here we are back in india! it took us a couple of days to get used to it again, after being in such amazing tropical areas in thailand. but we’re definitely back in the game, and ready to push through till the end. it’s one day at a time, and we continue to pray for guidance and God’s grace in using us exactly how He desires.

yesterday we kicked it old school a little bit! we split up into three pairs, and hung out in hot-spots for israelis. this is how we started our massah ministry, and it seems that it’s going to be a great way to finish it as well.

traveling for so long has certainly brought a lot of strain–emotionally, physically, and spiritually. and it’s more and more forced us to solely rely on God’s strength. and that was definitely my experience yesterday. God gave me the mindset of just letting go and doing whatever i could to tell someone about Him.

sterling and i went to a german bakery down the road, and placed ourselves a table away from a couple of israeli girls. after just a few minutes, we were really disappointed when a guy sat at the table between ours and that one. as we sat there, we prayed that we would be able to talk to the girls before they left. i really felt God there with us, and i felt that He wanted something to happen.

as i waited, i thought of a new strategy that i was excited to try out. we got out our b’rit chadashah (hebrew new testament), and i was flipping through it, trying to read some here and there.

the guy at the table next to us got up to go, and then the two israeli girls asked for their check. i started to get a little nervous, thinking maybe we wouldn’t get the chance to talk after all. i realized that if i didn’t make it happen, it wouldn’t! so i took my opportunity, and used my slightly comical new strategy: i went over with my new testament, and asked them what one of the words meant. they started explaining it to me, and then the girl holding the new testament proceeded to look at the cover to see what book it was! after a look of surprise, she told her friend in hebrew that it was a new testament! i just smiled i said yea, i’m a jewish believer in Jesus. i believe He is the messiah!

the three of us had a great conversation, all about what it meant for me to believe in Jesus, and about what they believe about the messiah. i asked one of the girls if she had ever read the new testament before, and she said no but that she was interested in reading it sometime. when i told her she could have mine, she was very excited and gladly accepted it!

i had already put my name and email address in the inside cover of the new testament i gave her, and i asked for both of their names and emails so we could keep in touch. i am praying that i will be able to see them again, and possibly even get the chance to pray with them, or discuss something that they’ve read.

please be praying also. their names are tamar and stav (tamar is the one who took the new testament)

God is good, and He makes things happen that are in His perfect plans. yesterday i had very low energy, but that didn’t matter. He transformed my mind, and gave me the boldness and strength to be able to go over and share His amazing gift.

Romans 12:2
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Its been 5 days since Stephen left us. Our time with him was really encouraging and we’re so thankful for that. However right now, we need some more prayer! Its been storming here in Pokhara since early evening yesterday, and its still raining pretty hard right now. We haven’t had hot water at our guest house for the last 4 days because the water heater broke, we still haven’t been able to find popular Israeli restaurant here in town, that is if it even exists, many of the Israelis that we’ve built relationships with are gone on treks right now, and as a group we’re feeling the weight of being gone for over 4 months now. So I’m not trying to sound like I’m complaining here, I’m just trying to communicate what we need prayer for, and recognizing our obvious need for God.

So even with all of this, as a group we’re clinging together and clinging to God. And even though I took a freezing (oh my gosh it was so cold) shower this morning, I’m having a blast being used by God over here. We love you all and miss you so much!! Pray that it stops raining, we find more Israelis here, and we get hot water back at our guest house! And that God continues to meet us in new and exciting ways We have a cool update video for you that we’ll post as soon as the internet is fast enough for us to upload it haha!

love
sterling

Description:
The greatest adventure of Sterling and Isaac

more visual aids for all of you back home!

isaac hanging out with some israeli friends we met in leh

we traveled to the amazingly beautiful pangong lake

NLR playing music at wonderland for all the committed fans

with friends at desert rain cafe in leh

on our way down from leh, world’s 3rd highest pass!

NLR playing for a full house at the friendly planet in dharamkot

we love you all, thank you for your prayers!

love,
mobile

Hey guys, so here’s a couple pictures of where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to:

Isaac talking about Y’shua

NLR playing at HaIsraelit!

Full house when we played!

On our way to Manali:20 hour jeep

More to come (we havea slow internet connection!)
love
sterling

So I just wanted to update you on the last couple days here in India. After two and a half weeks in Leh, we took a 20 hour jeep ride to Manali… that was literally like 20 hours on the Indiana Jones Ride at Disneyland. After recovering from that we had good time in Manali. We played a big concert at Dylan’s, which is the popular Israeli hang out/coffee shop run by Believers. We also spent more time with Israeli friends that we’d made in Leh that also traveled to Manali at the same time.

On one of the days we made goodie bags full of little toys and candy for the children at a Children’s Home in a nearby village that’s run by Believers. Our team last summer visited the kids and they actually remembered us this time. We had a great time playing with them and giving them awesome goodie bags The next night we met up with a missionary couple that we’d met last year and had become very close friends with. We led worship for their youth group and had a couple of the boys help us with the music. It was great seeing them again and being able to be an encouragement to them. Overall it was a really good week in Manali and now I’m going to give you an example of how travel here in India works.

I had booked a jeep to take us to Dharamsala late Monday night at 1:00am. So we got all packed up that night and hiked down the hill to meet the jeep… which ended up being the wrong kind of jeep and consequently too small for the six of us. So after calling our “travel agent” and finding out that it was too late at night for him to get us another jeep, we hiked all the way back up to our guest house and spent the night. We were able to take a jeep early the next morning, but that’s just an example of how things work here in India, and its not the first time (or probably the last) that its happened to us.

