SUNDAY IN KOLKATA

This is an email that Peter sent out to family and friends - I thought I would post it here to share.

Yesterday was a whirlwind. As most of you already know, when we flew into Kolkata on Friday we met a man from Atlanta who is on the board of a Christian ministry (Good News India / www.goodnewsindia.org) that has homes for children. Most of these kids are not orphans, but the parents don’t have the money to give them a proper education or even to care for them so they are allowed to live in these homes. The founder of this ministry Faiz Rahman, is originally from Kolkata, but now lives in the US, and is a converted muslim. To give you a little background on Faiz, he is associated with Tommy Barnett’s church in Phoenix AZ, in fact worked for Tommy Barnett for several years. For those who don’t know who Tommy Barnett is, he is the one who helped found the Dream Center in Los Angeles.
Anyway Good News India has approx 12 homes and 1,800 students in the homes. Faiz takes most of these kids in at the age of 6 and trains them up thru college. His oldest students are appox 1 ½ yrs away from graduating. I guess my point is this is exactly what we have wanted to support. Obviously we have a special place in our hearts for India and this ministry is doing great things to spread the gospel as well as helping orphans and children who may have become orphans because their parents couldn’t afford to raise them. If it wasn’t for God, our daughters could easily have been on the streets of Kolkata, so to say the least, what Faiz is doing definitely pulled a heart string for both of us and I believe Melissa and I have begun a good relationship with Faiz and his ministry.
What I’m trying to get to (before I went off on the background of Good News India) is I was invited to church by the man I met at the airport, Doug Moore. Well I attended and I was able to meet Faiz and then after service he took Melissa, Jaya and I out to lunch. We were able to talk about his ministry, adoption, and India. To say the least it was a wonderful meeting and we could see God’s hand in the whole event. The church service I attended was great, it was very neat to see so many Christians worshiping God in what I had thought was a city engrossed in Hinduism.
I’m not sure all this is making sense; I’m writing it as it comes to my mind. I’ve left out a lot of details and for those who are interested I’ll be glad to share more with you. It is 8:30p and it feels like 2am. We were up very early this morning with our daughter, she was restless and then on top of that we had to fly to New Delhi. Upon arrival we started our paperwork @ the embassy, again another story of God’s blessing, so we are tired. My wife and daughter have fallen asleep on the bed and I’m getting ready to join them. We thank all of you for your prayers.
So much has happened on this trip, it would take a very, very very long email to put it all down, but God has taken good care of us. His blessing is truly chasing us down just as Deut 28:2 says it will.
We love each of you and I’m sure Missy will be up early in the morning updating the blog.


Love,

Peter, Missy and Jaya and soon we we will be back together with Alysha