During the India trip, we were involved in the children’s work done in Fredrick’s church and in the slum area where the women’s tailoring programme is situated:

In both situations, we had fun telling Bible stories, singing action songs and doing games.

The love of Jesus is soooo high!

Listening well:

Gifts were given out after both meetings. We were able to give pencils and bookmarks and Fredrick’s church gave food and drink.

As always, an army of volunteers from the local church are essential to this outreach ministry:

We were also able to give out sweets and gifts bought in England (funded in part by volunteers at Barnsley Hospital where Emily works and by children at Chantelle’s school) to children on our visits:

This week, Fredrick’s church is running a Vacation Bible School for children and our team will be involved in that on Thursday and Friday.

For a number of years we have been supporting the women’s tailoring programme run by Reeba in India. It was especially good to visit the women who are currently on the programme. They attend for 3 hours each day for 6 months and learn sewing skills, beginning with a small version of the clothes they will eventually learn to make:

They learn to cut out patterns and keep journals of their work:

These are examples of some things they made:

Once they have mastered smaller sizes, they go on to learn how to make these for adults and are therefore empowered to have a skill which can help support their families. We didn’t look quite so professional at the sewing machines!

We were warmly received by these women, who gave us all garlands to wear:

We were privileged to be able to pray for these women. Some are widowed, some are in marriages where they need God to save their husbands, and some have disabled children or are barren and desperately want children. We were extremely touched by their openness to the gospel and by the warmth of their welcome. They are living in a slum area, but have a tremendous hunger for God and we are so pleased to hear of all God is doing in their lives. When they complete the programme, they are given their own sewing machine and encouraged to earn their own livings. Many become Christians through the love and support of this programme and make many new friends, learning the benefits of community living as they also learn a practical skill.

Easter Sunday in Goldthorpe included updates about the India trip.

During the past week, the team have been involved in:

• meetings at Fredrick’s church on Monday evening, Good Friday and Easter Sunday
• meetings with the tailoring programme ladies on Tuesday
• work with the children’s club at Fredrick’s church on Monday evening and with the children in a slum area on Tuesday
• praying with church members in their own homes
• a meeting with local church pastors
• a Good Friday meeting at another church in a slum area led by Pastor Ruby.

Good Friday service at Fredrick’s church

Julie & Garry preaching at Pastor Ruby’s church

Ladies at the tailoring programme

Children listening carefully

J-P spoke on Jn 3:16 tonight, possibly one of the most popular Bible verses, asking if we have content with this verse rather than allowing its truths to transform us.

God promises eternal life, but many may think that that is not something to be coveted. Eternal life is not simply a continuation of this present life, however, but the start of a new life with God, defined by our relationship with Him (see Jn 17:3). In this life we can start sharing in the glory of God and all He has done for us. We can experience the presence of God in His fulness with us now

Belief is the next thing to be tackled. Belief is essentially trusting in something or someone. Examples of belief or faith in the Bible can be found in Matt 8:13 (the centurion’s faith) and Mark 11:23. Jn 3:14-15 points back to the Old Testament bronze snake which represents our need to look to Jesus for our salvation rather than trusting in our own ability to save.

Love is the motivating force for God. 1 Cor 13:1-3 shows the preeminence of love and we see we love because God first loved us (1 Jn 4:19). God’s love motivated Him to send Jesus to earth and Jesus was willing to endure the loneliness and pain of separation from His Father. God’s love is not biased, self-centred or selfish. It is a love which we remember not only at Easter, but in our everyday lives too.

It’s wonderful to realise that whether we have celebrated Easter in Bangalore or in Goldthorpe, we all proclaim the wonderful truth that Christ is risen!

What can we say so far about our visit to India? It is difficult to know where to start. First impressions include the warmth and friendliness of the people, their humility and thirst for God, the insane traffic and driving, the heat, the smells of spices that are so different to the smells of bacon and coffee at home, the contrast between luxury and poverty and the sheer colour and vibrancy of all we see.

Fredrick and Reeba have welcomed us with warm hospitality and are solicitous in looking after us. We are humbled at being treated as minor celebrities wherever we go and at being asked for photos, simply because we are white!

The traffic and driving are mad. Fredrick says the motto is ‘you can drive without brakes, but you can’t drive without a horn’!! The noise, volume and speed of driving through crowded roads take some getting used to, and the drivers amongst us are amazed! ‘You’d get fined for that in England’ is Diane’s recurring comment on driving practices (riding motorbikes without helmets, overtaking on the inside, driving the wrong way down roads etc.)

The area where Fredrick’s church is situated and the area where the tailoring programe and slum children attend meetings has to be seen to be believed. One rickety tap provides water for the whole area. Families live in a room that looks more than ramshackle. Dogs, goats and cows roam around freely. In contrasat, we are staying in the IT part of Bangalore. It’s like a construction site!

We have been very busy so far. Today we are going into people’s homes to pray for them. Tomorrow we will be taking part in two Good Friday services. Please continue to pray for us.

As we reach the end of these Lenten musings, it’s very easy to summarise the life God wants us to live. He wants us to live a life of love. Love is the fulfilment of the law (see Rom 13:10 & Gal 5:14) and if we want to reflect God’s nature to others, we have to show His love in practical ways.

Getting rid of impatience, worry, idleness, pride, anger, envy and unforgiveness are means of pruning wrong attitudes, thoughts and actions from our lives. Embracing patience, trust, service, humility, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness and compassion are ways of reflecting God positively to a world that knows a lot about different kinds of love but which struggles to understand the selfless, unconditional love of God.

Tomorrow, Good Friday, is the day when we contemplate this love in its purest form: Christ hanging on a cross to redeem us from our sins. As Peter puts it, ‘Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.’ (1 Pet 3:18) Our response is to give ourselves wholly, unreservedly, to God, so that we become messengers of reconciliation to a world starving for love. Love well and do as you please, Augustine said, for when we love as God loves, our actions will match His.

We laugh at the joke told of the woman who came forward for prayer. When asked why she needed prayer, she said, she wanted God to give her the gift of patience and she wanted it right now! When Dave was recently in hospital, he was told he would need patience and determination to recover. He told the nurse he had plenty of determination, but sometimes struggled with patience! We all tend to struggle to embody patience and find this virtue difficult to practise: I am typing this on a notebook and it’s taking much longer than normal which I find irksome, to say the least!

It remains true, however, that patience comes through the trials we endure (see James 1:2-3, Rom 5:3-4). We learn patience because we have to. There is simply no alternative. The pregnant woman has to wait for the baby to arrive, and no amount of fretting can alter that fact. The impatient child has to wait for Christmas to come. When I was a child, I would frequently feel ill as Christmas approached because I was so excited, but that didn’t actually alter the speed at which 25^th December would arrive each year! If we don’t learn patience, all we do is make ourselves miserable in the now, which is God’s most precious gift to us.

The word often translated patience in our Bibles is the Greek word hupomone, a word which conveys the need to persevere and endure through difficult circumstances. William Barclay said, ‘Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.’ Rom 8:25 reminds us ‘But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.’ As we practise patience, often through tears and gritted teeth, we can also learn to do so joyfully because of the hope God gives us.