In this sermon, the speaker discusses the need for unity and the importance of helping supply personnel for Bombay. They emphasize the complexity of the situation and the need for prayer. The speaker also shares their experience of listening and learning from people in a different part of the world, including their thoughts on Americans and British people. They mention the importance of personal support and making changes in their relationship with churches.

The 26th of March, 1980, I'm sharing about some of the policies in working in India. I, first of all, need to warn you that my voice is not so well, so I hope you'll be able to hear. Also, I think the first thing I wanted to do was really thank you for your prayers. I know you were praying. We saw many, many answers to prayer. And I don't take it lightly that people pray. In fact, I believe that in many ways the main people that carry the work of OM are those intercessors and prayer partners. Many of whom, quite a few, have been praying for us for some 25 years. One of the reasons that I try to correspond with so many of these people, and we've been able to correspond with many of them during this trip, is because I really do believe these people are the anchors. People that intercede, humanly speaking, they're not seen, but they're there praying. People like Mrs. Clap, and many others. I thought that I shouldn't sort of release my main thrust here on Monday morning, because I'd like STL to be involved as I share about India and the subcontinent. Also, this time, instead of waiting until I got back to share, I shared with the teams in Pakistan when I was right in it. And that material is on tape. The final tape has just been reproduced, available today, called The Challenge of India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. And you know, more and more, our team here is linked with that part of the world. We're linked with the whole world, but OM is a movement where a lot is delegated out, and a lot of people have other responsibilities. So we don't have to get so involved, except in prayer, and of course, other ways too. But since I have this responsibility of overseeing the subcontinent area, I feel very much that I need to share with this team what is happening there, not just the answers to prayer, not just the things that I put on those tapes that go out to the public, but some of the things that the public wouldn't necessarily hear about. So I thought this morning I would share from the notes of Brother Ray Eicher. I might just say that this time with the Indian leaders has been one of the most encouraging times I've had in many, many years. And I do really believe the work is on a more solid foundation in India, with a team of people really united together to carry forth the work. One of the men on that team is Brother Ray Eicher, co-coordinator of the work with Alfie Franks. Alfie, by the way, for the first time ever will be coming out of India, Lord willing, and be with us in September, late August and September. Ray stayed on in Kathmandu a couple of days, two days really, and stayed up till about three in the morning typing up these notes. And I thought I would just share from these notes to just give you a little idea of what we were doing in Kathmandu for ten days. We had about 60 or 70 leaders, men and women, come up from India. Some of those people travel an enormous distance. Five, six days round trip on the trains. A little bit of air coming up, usually from the pipeline air. One of the exciting things about Nepal is many, many new roads. You now can drive to Kathmandu with one half the difficulty of before. If I get talking to you about Nepal, we never will finish. So I've got these notes, and I thought I would just share some of these things, and you can maybe jot them down. This is Roger's set, and this is Gary Dean's set. First item on the list, well let me read the introduction. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. With much thanksgiving we look back to these important days together. God united our hearts in a wonderful way, and helped us as we laid plans, thought through important concepts, fellowshiped together and waited upon God, upon the Lord. And then below are some of the decisions that are made. All right, the first thing that was shared is the shifting of the AIC from November 84 to March 85. This, for many of you of course, wouldn't mean too much. We need to continue to pray for the final word in regard to this, final confirmation, but there's a number of reasons. One, it's supposedly a little warmer. Another is in connection with the tent that they use for the AIC. Another is in connection with the Overland people, who have already come through a couple of conferences, they ride in and go to another conference. Another thing, which didn't come from my side, but came from their side, is that this year, if the Lord continues to lead, I will be stationed just across the border during the whole AIC. The Nepal border is only a couple hours' drive from Gorakhpur, where the AIC is. And then, after we have our initial leaders' meetings in Nepal, talking about February, March 85, then I will go down to the border so that I can meet some of the other brothers who I've never met. Anyway, that's something we hope you would continue to pray about. He's already set the tentative schedule, it may be changed, but February 21st to 22nd, sub-conference leaders' meeting. 