Wednesday, March 25, Bible College site

Wed, 25 March, I’ve been squeezing my Bible study time into our first hour at the school. Not feel satisfied. So this morning I went to hotel restaurant, ordered mango juice and coffee & did BS there. Mike joined. Not sure what he studied as long as he let me do my thing. Today I taught 2 sessions for total of about 2 ½ hours. Feel gratified at good chemistry in our group: Generally I’m the one who brings up topics of discussion or concern. Sometimes I have a thought of solution; sometimes not. But we discuss freely. And it seems to me that we come to consensus solution. E.g., tomorrow we will have testimonies from students. This partly arose from fact that we face more teaching time than anticipated. We emailed a number of times that we wanted to spend Wed & Thur visiting area villages. Wanted to spend the night out in one of the villages during this excursion. But host planned otherwise and remains adamant. By now it’s too late to return to our original request. So we’re making adjustments and that’s okay.

Not that you or the entire internet world needs/wants to know this, but.... The other benefit of having Bible study with mango juice and coffee was my digestive system. Mango juice does wonderful things for this biological function. (I'll let you read between the lines there.) And this methodology seemed to work just fine until a bug hit our group toward the end of the week, which made mango juice totally redundant and even torturous even to contemplate. Actually, I think I heard some hints that Mike had fought this bug earlier. But I was not really aware of it until Friday when Jim felt very ill.

Perhaps you've seen enough pics of the Bible college classroom. But I feel impressed this morning to show at least this one more pic. Don't look at me this time, or at Manoj who is translating here. Notice the furniture: 3 simple long tables with plank benches; room for 9 young men to study. Well, by Indian standards, they could squeeze in more, but it's already basically full. Then notice next the wall behind where I'm standing. Do you see the peeled paint there? You can't see this next, but there is 1 fan and 1 light bulb in the room. When (not if, but WHEN) the electricity goes out, there goes the light and the air movement. These men calmly take all this in stride. But it seems that maybe some of us could do something to improve their situation.

Jim, Manoj and Dean at the construction site.

Well, what is being done is this: Churches in the Pacific Northwest are working together to help with the cost of building a new facility on the edge of the city of Muzaffarpur.

This evening after the teaching session we drove to construction site for MIBC campus—way out of town which is all relative. Never left population area. People constantly walking, riding bikes & cycles, driving cars and autorickshaws. Only change was pedal rickshaws stopped and toward the end the autorickshaws stopped too. Manoj said it was 9km to the site; felt much longer than that. Still not very impressive to look at; but faith has different eyes. Right? Took pics & prayed. Returned to Manoj home for dinner.

When we arrived at the construction site, it was already almost dark. So this video is even more difficult to make out than most. Still, I think it's better than nothing.

Mike Harmon with Manoj Paul at the construction site.

The whole team at construction site.

Would you pray about this construction project? The "field of souls" really seems to be ripe for harvest in Bihar. We need this facility; we needed it 2 years ago.

What? You don't live in the Pacific Northwest? No problem! You can still pray about this.

And wherever you live, if you feel God's special ble$$ing in your life, you can help with this project. The need for the first phase of construction totals $155,000. About $35,000 has been given and/or pledged. You can do the math from there to see the financial side of the need.

But the real need is in human lives: These young men have left everything (as meager as that was) and are following Christ. People are coming to Christ at every turn in Bihar. The Kingdom of God needs these men in the harvest field to secure the harvest in God's ripened field.

Well, enough of my sermonette. Right? You get the point I hope.

ttfn