A new journey begins. We are in the midst of training time getting prepared to hit the streets today. 6 young men just out of the Israeli army. We are in South America expecting God to move in our lives as we will be together for the next 5 weeks. Please keep me and Daniel in your prayers as we are leading the training sessions . Also pray for the team as some of them are hitting the streets for the first time.
We are now on a bus back to Delhi. We are all safe and debrief went very well. It was a great time of fellowship and reflection on what God did in each one of our lives. We were all able to recognize how God gave us amazing oppertunities to share the Gospel with Israeli backpackers and that through that we grew too.
Please pray for our 10 hour bus ride to Delhi. God has protected and kept us on all our travels so far and I’m confident that He will continue to. The team will depart Delhi early Wednesday morning and Eli, Josh, Yossi, Liz and I will be in Delhi a bit longer debriefing.
Quick update. As you may have read in the news, there is much craziness in Leh right now because of a “cloudburst”. We didn’t have a team in Leh at the time, we are all fine, and God’s grace has continually been shown to us in our travels. Everyone on Massah is doing great! Thanks for your prayers.
Aaron
We have just about wrapped up our ten week journey, and we are spending our last day here in India. We have come so far in what seems a short time, but when thinking about it, it’s been quite long. So many changes have taken place, and so much growing has been accomplished. I cannot say that we are the same people who all met up on a sunny afternoon in New York. God has been so present throughout this adventure, guiding us in the most difficult situations, and faithfully providing opportunities to speak to people both in Israel and India. I can only hope that what we have presented will be remembered by those we spoke to, but I leave that concern to the Lord. I could not have been blessed more by those that I have traveled with these last two months, and have truly been encouraged by their testimonies and their faith, and the friendship they have extended. In many ways I wish that this journey would never end, but there are important things that call for us back home, others who need to learn about a relationship with Y’shua.
It’s been a crazy few weeks in India, full of conversations and opportunities to share the gospel with people. The first week was an extremely encouraging and busy one for our team, we got into a ton of conversations with all sorts of people, many of whom were curious and open to what we had to say. During that week I gave three people New Testaments.
The next week was very different. The people we were around tended to be much more disconnected from reality and interested in smoking chillum. However, there was a group of very friendly tourists who connected with us, and after five days we were able to talk with every tourist in the village about Y’shua. But it was a very difficult week in terms of energy.
As a team we’ve come a long way since we first met each other. I’ve noticed ways that I and other members of the team have changed. Even though we aren’t ready to say goodbye to each other, I know that God has prepared each person on the team in unique ways to take the many lessons they learned back home so that they can do ministry there.
Thank you so much for reading our blogs, praying for our team, and supporting us as we have been gone. God has been faithful in answering your prayers. All that’s left is the return journey, so please pray for traveling mercies. Thanks so much!
I am finishing up the end of a very hard week. I have been in a place that is very spiritual and full of drugs, especially chilum (a drug used in Hindu worship). I has been very hard to talk to people, but we have. We went to a small village and were able to talk to people. There everyone knew who we were and what we believed and we left on good terms. God can use any interaction and I pray he used these in particular. We have traveled back to the main town for a couple of days. Here it is hard to find a place to talk to people, but we have ran into people that we met in the village. Even though we did not bring up the Gospel on these conversations I know that every time they see us they remember what we believe.
The climate and mountains have been amazing. It is so beautiful here. Also we have had a lot of rain so we have walked across washed out bridges, driven over waterfalls on the road, driven over half roads with a hole and a 300 foot drop 6 inches away. Right now it sounds that the road that connects us to the rest of the group (which we wanted to travel on tomorrow) is washed out. I would like to end this with prayer for everyone’s safe travels as well as all of the seeds that have been planted while we were in India. May God continue to work in peoples hearts.
Our team has been a bit sick the past few days. Please pray that Liz S and Shmuel A will feel better.
There are less people here then there were last week but we’ve still been able to have some great interactions with backpackers.