23rd to 25th, OM India trustees' meeting. Then, OM India trustees and state leaders. We have different levels of meetings at this conference. First, we meet as trustees, the five men who oversee the work in India. The work in India is developed very differently than work in other parts of the world. Actually, the work in India is very close to YWAM. YWAM does not have a board of directors. YWAM is run by five men in the work who are the main leaders of YWAM. And they formed a board themselves. Very distinct from our development. And that's the way our work in India operates to some degree. It evolved that way. We don't have an outside board of directors in India, though indirectly they are responsible to other boards. But God has really welded together this team. So we meet with these trustees, then the trustees and the state leaders come. The final authority in India is still trustees and state leaders together, getting unity, and then they present it to the larger body, and through the Holy Spirit, brings everybody into consensus. I may share this again, but we had one of the most beautiful experiences I've seen in the history of OM. In fact, one visiting pastor, he's actually there for a year, but he comes more from outside of OM. He said this particular event convinced him more of God's Holy Spirit controlling OM than anything he had seen. I just got his letter yesterday. But we were moving through on this tremendous policy about personal support. And the India personal support system has been completely different from the West, from its foundation. And it just seemed so much the way to go. And a lot of the meetings that this had to be discussed, I could not be there because I was meeting with individuals. And more or less everybody had seemingly agreed on this, the night before. But then people were having personal fellowship. The hurts were coming out. The questions, fears, problems. Very complicated. And as we met together, the next day, dealing with another crisis, it just came, it came to, to our eyes that we were making a serious mistake. And the Holy Spirit just moved into that meeting. There were tears. And God just showed us that we were just running ahead of Him. And we got complete unity within a half an hour to pull the brakes on this shift, major shift in policy. And of course then we shared this to the whole body. And there was praying and weeping. It's just as if a great cloud just lifted. And though it was hard, it was a painful decision to pull back from what we thought was God's plan, it ended up being one of the most uniting factors. Even within those, within the few hours after that, people who were really on the base of this decision were going to leave O.M., including top level leaders who were afraid really to share all that was on their heart. They just felt, well, if this is the way O.M. is going to go, then probably the Lord, thank you, is leading me at least to consider leaving. And more than one person was in that camp. You know, sometimes in a committee meeting or a small gathering, it's not easy for people to express what's on their heart. Especially if what you express doesn't seem less spiritual or against God's great plan. And even more so in the East. And Peter Maiden was testifying what a school this was for him of understanding the difference in approach in India. That it's not always easy in a group for an Indian brother to just stand up and just say what's really on his heart. And some of the ones in the past that had stood up, hadn't been able to articulate it, because, you see, it isn't just what's on your heart and mind. A lot of people have great things on their minds and hearts can't articulate that. And other people who don't really have that much are very articulate. And in this world, if you know anything about it, those are the winners, at least usually. The one who can't express it at least he looks more like the loser. So that was a great moment. And we will, of course, continue to wrestle with this. We actually believe through this that the Indians will see great breakthroughs in the area of support. But at least in India for now it will be more on a volunteer basis than it will be sort of the law of the Medes and the Persians. I'll explain that at greater length someday. Anyway, let's move on to this second point which is really big. And that's the shifting of the Bombay operation, part of the Bombay operation. One of the strong things that God brought to our hearts was that we can no longer go on as we are in Bombay. If you think you have an accommodation problem, here we do. Bombay is five times more complex, at least five times more complex than Bombay. And there's a lot of things that happen in Bombay that are just hard to even explain. Very little moves in Bombay at all without black money and bribery. Very, very little. And our whole warehouse that we are in now, what the owner is doing, not us, but what the owner is doing in order to keep us in that warehouse. The biggest problem we face and our burden is not just one year or two years down the road. In India, from the beginning, we've always had to think 10, 15, 20 years down the road. Decisions we've made 15 years ago have saved us from unbelievable agony today. One of those decisions was we had to limit the number of families. A family in India is about five times more complex. For example, if they are a Kerala family, a strong Kerala family, very seldom would they not be caught up into the dowry system. Dowries