We met at the College Church parking lot at 5-5:30pm, with a wonderful send-off congregation of brothers and sisters in Christ from our sending "1-2-9" young adult fellowship and the College Church missions board. After loading the van and a time of prayer, we were driven to the airport by Pastor James Seward.
The first leg of the journey, from Chicago to Heathrow airport in London, was smooth except for one incident: our plane was hit by lightning. We praise the Lord that despite the shock and very bright display of light, airplane operations were not affected in the least.
We arrived safely in London at approximately 2 am, our time.We used the 4 hour layover period to eat, rest (as evidenced by one of the photographs documenting a "team nap") and to enjoy Heathrow airport.
The second leg of the journey, from London to Yerevan, Armenia, was smooth and we were blessed to meet a brother in Christ and his two children, a convert from Islam (see Susie Q.'s previous post!). We enjoyed mutually edifying fellowship. It was particularly wonderful to hear about how his wife had led him to the Lord, about all the Christian books and commentaries he enjoys reading, and about his thoughts on Islam and the Quran (which he says is the "devil's doctrine"). We have exchanged contact information and hopefully we will be able to meet his parents who are visiting in Armenia. He longs for them to see what true Christian fellowship looks like, as he says the Islamic concept of Christianity is "catholicism." His youngest son suffers from stomache problems and was ill during the flight. Please pray for him. Other members of the team were able to have good conversations and make new friends (Armenian and otherwise) both in Heathrow airport and on the plane to Yerevan. Praise God for these small seed-planting conversations.
We arrived in Yerevan, Armenia, to a new, beautiful airport terminal, at 12:30 pm our time - the next day. Only one team member's luggage did not make it. And we have made inquiries into it's return. We were met my members of the local church and "Asatur", the president of the Armenian Baptist Union. The drive from the airport to the Armenian Baptist Seminary was short and during that time, it was wonderful to hear that Asatur had planted about 100 churches in the last decade! - beginning with the more remote regions of Armenia, working inward to the central, larger cities. Indeed, these are Christians of great vision and intentional effort for the Kingdom. On this ride to the seminary we passed by a "Gehenna" where the state collects and burns garbage - smoke filled the air and that was very interesting to see... we also saw the border of Turkey, which we are told is currently closed because of political tensions, specifically that the Turkish are upset that the Armenians are speaking about the genocide that the Turkish committed against them, and have thus closed the border.
We arrived to a lovely, clean and new seminary facility. We were toured briefly, shown our bedrooms and allowed to retire.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment