Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Two blogs in one day?! Something must be up.

There is. Some things, actually. Some pretty serious things.

First, please take a moment and lift Betty Jo up in prayer. She’s been vomiting all night. We’re not sure if it’s a reaction to food…a reaction to the heat…but she’s in need of healing tonight - and rest. Please lift her up right now. Pray that the sickness has ended and now she can start rebuilding her strength. I can’t wait for tomorrow to report that God has heard our prayers and has brought healing. But we need you to help with this, please.

The other issue is really very serious. Last night during the usual blogging session, I heard continual drums and even saw some fireworks over in the distance. After talking with David this morning, he told us that this entire month a Hindu festival is taking place in the nearest city. As I type this blog, I can hear the festival music - and it’s not pretty. Standing on the roof of this Mission Center this morning, he pointed out that the nearest building is a shrine to a Hindu god. During our walk this afternoon into the village, some of our team went into the hut of Morganapriya - a 16 year old girl from the church who is the only Christian in her family. She wants to be baptized but in this culture, that would mean rejection from her family. Outside her house, her family had a large shrine with holes all over it where every night snakes come out and are worshiped as gods. I thank God that I was too busy with balloon animals to even know what was going on - but those who did experience said you just feel a complete sense of darkness and evil.

And tonight, David shared with us a story about an event that has been going on in this village. The instruction in the village is for men to not go outside at all after midnight because a She-demon moves throughout the village, enticing the men and taking them away. Initially we scoffed at a seemingly silly idea, until David shared that indeed men had gone missing and when they were all eventually found together, they had no recollection of how they had gotten to where they were. Their minds had been messed with and they were in a type of hypnotic trance. David also shared that Pastor Nandekumar is very familiar and practiced in confronting evil spirits.

I tell you this for this purpose: we are in a different place than where we were last week, and I’m not talking about geographically. We are positioned right in the middle of Satan’s playground, surrounded by spiritual darkness. The work being done this week is not some cutesy “Let’s have camp and ya’ll get saved” mission - there is an intense spiritual battle taking place right now as I type this. It’s existed long before we got here and it will be present after we leave. I know this is asking for prayer in a direction and on a level that most of us don’t engage in, but we are asking for deep prayer for spiritual protection in this place. We are asking you to bang on the doors of Heaven and intercede for these people who are SO incredibly lost. We are asking that you pray that God would reveal Himself in a way that is so obvious in this village that there would no doubt that there is only one true God. We ask that you pray for boldness to speak the Name of Jesus without fear. We ask that you just seek God for this village. For eyes to be open. For miracles to take place. For God to win in this village. That Satan would lose his stronghold here.

Week 1 was such a blessing and we saw so much love of Christ poured out and received in life-changing ways. Now, we enter a mission field that absolutely wants us gone. Tomorrow we go to war. Please go with us.