have now gone up. So if you want to get your daughter married, you need about $25,000. Fortunately, a number of our people are pretty heavy on sons. And if you have a son, then he is worth $20,000, $25,000. One of the main reasons that so many of the Kerala people are in the Gulf is the only way they can survive, the only way they can get their daughter married off. It's highly complex. Just to get a job. I think of all my children. As far as jobs, they have no problem. My son has been accepted by six major accounting firms. My daughter walked into a nice job in India just to get a job. You are talking about something that most people have to bribe to get. Just to get the education to get that job. They don't go to bribe. You give the school a large donation for helping the school. Of course, I don't want to expose you to much Indian culture and want to blow. But we realize that families in Bombay with the accommodation problems, that down the line, we are already in trouble now. Down the road, we are going to be in greater trouble. So there is a decision to move half of the Bombay operation out. Especially the warehouse and the literature side. One of the possibilities is Gorakhpur. There is great discussion about that. Some are not so convinced. God has given us a fantastic property in Gorakhpur. We are going to use that property to literally be searching the whole of India. We would like something more central. But these things, of course, will take a couple of years. Already one of the families has moved. Himmat and his wife are moving to Lucknow to be Joseph D'Souza's secretary. We had tremendous time talking about that. So just pray because each one of these things will take a couple of years. And we are doing a feasibility study on Gorakhpur and other things. Then the third thing, I guess this was another one of the major decisions, is connected with paid workers. Because it was hard to get OEMers to work in Bombay, Bombay being an administrative center, OEMers, many of them at heart wanting to be out on the teams and in other cases not having qualifications for the kind of thing we have in Bombay, took an easy route in some ways and started hiring paid workers. Now, this is where everything is so different from the West. A paid worker in Bombay is far cheaper operation than having full-time OEMers. Because full-time OEMers, we have to take care of those people properly. Bombay life becomes very complex. Very few families live on one salary. They have to have multiple salaries. That's why they live together as multiple families. It's survival. Just read about Bombay. A lot of people were not happy about this paid workers. We initially allowed it for coolies. A coolie is a man who carries a big bundle so you have coolies. They push hand carts. We couldn't expect to get full-time OEMers pushing hand carts through Bombay. Also, it's tradition and sensible in India that people have cooks and people to do the cleaning. And in our effort to adjust to India, one of the miracles of OEM and OEM India is that we have not forced a number of groups that have attempted this in India are in complete disarray. Complete disarray. But we have tried to find the Indian way and tried to find balance. So we thought the Indian way is to let them of course have paid coolies and let them have cooks. But somehow it grew secretaries, bookkeepers, financial experts. So we now had 25 and it was contrary to international policy of OEM, contrary to Indian policy really. People were not happy about it. Even when I was in the Gulf, a prayer partner came to me and says, we see that OEM has completely changed and now it's all paid workers. I picked that up in the Gulf. Me being in the Gulf is not mainly for the Arab world. I have no great gift for the Arab world. I'm happy to be there but it was mainly for the Arab church. But my bigger thing behind being in the Gulf is to get with Indians on a more basic level because if I only have Katmandu I can get very lopsided. And in Dubai I was among the Tamil people, I was among the Telugu people, I was among the Kerala people more so in Kuwait. How do these people think? What's really happening in India? Living with them, eating with them. And it helps me to understand India better. So we had a united initiative and of course we were amazed. One or two people who we thought we're not going to go with this. Very, very quickly we had unity that these people must go. They're on a one year contract that's also incredibly complex in terms of their future. And they've all been informed that within a year they have to go. State leaders have been informed that for Bombay it's not going to be an easy road. And Bombay needs a lot of prayer because it is a very, very complex city. And we have to... I think the main thing I did on this trip was listen. And you probably heard I have had a few meetings about 110. But the main thing I did was listen and learn how people are thinking in this part of the world. What do they really feel about, for example, us Americans? What do they really feel about British people? What is on their minds? One brother I was walking around the streets with he didn't say much till the very end. I said let's go into this teacher. He's a brother who's not a main leader but he's a long term man. And then he just began to open his heart. How people hurt him, hurt his wife. You know it was beautiful. I told someone later on that this brother had shared me. The