communication in the family, as we face the challenges of transition and the unfamiliar, together.
- that our family and our team would be bonded by intentional love at increasingly deep levels.
- for protection from all sorts of evil
- that our hearts and minds would be prepared to see India. We are so excited to experience together this place in the world, and all the beauty of it. But there is also suffering, and the pain of seeing suffering is intended to break our hearts as it breaks God’s. Pray that we would respond with honesty, courage, compassion, and love.
The whole world has been remembering Mother Teresa and the small, mighty gift she was to the world, and to India. As she so perseveringly reflected, “we do small things with great love.” Giving, out of the smallness of us and the greatness of God, is what brings Heaven on earth. This is what we’re after.