For the last one month, the Lord is very gracious to us and many more new souls are added to our fellowship.  It has been our prayer to make our church building small for us...and it appears that the Lord is listening our prayers.  In our nation, even one new souls brings such a joy to the whole church but on June 21, when I gave the alter call for anyone to accept the Lord, 13 new people came forward and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.

Our worship pastor is doing a marvelous job in leading us into God's presence.  When we worship, the whole neighborhood can know that there are people who lift up the name of Jesus with the top of their voices.  Some cry to the Lord, some dance and others just bask in his presence.  It is a great blessing to see how people can live free lives when they come to Jesus.  Some of these people are very poor, some were under demonic bondage, but in Christ, they are free...  

On June 21, we also had baptismal service and nine of them obeyed the Lord into water. four of them are elderly women over 65.  This is first time I have baptized four such senior citizens.  The joy God gives knows no bound even to those who are physically suffering.  The lady sitting with a headscarf is suffering with parkinson disease and hardly can walk.  We had to lift her up and deep into water.  I told her that it is not necessary to go down into the tank, I can just give you a holy bath, but she insisted that we must deep her.  The lady standing next to a man lost her mother last week.  Mother had accepted the Lord but had not been able to take baptism before she died.  She missed her mother so much and even wondered if her mother would be in heaven.  We tried to console her that since her mother had accepted the Lord Jesus as her personal savior, she will be in heaven.  Baptism is not the things that will save us, it is our faith in Jesus' sacrifice. 

Another problem was that her mother and other family members go to a different church where they believe that without baptism one will not go to heaven. The lady sitting on the extreme right will have to stand against all her clans for deciding to believe in Jesus and take baptism.  Life is full of challenges but the Joy of the Lord is their strength.

On the same day, we also had children's worship memory verse contest and Shanti Tamang took us all by surprise by the way she ate her bible.

Since my wife separated the children's worship from the adult, it has taken a different shape.  Before we used to worship adult and children together in the main sanctuary and then when the time comes to preach, we would take the children out for sunday school classes. But now, they have their service right from the beginning where they worship, take offering, have their own choir group.  Finally they divide the groups according to their ages .

This is how we have been so busy and blessed.  There are many things we still would like to do and need your prayers.

At present we are conducting special marriage seminars on every Saturday after worship.  This is another area of need in a nation like ours.

Three weeks ago, we saw the Lord touch our young people and since then the Holy Spirit is falling upon the children as well.  We can not wait for the Saturday to come; there is a kind of excitement in the air for the church worship.  In between the Saturdays, there is much to do and feel that the week has become too short.  Last Tuesday I traveled to Janakpur zone for a pastors' conference.  I was given four sessions in two days but due to the transportation strike two of the speakers could not make it.  My sessions were doubled into eight.  We saw the Spirit work among the pastors and others who attended.  Eight people even accepted the Lord as their personal savior for the first time.  But for the pastors who had come there, it turned out to be a different kind of conference.  In Nepal, when one says pastor's conference, it means money and some more money.  Almost in every occasion, pastor's conferences (leaders' conferences) are organized and funded by some foreign missionaries or pastors who are there to make a better profile for the growth of their business.  In order to succeed, they would not mind to throw some crumbs to these innocent but deceived rural pastors.  Usually there would be one cleaver and English speaking national coordinator who will make sure that everything goes well according to his foreign friends' will.  So, when one hears about leaders or pastors' conference, it is not about the things of the Spirit but the things of the flesh; money, materials, and sometimes a ticket to the country where the money carrying master has come from.  Just to fill in the gap, they would invite some national speakers as well. 

With this background, I was invited to speak for this conference along with four other foreign speakers.  I could feel the cold air of uncertainty among us because they never knew what I will be speaking. As the time progressed and sessions started, the cold air began to evaporate and we began to open up with each other.  By the time the conference was over, these foreign friends also realized that every national is not in the ministry only for money but I was even glad to see the change of attitude in the pastors' mind who attended.  Few of them met me personally and confessed that they had never looked at them and their ministry in the light that they saw during those two days.  But there were others who were totally disappointed, and I am sure when they see my name in the speakers' list they will never attend that conference again.  

One among the attending pastors was a brother whom we had sent to pioneer a church in his village.  Our church invested in him until the church was able to stand on its feet.  But few years ago a false teacher came and deceived him.  We had to abandon that beautiful church due to the arrogance of this brother to join the cult.  After a year the cult leader was found to be chasing after the young girls of the village and some even became pregnant.  Eventually the villagers chased him out and members realized the stupidity of their pastor. At the end of the first day of the conference, this brother came up to meet me with tears in his eyes.  I could see the pain that his initial arrogance of not listening us had caused him, he was broken and lonely.  He had chased many other leaders and denominations to accept him into their group, but no one accepted him.  During this conference, he mustered all his courage to come and ask me if we could accept him back into our fellowship.  There are about 150 members in his congregation and we are glad to see him come back.

 I am praying to God for the open door to minister the national pastors.  They are hungry and at times have very low self esteem thinking that money is the measure of one's success in the ministry.  Please say a prayer for me so that I would bring hope to these pastors.

Tonight me and my wife visited one of our church members' home.  The couple have an old mother (over 70 for a Nepali woman is a thing to celebrate).  She had been a devout Hindu until recently but the couple kept praying for their mother's salvation.  Eventually God did touch her heart and few months ago she accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal savior and discarded all her idols and worshipping items.  Last Saturday (Nepal has church service on Saturday) we had a wonderful worship service and the Lord touched the hearts of many hungry as well as hardened believers.  Five new people accepted the Lord.  But tonight, while talking with this elderly woman, my heart was so full of joy.  She said that as we began our worship, her whole body began to feel a kind of electricity go through her and towards the middle of the praise and worship, she could not stand up.  She would feel as if someone has picked up her body and is swirling around in the air, she would at times feel heat and see some kind of strange light.  Finally she asked the Lord to help her gain her control and give her the peace in heart, and to her surprise the body came to a standing still and the joy and peace of God filled her heart and took away all fear.

The same day, after our service was over, we had planned our leadership seminar. It had been five long years since I had any proper contact with these leaders.  Some had developed a cold attitude and others were nearly apathetic towards anything I had to do or say.  Realizing the cold response, I thought about inviting one of my good pastor friends to minister us the word of God for the whole sessions.  But as I picked up the phone, something in my heart prompted me to not to make that phone call.  Lord began to impress on me that I must trust him, not man or my own ability.  So, the whole week, I was kind of nervous and finally Saturday came, we finished our service and left for the retreat center at 3PM.  All together we were 20.  We had a tentative schedule for three sessions but as the time progressed, we forgot all about our schedule.  The sweet move of God swept us all from under our feet.  By the time it was 2AM, we were so broken and united in heart and purpose.  No eyes were without tears and no feet were unwashed…never before had I seen God touch stony hearts like that!  When God visits the church, it’s a joy to be the under-shepherd of His flock.  This week, we are taking our young people to the same retreat center…please pray that the Lord would touch the young ones' lives as well.