person couldn't believe it because this brother had shared me. What's really happening in his heart and mind. You know some of these people have been in OM 15 and almost 20 years. They are as vital part of this movement as anybody who may think he or she is some great leader. Because little people or apparently little people are very important with God. Anybody who's been in the work that long and has been faithful. How important it is to listen to them. And this brother is another one we didn't think would go along with this paid workers thing but he's one of the happiest to be amazed. You see we often think we know what people are thinking. But you know often we're wrong. We don't know what they're really thinking. And I don't claim even now to know what that brother is thinking. I'm sure we only got part of it. The fourth thing. Let me try a little of this oil here. The fourth thing is personal support. And I've already shared about that and the way the Lord led us just to not make any radical changes in that area. But to work first of all for making changes in our relationship with the churches. Our relationship with churches on one side is very strong. The churches we work with in evangelism. That's quite strong. Very good unity. The churches that our young people come from in many cases there is no relationship. Actually quite a few cases through our research they're not even happy they're with us. Very different development than here in the West. O.M. is more a parent church there than it is almost back here. It has really gone on quite separate from the churches because we're dealing in Carol with the Syrian Orthodox Church the Nartoman Church very close to Roman Catholic Syrian Orthodox. A church where you have far more people want to serve the Lord than ever can be absorbed into the Lord's service. Now we go around recruit, recruit, recruit. It's totally different. And of course highly educated people with good jobs that you've entered a different planet than where O.M. has been up to now. So many of our people we've got a few like that have come from a young age quite a few with nothing else to do quite a few mommy wanting to get the daughter away for a while we discovered that one of the main reasons some of the sisters stay on longer is because the parents cannot marry her off they haven't gotten the dowry money yet they don't know what to do with her let her go on O.M. for a couple of years until we can raise the cash and get her married off. There are many many other complexities that especially we are as thick as anybody can be when I look back at myself in India 20 years ago it's good that I was a bit thick because I would have just completely flipped out. If I had known some of these things I went down to Kerala full power and people responding signing up for God's service the Holy Spirit is moving George Burroughs man of God well you know the complexities that have caused us to face things cause things to happen and now we have to face we are seeing it's come within India it's quite encouraging we are seeing some churches support the people it is unbelievably slow one of the things we had to battle in Kathmandu is generalizations you know whenever there's tough problems you always come up with easy answers and people make little comparisons Bible Society seen so many hundreds of thousands of rupees why can't OMC hundreds of thousands of rupees well if you study that closely you discover that the Bible Society of course has deep roots within the Indian church and of course is a fundraising operation and in India a lot of money comes by intimidation and if we operate through intimidation that people would feel embarrassed that they don't give they are giving, their church is giving what are you going to give names printed on sheets all these kind of interesting stimulus now another group that we have been compared with is Friends Missionary Permanent a North Indian director came up to be with us very close friend, ex-alumer for 10 years this is absolutely totally different situation they have 25 to 30 men on the field their one job is to get that money and to get it from the Indian churches the Indian churches in Tamil Nadu know there is only one way those people are going to eat and that is if they get the money and the human heart is very interesting especially when it comes to money we have seen this plenty here in the West think if any other way other than them having to shell out they are going to help find that way and with us as an international operation with even brand new Indian vehicles with all these trucks with two ships creates an atmosphere that on the human level is unbelievably destructive for indigenous giving and despite that we still have seen gifts and in the Gulf lots of gifts and I wanted to present large this check this morning I thought I would encourage the team $8,500 Dubai $7,000 but that is from the international church in Dubai though it was Indians who pushed that gift one Indian said we got money about 2 to 3 2 to 2,000 pounds of it got released but please do continue to pray because that is one of the toughest issues we are wrestling with in India personal support at present we are continuing with the policy there and actually in Bangladesh this policy is now being accepted of accepting as a legitimate way for God's work to be done of national work the complexity of sending out prayer letters in India is again about 5 times greater than here but