India Trip 09-2019 Part I - The Journey There
This was my first and so far only trip with Pastor Praveen. On the days leading up to my departure from home, several church members asked me “are you excited?” and “are you ready?” My answer to the first was “yes” but to the second I could only respond “I don’t really know…” My mind was sort of blank. I didn’t know what to expect going on this trip. Personally, it was the culmination of a lot of things God had been working in me.
I turned 40 the day before I left for the trip. I was feeling I could officially no longer play a “young man” in the theater of my life. In that sense, I was excited to get out “in the field” again. After all, I’ve only got so many breaths left here to do work for God; going over the hill makes you more aware of that.
I knew God was about to show me something. It was confirmed to me that God was going to answer a desire of my heart. For years, I’ve longed to see God work in people as it’s recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. I’ve wanted to see people healed miraculously in a way that would be impossible for me to doubt. I wanted to know I truly do serve a God that does random acts of love for his creation, still. The Bible says in John 14:12 that we will “do greater things than this.” So where are these greater things?
My earliest memories of the church include seemingly phony televangelists and big-haired women singing hymns in gaudy clothes and tons of jewelry on television asking for calls to their prayer line so they could receive your generous donation. Because of this and some other deceptions from my formative years, I am skeptical of people claiming to work God’s miracles. Still, there is a desire to see God’s work. I have watched most of Darren Wilson’s movies. They are moving, and I can get excited about what I see, but I want to see it directly, not just in a movie. I want my experiences with God to be undeniably authentic, not something I’m fooling myself into. So, here is the theme and what God was getting me ready for.
Pastor Praveen is a non-staff pastor at my church. He often goes on missionary trips to other churches around the world supported by our congregation. He’d come back and for five to ten minutes on Sunday morning tell of amazing healings and spiritual deliverance that God would work through him on these trips. Of course, this got my attention. I’d long to see these things. But because I didn’t know him very well, I had not worked up the courage to ask him to go.
Last year, during a church cook out function. Pastor Praveen asked me if I’d like to go on this trip. Quite calmly, but maybe with a revealing smile I said, “Yes.”
So, I knew God was working on something here. But, as mentioned above, was I ready? I didn’t even know what I should be ready for. My mind was blank. All I knew is that I’d go to assist within whatever capacity I could, but that seemed limited.
On the way to the airport, though, that started to change. Pastor Praveen was lamenting that he wished he had someone to write down all the things that were happening on his trips, and all the things God had done in his life. I said, well, I brought this notebook, I am no writer but I can write a blog for this trip.
Dad’s Notes
The notebook was a small spiral notebook I grabbed as I was packing in case I wanted to journal a bit while I was on the trip. It was one of two given the day before by my daughters for my birthday. It said “Dad’s Notes” on it. “Dad’s Notes” was filled by the last day of our trip. Filled with accounts from the mission, with stories of Pastor Praveen’s life and testimony, with inspired insight from scripture, and with my own sermon notes. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do on the trip, and although that notebook was an afterthought, it became the primary reason I was there. It was the initial fuel for the content of this blog, and I suspect it will last a long while before I run out of stories from it.
Pastor Praveen let me know that he tends to sleep very little during these trips. He is up at 2 a.m. (1:55 a.m. to be precise), as God directed him to worship, praise, and pray for several hours. I decided to follow him in this while I was on the trip, as best I was able to.
We landed in Trivandrum at about 3 a.m. local time and were received by his youngest sister, brother-in-law, and one of the pastors from his church and his son. They drove us to his house in the hills outside the city. We stayed there for two days to acclimate to the time change. There, I was host to the full hospitality of his family, ate amazing food with my hand, and drank lots of good tea. His brother-in-law and sister were extremely generous and grateful to me. I was allowed to join them in their daily family worship, and though simple it was something that brought me to tears when I described it later to my wife.
Once I got my bearings about me, it was about time to begin the journey to Telengana. So with my notebook and pen ready, and a new daily regimen of 2 a.m. prayer, I set out with Pastor Praveen and our cohort from his family and church on a 24 hour train ride to the other side of the subcontinent.
