The Two Month Mark

It has been an interesting ride since arriving in India. From someone being sick every week the past two months, literally, to losing our baby, it has been a challenge and at the same time the movement of God has been noticeable.

If you have read the other blogs, then you know how God has used our loss for His glory, and we are so thankful for that blessing. We continue to see the fruit from such a traumatic time, but as always God uses such times of distress to further His kingdom and for His glory. We are but His clay, and He is the Great Potter!

I have completed my first class and it has been an adjustment again from teaching students in the U.S. Accent is one of the biggest struggles to overcome. They all speak English and can read and write in our language, but their accent is very thick and we both have a hard time understanding each other, but we are now becoming more acquainted with one another. I had to readjust my teaching method from using a power point to just writing on the dry-erase board, as I would move too fast for them with the power point and writing it out slowed me down. I also forgot and found out again that anything you write on the board or put on the power point, they will write it down. Even if you tell them not to worry about it and no reason to write it down, they would still write it down, which led to them paying more attention to the notes on the screen then to me talking.

My next class will be in Pastoral Counseling, which I am excited to start. This will be a two week intensive class, as we have to fit a semester of classes in 10 days. After the completion of this class, I will be challenged with teaching a Ph.D. level course on Worldview comparisons between Christianity and Hinduism. The outcome is to hopefully find some new perspectives and approaches to the Hindu faith. This would lead then to developing more advantageous outreach programs that work within the Hindu culture, as most today still try to use Western approaches that just do not work within the Indian culture.

While studying to teach this class, I have found Hindu Philosophy to be very complex in its very nature, but simple within its main tenets. Hindu faith has no problem with something being correct and incorrect at the same time. Meaning you can have one story regarding how Vishnu came into existence and his story, and the village next to you can have a completely different story of how Vishnu came into existence. They have no problems with the discontinuity. How do you witness to this when there is obviously no concern for absolute truth? At the same time they do have some basic tenets, as with Brahma and how he is the creator of the universe. There appears to be a resemblance of a trinity as well that can be developed for the purpose of showing the true Trinity.

I will be starting to counsel very shortly as well, which will be an interesting adventure with cultural norms being different, not to mention words mean something different here, even in English, at times. When someone says you look pale here it means you look tired and not that you look sick or more pale, which would be hard for me anyways. My counseling sessions will have to accommodate for all these differences and making sure that I am truly listening in a different fashion. It will be a great test and a great way to witness in a safe environment.

Another ministry in the area, which offers Ph.D. degrees in Missiology and who I am teaching the class for, has asked REAP if I would be part of their restructuring committee for their degree program. The last leader was very liberal and taught distinctions that are not evangelical in nature and was becoming unproductive and against the mission of the agency. They had to fire him and now are formatting the classes and I will have the opportunity to be part of this process.

Along with all these other responsibilities I am in the process of writing a handbook for the Doctorate of Missiology degree that ACPL wants to start in July 2009. Working alongside Jayakumar and another gentleman, we are putting together the entire program. Currently, I am writing the handbook for the program. Then lastly, every other month I am teaching at a local Friday afternoon Bible Study that is translated into Tamil, though most of the people speak English.

Thank you for donations that have allowed us to be able to minister in so many fashions. We are training indigenous Church Planters and teachers. We will be working with emotionally hurting individuals through counseling sessions and we are impacting the local community through Bible Study. We are also making friends of the local Hindus as well through buying our groceries from their stores and we have bought a piece of art from another in hopes of continuing to build a friendship and to potentially witness to them. As we were told to be careful witnessing without truly knowing the person, we are taking it slow with the people we are making friendships.

God has been very faithful and wonderful through everything we have been through in the last two months, as He has given us the emotional, physical and spiritual strength to be productive in spite of all the sickness in our family and then the loss of our child, Tobiah.

I will end with the meaning of Tobiah’s name: God is Good!!!