we have all agreed longer term people must start producing prayer letters and I won't go into detail about that then they talked about OM representatives want to try to harness some of the energy of XOMers at present instead of XOMers thinking in terms of wow OM that is the group that trained us I want to give part of my money back to XOM it is the reverse they are all looking to OM to help them survive and you know Ray Eicher if there has ever been a man that has gone the extra mile for XOMers it is Ray and Alfred and with our own limited finance and others linking people up operation link up you have seen the memo about that in connection with the ICT team is one of our ministries here just linking people up linking people up and then let them go at it and we have linked many of these XOMers with source of finance and because of that their ministries are going now this is a problem because some of those sources of finance are overseas that itself is another controversial problem that suddenly has mushroom and is talking about thousands of national workers at $30 a week $30 a month I think when the fact is that people even in India workers once they are married they are not living on $30 a month so that means that these advertisements advertisements that go out in the press these higher native workers are actually false this is grieving many of our leaders that this kind of thing is going on it is a major, major area that we are wrestling with that is a multiple headed monster but we are praying about getting representatives in different parts of the country and giving them a little bit of an official recognition then we dealt at length with this whole thing of long term commitment as some of you may know as of some years ago there had to be a semi freeze on long term committed people we have more people wanting to be long term just the opposite of the rest of the world to get people to commit themselves in the rest of the world to something like OM is no easy task in India there are more people that want to go long term lifetime ready to sign the dotted line than we can take and they especially just young people getting married or about to get married for example we commit ourselves to one man per state generally speaking so our man for UP is Marcos Marcos is from a close to scheduled caste Christian background he says as we had a chat about this it is not a scheduled caste just a little higher than that it is a unique people's group within Kerala that is considered outside especially by the Syrians they trace the heritage to St. Thomas they are like a separate caste and there is no mixing between them and anybody who is a new convert into Christianity from especially any kind of low caste or outcast group and so Marcos is in that camp he is marrying a Syrian girl this is as international as anything we have ever attempted in Europe and the Indian leaders after much thought and much prayer they feel this is of the Lord I think they have discussed this because how can you discuss each individual marriage things become highly sensitive but there is a unity and I had supper with these two counselors as if I knew anything about counseling such things but we feel this marriage is from the Lord in this country Kerala will be very very difficult this is an OM marriage from beginning to end and we have to stand with these people by God's grace the rest of their life we are their parents we will have to pay for a lot of the wedding weddings in India are big events and you can't believe the details we get into a fixed amount for weddings this is it we don't give any more than this amount that may sound like the answer but you see some people have quite a lot of money from other sources churches, friends other people have no help from other sources so all that changes the picture very easily but we do believe God is wanting to add that can increase immediately the quota because they are not dependent on the general fund dependent on church other individuals a number of our families in India now are supported the negative side of that is that so often it is money from abroad and there are people that have contacts abroad they have been on the ship they have done their recruiting of different things but one was reading the book People's Movement in the Punjab which showed God working in a very different way in India than what sometimes I thought and way back then 80, 100 years ago their great argument and struggle was do we have totally indigenous support and when the Presbyterian because some of the pastors their main thing had to be to raise their money and they had to find the people in the church who had the money and they had to please those people otherwise the money wouldn't come the whole shift and we see this problem even within OM that because we are on this aren't we sort of one system is black and the other one is white there are problems on both sides and we've got to wrestle with that and try to find God's answer then number 8 this was very, very exciting was a decision to now have associate OMers this is the kind of decision that needs to be and must be sort of ratified or agreed upon by the national level because it represents a new precedent within OM of having an associate OMer we find there are so many complexities in OM and OM has some definite principles some definite standards it's a committed community of people it is supported out of the semi pooling generally pooling system yet