This pilgrim life…

Our life journey continues…

In late 2015 Sheba and I were led to step away from 12 years of community in the city of Thane, Maharashtra where we had been serving with people living with HIV/AIDS.  We were delighted to see so many lives changed, and humbled to witness eternity enriched and local churches welcoming people with HIV into their families. 

Ever since we moved to the Mumbai area in 2001, we would take time to pray and reconsider at roughly 3-4 year cycles.  Over the previous dozen years in Thane, each such exercise gave us the same basic message: be faithful, stay put, carry on.  But this time around a specific verse spoke to us: “blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage” [Psalm 84.5].  We knew it was time to move on.

Moving on meant uprooting and being replanted in Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh – right in the centre of India and part of the drought-prone Bundelkhand region – 13 districts straddling northern Madhya Pradesh and south western Uttar Pradesh.  We were deeply privileged to serve with the HBM Hospital family.  These past 3.5 years were deeply challenging, and also a great blessing as we have seen God’s grace operating in so many ways, and are again aware of how much we need to be shaped more and more like Him.

At the end of March this year Sheba and I were privileged to spend some time together in prayer.  Our parent organisation had spelled out what their strategy for the HBM Hospital was going to be and we needed time to reflect and hear God’s words to us.  We read and prayed through “The Calvary Road” by Roy Hession and came away with a clear leading to move on.  We thus gave our notice to our leaders that we would be leaving come June 1^st of this year.  And we did.  We are currently wonderfully open to wherever God will have us next.  Deep breath. Blank canvas.  Big God.

It’s our year of Jubilee and we want to experience the Sabbath rest, the Shalom-presence of the Lover of our souls.  And so we are on a journey.  A continuation, a series of further stages in our pilgrimage.  We have 116 boxes of our things packed away in a friend’s home in Lalitpur, awaiting shipment to our next resting place.  Where they will go we still don’t know, but we have already had the deep joy of two and a half amazing weeks of travel and meeting so many precious people.

Will you join us in our journey?  In this blog (untouched for many a moon) we will be highlighting some of the amazing places where wonderful people have asked us to consider joining them in the remarkable work they are doing.  We know we can’t serve everywhere – and so are listening and learning – wanting to hear which is the yoke that our gentle-hearted, humble and kind Jesus has shaped for us (Mat. 11.28-29).  In the mean-time we are just blessed to be with folks who are the salt of the earth.   People doing destiny-shaping work, far from the razzle-dazzle spotlights which we (secretly at least) yearn for.  Just being with them is such a blessing.

The next 3 months will be truly pilgrim worthy.  We travel down to Chennai tomorrow to spend time with Appa and Sheba’s brother Peter and family.  Then I take Enoch back to boarding school in Mussoorie.  We hope to visit another potential site for serving, and need to meet the good folks at the US Embassy in early July.  Why you may ask?  Because our dear Asha is slated to start college at our beloved Taylor University in Fall.  Amazing grace that God has provided an unheard of combination of scholarships and a wonderful supporter family to cover her costs!

Sheba and I are hoping to join Asha on a US trip from the last week of July to early September.  Our current plan is to come in and out of Chicago.  Stops planned include a visit to Sheba’s sister and family in Arizona, friends in Colorado, more family and friends in Indiana before dropping off Asha for her orientation on August 20^th.  That leaves us with a final 3 weeks of jubilee and flying back to Bharat on Sept. 10^th during which time we also hope to meet up with my sister Premila

Let’s see how the cookie crumbles.

So please join us on our travels. We need your prayers and advice.  Any thoughts for our next steps are of course most welcomed.  And while we know we cannot meet all of the galaxy of amazing people who have loved us, we do hope to at least bump into a few of you on these journeys. 

It’s a wonderful life!