Impromptu preaching… (Oct. 8)

I can’t say I relish the idea of speaking up front. I can do it but wouldn’t consider myself amazing at it. I also like having a good amount of time to prepare for it to ensure I don’t get up there have no idea what I’m going to say. Well, after our surprise trip to Machilipatnam we were treated to another wonderful surprise when Pastor Kumar Pitta knocked on our door at 10:30 PM. He’s Raj’s older brother and they are definitely related. We had talked about maybe going with him visit the 3 churches he pastors some Sabbath but we didn’t know it was going to be this one and we certainly didn’t think we would be speaking at them. Pastor Kumar had a different idea. We would be speaking at all 3 churches in the morning! We tried to explain that we would prefer to speak another weekend so we would have more notice and more time to prepare. Normally that would have been a good enough reason to get out of speaking the very next morning but Pastor Kumar countered with, “Well, I’ve already to the church members that you’re both speaking”. This guy was good! He’d covered all his bases…. We were absolutely exhausted from traveling to Machilipatnam and back and running on little sleep with it being festival week and all so we headed to bed intending on preparing our sermons the next morning. The problem with that was, we were tired and we slept a bit to long and so when 8:30 rolled around we were still just looking up texts to use for our topics. Thankfully Kumar was in fine Pitta form and came a half hour late. We still really only worked on our sermons for maybe…10 min?

Anyway, we set off to the first church and Zach somehow weaseled out of speaking. I spoke there at the first church to an audience of 8. The church was about 15 ft by 30 ft and was decorated with crazy streamers and banners. It was really nice to have a small audience but still it was certainly nerve wracking. We ended up not singing at this church and I almost fell asleep while Pastor Kumar gave his talk since I was perfectly hidden behind the pulpit. I was pretty thankful for that!

We finished up with the first church and moved on to the second church, which was a couple kilometers down the road. The 2^nd church was identical to the first with the layout and decorations except that this church still had it’s Christmas banner up behind the pulpit with not only a picture depicting the manger and Mary and Joseph but also Santa Claus in all his red suited glory. This church had a few more people but the attendance was still under 25 people total. Here Zach and I both spoke as well as sang a couple songs, which we came up with on the spot. I ended up pitching “Teaching the Truth in Love” by Acappella about 2 steps too low so that ended up being kind of a disaster but hey they didn’t know the difference!

Here was the first church that we had members wanting us to pray with them and give them a blessing. This part of the day really had an impact on why I was here. It made me realize that even though I was falling asleep from lack of sleep as well as hungry and tired from the heat, this was a phenomenal way to witness. I hope that we represented Jesus.

From this church we ended up stopping at one of the members house for chipatis and potato curry, which was absolutely amazing! Zach and I were talking about how if we were able to get a motorcycle we could come out here to this ladies house and learn to cook this stuff! Zach and I both ended up drinking the water they handed us to wash our hands with…oops. But hey, it’s been a couple days now and no vomiting or diarrhea. I think we’re in the clear, hopefully.

The third church was identical to the first two and we did the same thing we had done at the other churches. There were more kids at this church though and that made it really fun. Here we prayed with more people than the other two churches combined. It was interesting to find out that most of the members we saw were Hindu Christians, that is they held true not only the beliefs that SDA’s hold to be true but also any number of Hindu teachings they have chosen to follow. It occurred to me that this would not be a weird thing to do if you were a Hindu because Hindus are polytheistic to begin with so in their minds, what’s one more god to add to the list. While this is true, I also found kind of sad. It’s almost like they have the concept of religion all jumbled.

One interesting thing about these little village churches is that they have sound systems…but not for the inside. They have speakers that are on top the church and project out to the entire village. I’m sure the villagers have mixed emotions about that. I know I would!

Our day ended around 4:00 PM when we got back to the hospital. We didn’t really do much after that since we were so tired after preaching and traveling and not sleeping…but it was certainly a good experience for us. I think we are both going to prepare some sermons though so we’re not unprepared when we get asked to speak less than 12 hours before we have to speak. Although when you’re using an interpreter to speak it does give you a few seconds to gather your thoughts and figure out what you’re going to say next. So maybe less preparation is okay!

Blessings J & Z