we have people ready to move with us who may have their own finance their own bank account they are living separately they cannot take on the whole OM thing principles and policies and so there is a thought on a very careful basis of having associate OMers who are completely in agreement with the policy and the principles of the movement but usually for financial reasons they are unable to come into the community in a complete way by all the state leaders and trustees so there is not going to be any big gathering of course one of the reasons we moved this way is we discovered we already had associate workers in various parts of India and well you know how things evolve then number 9 we talked about leaving OM our commitment to people when they leave long term by the way there is a nucleus of men and women that got into a big big thing because they forgot the women one of the greatest mistakes you can make in life is at any point forget the women and they had this big discussion about men who are willing to push marriage back 3 more years commit themselves for 3 years with the agreement in the end the 3 years were a level of leaders who would be able to get out more with the teams we even thought of all kinds of new titles like program coordinators and whatever else because the state leader cannot handle all the program all that is happening so these men would be responsible more for the program within the state but it is very very complex and yet we have gone ahead each person in their own capacities and there was unity about them the sisters operating in somewhat of a different basis for example having to be ready when the parents call them home somehow they didn't get the women enough into this thinking and the women's leaders blew the whistle with no uncertain tone I wasn't in the meeting but I definitely agree with what they said and I never did hear the same for Linda Cowley because Manjula is coming back to Britain and Linda is carrying a lot of the load she has a sister who is helping her but is not really qualified to be all India women's leader so that is a big thing that you could remember marriage number 11 financial support on OM the printed sheet they are working on a lot of basic things we need to run with this program we don't even have yet number 12 the food money controversy I hardly even got in on that I compromised kept my mouth shut and the whole thing went very well basically they agreed to continue with what we decided last year the point of emphasizing that the members also the state leaders all should make an effort we discovered that what we decided to do did not work the way we had hoped but that it definitely did improve the situation very encouraging because at least there was less sense of legalism and that spending less was more spiritual now more people felt free to spend for food and also the pocket money policy even though so often they didn't they still didn't spend it and they claim some leaders you don't need as money to eat and some of the stories you just wouldn't believe I just want to tell every one of you this any way by hook or crook or dingle dance you can get two years out in this part of the world it is worth giving your arm at least a toenail it's worth because it is so refreshing and so balancing to be in such a totally different part of the world and to see how other people think I had tremendous time fellowship with Frank Brooks dear Frank you and I are very close we met on cruise station he was on my tour of England Earth Invaders with Sheila Walsh who now has become by the way the superstar of the Christian singing world at least in the states and we are going to be ministering together again in Chicago this summer but I don't know if I will be able to get her autograph anyway Frank Brooks was with me on that he has had a very difficult time in India and flowing into ditches ill he was on his one team of mainly tribal brothers these tribal brothers they had they eat so little and for him just to get them to even put a little meat anything above you know five rupee mark was a major major event and I just don't think he was eating too much very much dear Frank we sat down for supper and he swallowed a chicken bone so here is our wedding night fellowship with Frank Brooks he is sitting across from me I get really scared when people swallow bones because I swallowed a chicken bone at a conference in France I thought I was going to die you know I read the story of a guy swallowing a little bone choking to death so here Frank he just tried to be real phlegmatic he says going down going down and then we got Alfie Frank his chief medicine man we got him and anyway that was a crisis but they are eating more trying not to eat bones personal money during and since Go83 it was set at 7 rupees a week how much is 7 rupees in money it is little less than a dollar yeah 50 pence a week it can now be raised to 10 rupees per week great discussion fanfare rockets went off teams should be motivated to work hard sell well and have the privilege of demonstrating personal financial integrity I gave a message on the subject of integrity now the word is popping out in the reports number 14 we talked about reports we discovered a lot of papers flowing around I won't go into detail about that number 15 we talked about having a family conference it was set Bombay December 28th to 31st coordinator Jess Harper how we praise God for these foreigners internationals who are