Please pray God will bless our last few days of evangelism and give us even more oppertunities to share His live with others.
Our time here in Dharmsala has been very rewarding. There is a growing sense of unity in the group, as the Lord works to bring us closer to Himself and the true purpose of our being here in India.
Today Joel and I were able to minister to have a good discussion with a religious young man who we’ve been getting to know the past few days. He is really serious about his study. I feel like there’s a lot that I can learn from Him. Today we discussed the stories of Jesus and His disciples picking grain on the Sabbath. For him, HaShem becoming a man is a philosophical absurdity and impossibility. I have to agree that it is an absolutely amazing truth and a very tough concept to grasp. How awesome is our God.
The three of us and our friend’s father, who is not religious, hiked up to the waterfall here in Bhagsu, the region of Dharmsala where our group is staying. It was incredible. Really too beautiful for me to express. We also got to get up close and personal with a few goats along the way, which I thought was thoroughly enjoyable and fun. India is a crazy place.
There’s another contact here in Dharmsala that I really hope to be able to speak to more. He is a genuinely kind young man who is jaded to spirituality and religion. I haven’t asked his story, and he hasn’t shared it with me, but when I share scriptures with him, he quotes them word by word in Hebrew. No kippah or tzitzit, but clearly he has had serious religious training. He knows what we believe, and we see each other around town a few times every day. I’m really hoping for more of those gospel seeds to be planted in his heart.
A crazy thing happened this morning. Eli and Liz came into our morning devotional time and told me that they had just met someone who knew me. A girl from the synagogue I grew up in in California was in Dharmsala. Can someone say divine appointment!? Just to make the story a bit more uncanny, Joel, Shoshanna, and Liz S had just met her the week before in Leh. What a cool testimony to God’s ability to bring about the situations for our stories and the gifts of God to be shared with others.
There’s one last story that I wanted to share with all of the blog readers. On our last day together in Vashist two young Indian men received the Lord. Their names our Rao and Seth, and they come from Hindu families and backgrounds. They were both struggling with their faiths–the failure of Karma to execute justice, and the lack of presence of their gods had turned them off to the beliefs that they had grown up with. After hearing about Jesus and us Messianic Jews, they both said, “We want to be Jewish.” Perhaps a little bit of a misunderstanding, but what they were really interested in was the God of Israel and His Messiah! They certainly need our prayers right now as they seek in the Word for further understanding. Our God is so awesome to use us to speak words of truth into the lives of the lost!
Joel and I both felt strange today after our conversations. Perhaps it was something we ate, or possibly spiritual warfare. In any case he was feeling crummy enough to go to bed early and could use some prayer.
God is good and may He bless you all!
Quick update… I’m alive and fine. In Northern India somewhere, and really excited to see what God will be doing with out group this week. Please pray for safety and protection from spiritual attacks/darkness. Update more later! Thanks, and God bless! Elissa
Hello bloggers,
Today we split into our new groups and took off on a new adventure. New sights, new sounds and new people to hear the gospel! Our group, joel, shoshanna, elissa, tirza, elly, liz k, josh l, and I are getting used to our new surroundings.There is a lot of Buddhism being practiced here. I saw a few monks walk by on the road (Sidenote: I also saw some monkeys on the 8 hour car ride today) and our cab driver told us that the Dalai Lama is in town. Strangely enough, in spite of the religious focus, the atmosphere is very much like the other Israeli tourist destinations we’ve visited–lot’s of drugs, cafes, hikes, guitar music, etc. Oh and of course I shouldn’t forget “Hello to the Queen”, the must have dessert among Israeli travelers in India. Hot chocolate chip cookies, and chopped bananas, covered in vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Yummm
I’m looking forward to our time here. I’ve heard that there is a heavy spiritual presence here, along with opposition from Chabad. Acknowledging these things, I think we’re all excited to be here and to see what the Lord has in store for us and the people we’ll soon meet and speak to. Our God is at work here in India and it is such a privilege to be a part of it!!!
Thank you for all of your prayers and support