But we made it to Dharamsala and have had a good couple days, especially last night. So we’re staying next to this “restaurant” called Friendly Planet that is full of Israelis til 2am. At breakfast yesterday we were talking to this Israeli about how we had been in Leh a week ago, and she asked us if we were the ones who had played the music in Leh, and proceeded to tell us how there was talk all this last week of this American band that had played amazing music in Leh! We hadn’t met her in Leh, but she apparent knew us! And wanted us to play music at Friendly Planet that night. So we talked to the owners and played last night around 10:00. It was an awesome concert! There were +50 people, the place was full, and it was the most attentive crowd we’d had in a while. We played for about an hour and had some really good interactions with people afterwards. It was a really fun night, but probably the funniest/most encouraging thing to hear was that our music and presence in Leh definitely made a big impact.

God is awesome and its so cool when He allows us to serve Him in fun ways. Please be praying for our last couple days in Dharamsala and our ministry here. We leave for Nepal in three days, please pray that God would guide in our steps in Kathmandu and lead us to the right area, full of Israelis. We love you guys and are so thankful for your prayer, support, and encouragement.

love,

sterling

Hello everyone!!!

This is Isaac reporting live from an undisclosed location in India!

We have just traveled 20 hours straight on a jeep ride from Leh, our first location as a Mobile team, where we spent the last 2 weeks doing ministry and living life with Israelis. I am pleased to report to you all that it was indeed incredible.
When we started talking about extending the Massah program in this way, we, along with a lot of other people, were quite skeptical about what would come of it, or if it was even possible. There were a lot of ups and downs in the formation and preparation of Massah Mobile, but God knew exactly what He was doing. After spending these last few weeks with this team, living life with them and making ourselves available to be used by God in this way, I can say that there is no place on earth I’d rather be. God is so powerful and so sovereign, and it is so obvious that He is leading us in to the core of His heart and His will on this journey.

In our 2 weeks in Leh, we were able to play around 10 concerts for hundreds of Israelis and others of our music, which is Gospel-centered, as well as talk about the songs and their meanings. We also gave out over 50 Cds of our music to those we interacted with. We had very significant conversations with around 50 people about the Gospel and our personal walks of faith, and are in touch on Facebook and other means of communication with just about all of them. We interacted with dozens more whom with seeds were planted, and many of them received Cds of our music. Among those people, we made several VERY close friends whom we love dearly, and were sad to see us go. Some of these people traveled to our new location at the same time as us, and we will have more chances to connect with them. Please pray for Naama, Rotem, Chen and Ayelet, who we will continue meeting with.

Thank you so much to everyone who continues to read our blogs and continues to pray for what God is doing here. We are so excited and encouraged by what we have seen in our first 2 weeks, and can’t wait to see what God has in store for the next few months. Please continue to pray for health, discernment of God’s Spirit, and an ever-increasing ministry dynamic among the 6 of us. We love you all so much and are so thankful for your support. We cannot express that enough. Until next time. J

Love,isaac

So I would just like to agree with Talia that its definitely been a week of ups and downs, but God always comes through… and sometimes when youre least expecting it.

Yesterday we celebrated my best friend Remy’s 20th birthday. It was a lot of fun, we had dinner at this funny little place and had arranged for them to bake a cake for Rem…which wasn’t very good but its the thought that counts right? Afterwards we had arranged to watch one of Remy’s favorite movies at a little cafe that shows movies, but had given him a choice. We had played music a couple of the nights earlier on in the week, and had not played the night before, but had told a whole bunch of Israelis that we would be playing tonight. So Remy chose to save the movie for another night, and take advantage of the opportunity to share our music and share our faith.

We made our way to Wonderland Cafe (the most popular cafe in town) and found it busier than any other night we’d been there. After strategically finding seats in the middle of the center wall, we started playing. That was at 8:30… we didn’t stop playing until around 10:00 It was probably one of the craziest times we’ve played. There were soooo many Israelis there, and we got to interact with a lot throughout, and after the music. And its so cool to see how God uses the music to open the door for us to talk with people that we would normally not have a chance to talk to, and have them asking us about meanings of songs.  God is way cool!!

So just wanted to share with all of you about how God is using us, and how in control He is. We all miss home a lot, but God just keeps drawing us into Him and reminding us of our purpose here.

We love you all and need your prayer sooo much!!! We’ve gotten close with a number of Israelis here so please pray that God would soften their hearts as we share with them.

love

sterling

Isaac here. The conversation, as Remy stated, was indeed surprisingly well-received on Nadav’s part, as well as our 3 other friends who were, at many times, pulled away from their other conversations and listening intently to the dialogue. Although a self-professed “cynic”, Nadav seemed intrigued by the Gospel as we shared it with him. He was raised observing cultural Judaism in Israel, and had somewhat of a bewilderment when it came to the religious practices of Judaism, and any other religious practices for that matter. After clearing up a few theological confusions regarding Messianic Jews, Remy and I along with well-timed help from Sterling and Talia, were able to lay out the entirety of the Gospel, including potent nuggets from our own testimonies. Nadav, elated, many times shared that he felt our beliefs were “a very sane way of life,” which we took as a compliment. We were able to skim the surface of several key doctrines; just enough to peak his interest at the moment and end the conversation on a positive note, just as the café began to close down for the night.

Later that night, as we had made our way down the 700 steps in the dark, we reconvened in another small restaurant closer to our guest house. After sharing a few more laughs, Nadav invited our group to accompany him and his friends on a trip to the lake further up in the mountains. Earlier in the night Nadav had expressed his desire to do this trip, but that he was having a hard time finding “quality people” to go along with him. I guess we made the cut. Our plans are to make the trip with Nadav and two of his friends in the next day or so.

It would mean a lot to have your prayers in these next few days that we will be spending with our new friends. Please pray that God would be revealing Himself to them in a dynamic way, and that we would get a chance to answer more questions and even open up His Word with them. Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support.