coming back and you know the unity between the Indians and the international generally speaking is very very encouraging there is no sense in India you know that as foreigners you know it would be really better if we packed our bags and moved on they really sense that we are able to work together and so that was very encouraging and we can pray for Jess Harper Philip Morris leaving Bombay Ray Eicher away for the summer Jess is really thrown into the deep end and 16 the full conference in Belgium Alfie and Heidi attending the conference there will be others as well then there was some other points the East India base is being shifted largely to keep the rent down to Balasore that's with brother Devakaran very encouraging time with him then we talked about literature I won't go into details about that we talked about policy making international that's something that Peter Maiden handled so incredibly helpful to have Peter Maiden there there is no way I can handle this conference on my own because I try to give a large part of my time to being with individuals they all come supposedly one of the reasons get some time with me since I can't go in India so I had a personal anywhere between an hour and 5 hours with each individual who came there it's the most intensive time of the period the year for me really it's 15 16 hours every day non-stop because you just can't visualize having that brother go back down that mountain 2000 miles and not having that time with him so you just push push push and while I do that Peter Main gets in on the discussion and then I get involved in it to some degree popping in and out of different sessions and then they talked about policy making within India that's the pages that will go out quite generally you can see those and then from page 7 there are some notes just for state leaders and some of the responsible people abroad why do I share this with you because that work there is your work it's not my work first of all of course it's God's work but God has called you on this team we actually need a sub continent area coordinating base but I think most of us out there agree we don't want a sub continent area coordinating base unless I can move out to Kathmandu or something like that something we haven't thought about meanwhile London is the best place to coordinate the sub continent these countries don't get on there are many complexities there and we are in the best city of the world outside the sub continent itself better than Kathmandu actually because the communication of Kathmandu is just a nightmare a little better than it used to be and I talk about the work in Nepal and Bangladesh that's also on that tape and so in a sense if the only job we had this small was just the sub continent there would be more than enough to do of course we'd be able to improve on every area but instead this is you know one of maybe ten of our major tasks here on ICT I feel it's one of the most near the top and I feel you need to know what that work is about if it wasn't for the airfare we'd fly every one of you out there I've already got a vision of taking a team of twelve with me next year Dirk Roth wrote me one of the most encouraging letters I've had this year this was when he left Pakistan so encouraged so motivated greatest experience of his whole life of course he hit Pat Mandu sick as a dog I haven't had any letters since but we left him in India for advanced training but he got thrown in the deep end he landed in Karachi ahead of me immediately he was taking my meetings this didn't always work later on they tried that the pastor got in a car and a taxi almost got me out of bed but it was a very encouraging time I want those of you on this team to understand you'll never fully understand it because I don't fully understand it but to sense that you're a part of this work the money that we have to channel out there the literature projects that we're involved in the cassettes the endless equipment Gary Dean is shifting on it's amazing what people arrived with from operation Dean and you know Dirk Roth had to carry so much stuff and it's good he's a rookie he didn't know what he was doing he has giant engine parts it really is quite comical let's pray Father we could talk all day about India subcontinent thank you for all you've done there we're not out of the woods yet humanly speaking with a church the way it is in India we never will be but we thank you for many answers to prayer many victories tremendous unity not only within India but across the whole subcontinent area with Phil Bushel and Mike Wakely and dealing with so many complexities so many different winds of ideology and we just pray now as these men are back in the battlefield and are really up against satanic opposition that you would strengthen them and minister to them and help them implement these decisions that they themselves have made there in Nepal Father I just thank you for being a tiny part of this thrust into this area of a billion souls a thousand million people and we believe that far more is going to take place in the coming years Father we as a team want to recommit ourselves to this task that we have of helping serve this part of your work and Lord you know the mountains of work sometimes this involves many little things that sometimes get out of control people we need to be meeting at the airport and so many other ministries people go back and forth help us Lord we are cast upon you in Jesus name Amen