UNMUTED
It seems God has unmuted me – at least enough to do the sessions today. My doctor and nurse tell me to be quiet and rest my voice all the other time so I gladly obey! I can talk, but weakly. I have no volume and what I can say is very low. So it seems I have the best of both worlds! It’s interesting how things turn out sometimes. I do feel badly for Nancy, though. She is lonely with one-sided conversations and misses our interactions. I think I’ll be talking with her tomorrow, our day off. (Comment by Nancy: “Yeah! We have off tomorrow, Saturday. My plan is to sleep IN and keep Jerry on voice rest.”)
I dressed as Peter today, then did a double session on the Bible Overview, tracing the plan of salvation through the whole Bible. It was very, very well received – quite enthusiastically I must say. They listened attentively for hours of teaching and magic. We are facing one ‘problem’ at the conferences so far, though. Many more pastors are coming than expected. We had 200 at the last conference and 230 at this one, far more than expected. That really fills up the rooms and has some far in the back. It also means we run out of food and have to get more and make another meal for those who missed eating the first time. In addition, we run out of book so we have to transport more back to the area later. Of course the cost goes up for more books, food and travel money for more people. It already looks like we’ll be well above budget this year. But if this is the worse problem we have we are in good shape! Despite everything else, we are reaching many more pastors than we expected. We seem to be developing quite a good reputation in this part of India.
To our amazement and joy we found another pastor and wife from our area that we know in our restaurant for breakfast this morning. I had helped him prepare for his first trip to India 4 years ago and he has been coming ever since. He teaches in a Bible college for a week. The Indian man who brings him also lives in our area of PA. He and Moses know each other from the past. In fact, his hotel room is next door to us. We re in room 209, he is in 208 and Moses is in 207! That definitely is a God thing!
Thanks for all the prayers and encouraging emails to do our best, whatever we can, and trust God to use it. Thanks! In closing I’d like to throw that back at you for you, too, need to do your best no matter how poorly it seems or what difficulties you face. God will use it anyway. And there is nothing you can say that is worse than not saying anything! (January 20, 2018 Vijayawada, India)
Isaiah 55:11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.