Greetings dear friends in Jesus. It is such a privilege to be allowed to communicate with you. We have been back in the States for a few weeks and I am still acclimating to the culture of 'home' and mentally collating the sights, the people, the events and experiences of our visit to India and Austria. We were profoundly affected by all of those things and I will write to you about a few things that stood out.
During our three week stay in India, we (Sharon, our young friend Amanda Stephenson and myself) visited the major cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad, and many, many smaller cities and villages in Andhra Pradesh State, spending most of our sleeping/eating hours in Mancherial, a city of about three hundred thousand a little over three hundred kilometers (180miles) north of Hyderabad. Our orphan home, My Father's House India, is in the small town of Tandur about thirty kilometers (18miles) from Mancherial.
The city of Mancherial is guarded and overseen by a giant statue of a god. It is a representation of the monkey god, forty to fifty feet tall and brightly painted. Blind, dumb and fixed in place but somewhat imposing and a little disconcerting to Western eyes. The first time I saw this monstrosity I was not anxious to even sleep in the city, but the Spirit assured me that this little god could not see even behind him and there was nothing to fear. Our God, the One True God is not only above all so called gods, but He even created the building materials used in their fabrication. They, the idols, are impotent and not worthy of our concern.
The people are a matter for concern. While we were visiting they were in the midst of a large annual festival to the elephant headed god, Ganesh, and representations of him were everywhere. The people bring their children to temporary tabernacles and worship him with incense, prayers, candles, processionals, drums and dancing. Plaster representations of Ganesh are in all sizes, two feet tall to four stories tall, and in multiple colors. The little parades are in all the streets and in every community with powder and paint being spread about while attendees dance and beat drums. At the culmination of the festival the idol is immersed in water and dissolved. The whole country seems to be caught up in this gross idolatry. Our hearts desire is to see them turn from ganesh, and all those like him, to serve the Living and True God.
Our church planters are doing a wonderful job but there are so many who have not heard and so many who do not believe in Jesus.
The culture evidences the lack of Jesus' love and compassion. Just the other day our people were informed about a new born girl about to be killed because she was a girl born to an unwed mother. Nobody wanted her. (The only reason she was brought to term was because they thought she might be a boy.) Our people quickly made their way to the hospital and rescued her. Praise God! They called us to tell us the news after they got her safely to My Father's House. She was three hours old when they brought her home. We are so privileged to have God's new daughter in our care.
We have named her Hope Rose and she is a beautiful little blessing from God. Would you pray for her and her many siblings at My Father's House India, My Father's House Haiti, My Father's House Monrovia, the orphan works in Ganta, Liberia and Nairobi and Ukunda, Kenya? Our homes are places of hope, faith, love and freedom from fear for the children and beacons of the truth of God's faithfulness for all who see them.
