Upon checking in, the flight attendants told me there were no front seats. I had requested a front seat so I could have more leg space plus it makes it easier when nursing etc, and I had also requested to be seated next to a lady…………..you can imagine why.

Believe it or not I was seated next to a dignified looking lady from Spain of all places. (Which is also where I am from). She was such an angel of a lady, and we began a conversation right away. I was able to give her an Activated mag and find out more about her and her family. She told me that every time she flies she gets terrible earaches that are quite unbearable for her, especially during the landing. Since we had just been talking about God and how much He wants to be a part of our lives, I offered to pray for her just before we started landing. Her ears had already started hurting, but we prayed together in full faith and then carried on our conversation. As we got off the plane, we exchanged addresses and she then told me that the pain in her ears had completely disappeared and she had felt no pain from then onwards. I felt encouraged that day – seeing two answers to prayer.. One, having met ‘that special person’, and two, the answer to prayer for her ears! I love putting God to the test, because more and more I realize that He never fails to answer in the way that is best for us.

Penelope invited me to an event at the French embassy to schmooze and see if we could meet people who would be interested in sponsoring our work. I’m not good at talking to snooty French strangers, but I wanted to be supportive so I went along. Towards the end of the event I was standing alone off to a side and this man approached me and we started chatting. I got his card and gave him my number before heading on home. Honestly though, I didn’t want to call him back because he had been flirting with me and I didn’t want to come across as accepting his advances. What was I going to say, “Hi, I’m that half-your-age girl you met and I have something I want to tell you”? Don’t laugh. Obviously I had absolutely no experience in Follow Up.

Well, Penelope definitely had the faith to call him so we ended up meeting him together at his office. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as I expected it to be, and when the subject of her life-long dream of visiting Cuba, he knew just the person to make it happen… and it did!! Several times now! So I learned the lesson to have the guts to call any and everyone because you never know which one is the Lord’s sheep and what He can do through/ with them.

Something interesting happened on the way back. We had prayed in the morning that God would lead us to someone special at the airport, and as the day went along we sort of forgot about the prayer and got ready to go. Our flight was a fashionable 2 hours late so we decided to stroll along the bookstore that was at the Mumbai airport. There was a sale on kids’ books, so I bought a little shiner prize for Kaila and some baby books and kept looking around. All the while there was this guy, maybe in his thirties, obviously part of some multinational company, and rather dignified looking, checking out the bookstore as well. I ventured to give him a tract, (a small paper with a simple message about God’s love). This paper is called ‘Somebody Loves You’. I was initially a bit embarrassed to give this guy a tract, after all here I was 8 months pregnant and bulging, totally wiped out , not looking my best, and with a pile of baby books in my arms. Heh. Well, I’m happy I did….-.I gave him the tract and spoke to him for about 30 seconds, exchanged names, and bid him farewell. He was very grateful that I had taken the time to say hello and was quite surprised. I had scribbled my number on the back of the tract just before, but I was kicking myself that I had not gotten his number – why do I forget everything these days. The whole journey I just couldn’t forget about it and I prayed that somehow the Lord would lead him to us again. That evening as I arrived home I got an SMS from Sandeep. Here’s what it said;

‘Hello Sarah, thanks for the wonderful note you gave me at the bookshop at Mumbai airport. I wish you and your group the same happiness and love that you are spreading. In this age and time it is truly an incredible gesture. Warm regards, Sandeep’

I certainly didn’t care now about the flight being 2 hours late and the sweaty wait at the airport. We had been in the right place, at the right time, and had somehow been God’s channel to someone who needed to know that ‘Somebody loved them’. That was a pretty good feeling!

1)    A set of educational VCD’s. The series is called Treasure Attic and is not only an educational series, but also deals with what is termed here as moral science. For example; health and hygiene, obedience to teachers and parents, sharing, friendship, courtesy, manners. Etc.

2)    A computer set up for each school.  A computer can double up as many things and these days you can get big screens for not too much, so we are looking into this.

3)    A series children’s books by the name of ‘Grandpa Jake’ series.

4)    A lively musical program for each school upon distribution of the materials.

These materials will be going to rural schools, and to schools here in Bangalore that are quite needy.  Please keep this project in your prayers, and if you would like to help in someway, do contact us!

Aurevoir!

Here’s a small map, and the red dot on the map shows the location of the village, which is quite near to Sri Lanka. Our rehabilitation and humanitarian efforts are still going strong in the Tsunami affected areas of South India and we hope to keep you updated on it! Ciao for now, pray for Vins journey – those buses can be.pretty dangerous.

It’s hard for me to stop sometimes and take that time with the Lord and I of course have the voice of the devil right there ready to try and convince me that’s it’s boring so I really admire those like Ceasar and Rosa. These two dear people are part of this blooming bible study and have a real hunger to learn about the things of the spirit. Lord helping us, John and I who are giving this bible study can do our best to make things interesting and power packed.

Today we studied about “Daring to be different” and challenged our students to be different from the majority by following in Jesus’ footsteps of loving your neighbor as yourself. Thisais a bit of a heavy topic and if not understood well could come across a bit contradictory. For examples when it says in the Bible “He that saves his life shall lose it, but if you lose your life for Jesus’ sake you shall save it.”This goes completely against our natural thought patterns but it is so true and does not contradict itself.

I am going to include a song that you all can download that I wrote on this subject: True test

Thankfully there were no guitar-strings broken, shoes flung into the crowd, or lyrics forgotten. Au contraire! The organizers interviewed everyone like 3 times, thanked us for our work, and even invited us to awesome tacos and tamarindo juice. I have to say, it was a great afternoon.

Here are some different quotes that I emailed out last week:

• The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
• There are three types of people in the world: 1) Minimizers do as little as possible, 2) Maintainers do what they need to get by, 3) Maximizers give it their all. Which are you?
• Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.

Disclaimer: Um… just be careful you don’t hug weirdoes.