2.54p local time.  My expectation is that by now, all 8 members of the I10 team (7 from NHF & our honorary NHFer, Anna, from Virginia) are home, showered, comfortable, sleeping?   We landed safely at JFK about an hour late, and said a brief prayer over Anna as we sent her off to her connecting flight home to her family in the D.C. area.

Hi,

We’re in Dubai once more, waiting to get on the flight HOME.

HOME.  That word never sounded so good, honestly.

The ratios still don’t look good: 4 out of 4 are still down with one thing or another.  We’ve got some airplane pukies, consistent massive stomach cramping, and all other sorts of things you can imagine might go wrong.  And we haven’t really figured out what caused it all. =(  The other 4 are hanging tough (chowing down on McDonald’s as we speak, actually).  Please continue to pray for all 8 of us.

Hi all,

Wow. What a week. What is the meaning of the purpose of God and/or the nature of spiritual warfare, when spiritually, w/respect to FS, we started w/dark vision & ended in glorious light … But our bodies started strong & rapidly degenerated into sickness?   Weird. Still trying to see what God is saying in all of this, and we are still trying to battle strong.

From Robert:

I feel like we have gotten a lot done because we were able to experience something about people’s lives here, and especially to see the Hilton’s ministering to the women. That is the most remarkable thing. Also, everyone feels inspired to try hard to support the work here which is beautiful and noble….’

From James and Robert:

Cathy and Jen are both sick. Please pray for their quick recovery, so that they can continue their work and also able to fly home on Saturday.

I’m actually writing this on the morning of Day 6 . . . yesterday was sort of a wash for me and I just didn’t have the energy to type.  I stayed home (Becca stayed with me) totally sick, while the rest of the team came to FS.  This is what they told me about their day…

We woke (Bob & I at least) with heaviness for our team. A strong urgency to re-knit our team back together in the face of mean, mean spiritual attack.  So we prayed Ephesians 6 over each other, visualizing ourselves lifting each individual part of God’s armor & lovingly dressing each other w/the same.

God came thru today.

Hi,

Thanks for your patience in our backlog of daily reports…

First, the bad news:
– Catherine got hit by a cab.
– James slammed his finger in a cab door badly. Twice.
– Bob & Anna were interrogated.
– our group was detained by the Metro stationmaster.
– we’ve got our first case of food-related icks.

Hi dear family,

We just finished evening prayer and are back in our room eating beef jerky (o, the irony) and unwinding from an intense day, intense evening, intense prayer time.

Worshiped this a.m. @ Carey Baptist Church, the church that William Carey built way back when. Walking unto service & hearing familiar songs being lifted up in praise made the world shrink in a millisecond. Love when that happens! And to finish off worship w/ How Great is Our God… Awesome!

This morning at about 5a, the call to prayer rang out from the mosque next door. So beautiful.. Yet couldn’t help but think how misguided… As I tried to fall asleep afterward, the song “Jesus, Jesus, holy & anointed One” kept ringing thru my brain. In sleepiness, it went with the call to prayer… And I felt lucky to know Christ. There are some who found it creepy. Please pray that we’d continue to be UNAFRAID of the foreign culture AND the foreign gods… That we’d see & hear the beauty… But love more the beauty of our God.

He loves India so; THAT is what I felt the moment I got off the plane – not darkness but hope. May He sustain us this week, as individuals AND as a team, and may He give us more glimpses of His hope today…