January 5-15, Tim Smith, worship pastor at Living Hope Fellowship, lead a worship team to Grace Bible college outside of New Delhi (Delhi), India.

The team consisted of Carter and Christa Cheston, and David Penn. We left PDX on January 5 going through Detroit and Amsterdam.

Because of a deep fog at the Delhi airport we were ‘forced’ to tour the sites in Amsterdam for 12 extra hours. We got to see Anne Frank’s home there!

After arriving in Delhi, we were carefully transported to the beautiful college campus approximately an hour’s drive away. They have carved this campus literally out of nothing and made it into a beautiful oasis for the students and about a thousand children. They even have their own beehives on the outside of their library!

Dr. Paul Pillai and his wife, Annie, started Grace Bible College years ago with a vision to train pastors to evangelize their cities and states in India. This is Pastor Pillai with his daughter Jessica, wife Annie, daughter-in-law Aiko, and son Sujay. He also pastors a multi-cultural church, Delhi Bible Church in Delhi where we were privileged to minister twice and meet some wonderful brothers and sisters from Congo.

He asked us to come in and teach worship and music for a whole week with 600 eager students. We taught on music and worship every day. We also taught them many current songs and led them in some wonderful and powerful prayer and worship times. Our emphasis, though we shared many practical areas, remained learning to receive the love of Jesus in worship. Breathe in and breathe out. They had a wonderful time breathing with us. There was also many moments of releasing a prophetic song over them during worship as Jesus sang His love for them. Their receptivity seemed to know no bounds.

We also ministered at their Children’s Home, with as many as 1000 children being taught the practical love of Jesus everyday. We learned a Hindi song and sang it with them. I think they could understand our accent?

Christa (a worship leader at LHF) taught on worship leading and building worship teams and also led the Children’s Home worship times.

Carter, the junior high pastor at LHF, taught drums and spoke at the children’s home.

David Penn taught bass, music theory and vocal technique and took most of these great digital photos (thus, not many pictures of him, sorry, David)

Many of them could be killed for preaching the Gospel. We were deeply touched by their devotion to Jesus and desire to learn more of Him and His love. We were greatly humbled to teach and minister with such dedicated people and their wonderful faculty for a week. Of course, it wasn’t long enough, and we hope to go back soon.

India is a complete contrast to life in the United States. The standard of living ranges from villages with no electricity and only well water to big city living. The diversity of religions, lifestyles, castes, homes and transportation was fascinating to observe.

One of the most notable differences was the driving. There aren’t any laws really to follow so everyone just lays on their horn constantly and swerves in and out to get the best position. The road is shared with cows, oxen, Brahma bulls, dogs, cats, pigs, camels, bicycles, mopeds, rickshaws, tractors, cars, and trucks. People drive as fast as they can and are usually within an inch of the vehicles to the front, back, and both sides regardless of speed. We nearly crashed about 15 times. Especially in the dense fog in the late nights and early mornings. Fortunately, we did not drive ourselves, but were in an SUV driven by one of the drivers the college employs. Also, just to remind every driver, the stop lights all had ‘relax’ printed over them.

The food was excellent. Gian, a Brahman Hindu, was our wonderful cook for the week at the college. She took really good care of us. Lots of chicken curry! We also ate at the McDonald’s in Delhi. Instead of a Big Mac it was a Maharaja Mac which is the same except that they use lamb.

We did do some sightseeing in downtown Delhi where we say the India Gate and Red Fort and even their version of the famous Rose Garden! We also spent our one day off going to the Taj Mahal.

Though we did get sick the last couple days there, we will never forget this wonderful time with our new friends in India. We were able to bless them with a lot of new music and sound equipment as well as training on how to better use them. We hope to go back in the fall and continue the training of God’s ambassadors to India. We trust worshiping Jesus will be a new adventure everyday for them now.

- Tim Smith