From Dhule and now the story.

When I left for Dhule I had no idea what was waiting for us there. Infact none of us did. Pastor, Shannon, Justin and I were as clueless as we could get. All we knew was that Pastor was ministering to a youth camp. What kind of crowd would come in. Are they believers? How much of the Bible do they know? were some questions that were playing on my mind. The trip was long and exhausting. We left at 3.00 P.M from Pastor’s place. We had a translator who was from NLF Kholapur with us. I sat in the back with Shannon’s guitar. Shannon popped a pill cuz he gets sick during road trips, esp if Rishiraj is driving us. So the translator (Abhijeet) had a problem of road sickness too. He didnt tell us at first. But later he asked for the pill too. And in a couple of hours he vomited! He didnt mess up the car though. We stopped and he did his work! By the time we reached Nashik it was 7.00 p.m and we had 120 Kms more to GO! And to make matters more exciting we didnt know the way as this was our first time to Dhule. So by the time we asked people and kept driving on admist breaks for pee sessions and finally got there it was way past 12.00. We were shocked to see the place we were to stay. It was a big British Colonial styled Bungalow! We thought the missionaries built it for themselves. Turned out to be true. The foundation stone said 1922. It was a huge house with 3 Bedrooms ( of what I could make of it) and one of them was supposed to be a study I think. Big, huge and comfortable. Se slept on cots.

So the morning of tuesday we spent praying in tongues and exploring the place. The entire area was oned by a particular Protestant Group of churches called Alliance Church. I’ve been to one in New Bombay but thats all I know about Alliance Church. Their Pastor had deserted them and had done a couple of nasty things. So the entire meeting was organized by a group of 3 charismatic men. One of them is in NLF and serves under Pastor Edward.

The Camp:Tuesday evening was the scheduled time for the camp to begin. The sound system had to be replaces as it was horribly under a lot of pressure. But no issues there as they got bigger speakers. The whole point of the camp would be wasted if the kids cant hear anything right? So Pastor came up and started to speak. The second he stepped up everyone got stiff and began to wiegh him. So it was a difficult situation , and we were facing a difficult crowd. I wanted to see how Pastor would crack this place. It was a real challenge, but Praise God for his Wisdom. Pastor finally managed to break through. The evening session he just spoke on Salvation and Jesus Christ. Out of the 50 who stood there around 40 of them got saved. The rest were given permission to leave if they didn’t want to receive Christ. You see the entire situation was like this-
The youth that had assembled there weren’t churched. They knew about Christ through hearsay and some of their families were saved. But they weren’t churched because they study away from home. Some even in Mumbai. I met a couple of the kids who study in C.S.T.
So they accepted Christ and Pastor dismissed them. He met them in the morning and unexpectedly he started teaching on ‘How to Overcome Sin’ ( the same message we had at youth Camp) & he closed it with an example of how to receive the Holy Spirit. Now when i say example, I mean a live one. He actually picked up a person from the Crowd and asked him if he was thirsty for the Holy Spirit. He said yes and Pastor asked him to receive. He also called up Justin R to receive as he also said that he wanted to receive. And for sure, they did. They were soon drinking of the Spirit. Justin faster as he knew how to, but the other guy soon caught up. And before I knew it everyone wanted to drink. And as soon as they were on their feet, lifting up their hands, opening their mouths in that little faith BAM! The spirit exploded in that place. Everyone who stayed back(for every time Pastor wanted them to receive something he only asked the ones who were really thirsty to remain. The others , say 10% left) were filled by the Spirit and two of them even spoke in tongues.

The next session was on Speaking in Tongues. Sadly a few wanted tongues. A lot of the crowd that received the Holy Spirit left on their own accord. Pastor allowed them to, as with Unbelief the Spirit can’t come into you and start HIS work. But everyone who stayed did receive Speaking in tongues. It was the most fulfilling to stand there and see lives being changed. At at that moment I knew what I wanted to do. I cried looking at kids as small as 6 to 10 years old being filled by the Spirit and speaking in tongues. Usually these kids don’t want to hear messages or a sermon, let alone a session with The Holy Spirit!!

The last and final session was Pastor anointing everyone( who stayed back) with Oil. I made a coupe of mistakes here and he got really agitated, but I guess its all a learning exp. And with that we were at the end of our trip. We left as soon as the session got over as Pastor had to rush back to Mumbai to meet Pastor Paul Thangiah from Bangalore.

So that was the entire Dhule trip. What did I learn? I learned how to behave,act and even pray during such trips. I learned how to project yourself and what is expected of you during a trip. I learned a lot from Pastor. He didnt teach us. I just observed and noted down things in my mind. I believe that in 6 months my life is going to CHANGE!!!