Saturday, July 16 - Today was something like an emotional roller coaster ride, very dramatic, in fact traumatic. After breakfast and some group pictures, we first went to the Siloam Hospital in Karawachi, just down the street from our dorm/hotel. We sang in the lobby of the hospital for about 45 minutes straight, with lots of patients, hospital workers (even someone dressed in a Pooh Bear costume) listening. We had a chance to talk to some people afterward, then in groups of two went to pray for some of the patients. Eighteen of us went to 9 patients' rooms to pray for the children there. We were allowed only to pray for those who asked for prayer but one team missed the person they were supposed to pray for as he was discharged a few minutes before. But another boy (who said he was Muslim) in the room asked for prayer for his asthma so they got a chance to pray for someone after all. One team prayed for healing for a young girl who has seizures and had to come to the hospital once a week or so. The plight these patients touched our team members quite deeply. We then took our bus (eating on route) to the street kids ministry. They meet in a former garden nursery just off a busy road with lots of people passing by, but almost no one took notice of these poorest of the poor. These kids (about 30) and their parents (mostly moms were there) are street beggars. We sang to them, did a couple of skits and did our mini-VBS, then passed out some of our gits of soap, toothbrushes, etc. including a snack. A church donates school uniforms so some of these kids can go to school and there is a lady who comes weekly to do Bible study and a young man who himself was a former street kid who ministers here. This man wants to go to Bible School and we prayed that God will open the door for him to do that. When we sang, someone started a fire and thick smoke started coming our way. This young man dashed over there to put out the fire. It seems the fire was started to dissuade us from singing, but we were able to complete our program and several of the kids seemed quite serious about praying to receive Christ. We then bused over to Stephen Tong's church where we listened to their choir practicing the Bach Mass in B-minor for about a half hour. We also sang Cantate Domino to them. When we were almost to our bus to leave, we were asked to come come back and meet Rev. Stephen Tong. He greeted us, shared some remembrance of Rev. Eddie Lo, and then took us to the concert hall to listen to an orchestra rehearsing for their concert that evening. The sounds were so wonderful there. He then took us on a personal guided tour of his soon to open art museum. What a rare privilege to see this museum which will open tomorrow for the first time for only his church members (then the public later). We got to walk through and see replicas of hundreds of famous paintings and then to another floor to see very rare Chinese artifacts, some as much as 7000 years old. By now, we were all tired so we got back on the bus to return to our dorm and eat our box lunch/dinners. So far, we had seen the poorest of the poor and some magnificent paintings and hear great music, kind of the poles of society; the most marginalized and the best of the culture, juxtaposed, yet God loves them all and is glorified somehow through all this.
Then on the drive back, on the limited toll road at about 7 PM, our bus struck a man who was dashing across 3 lanes of traffic. We don't know who he was or how he got on the freeway or why he was running. There was just no way to avoid the man as he just ran right in front of our bus. We felt the bus jerk as the driver slammed on the brakes and heard an awful thud. The bus stopped on the shoulder, the driver and his helper carried the man to the luggage compartment under the bus and we pulled into a rest stop just a few hundred feet from the site of the accident. An ambulance showed up almost immediately to take the man to the hospital. The driver was one we used last year to take us to Bandung and he remembered our joy and kindness to him from last year. Even though he was so shook up, he only asked his supervisor to make sure we, he called us his guests, were taken care of. What love shown by a non-believer! When we returned about 9 PM, we spent almost an hour to process what happened and pray for the man who was struck (we found out he died shortly after getting to the hospital), his family, if any, the bus driver, his helper and their families. We know God's sovereign hand and timing was in all this and though many on our team members were shocked, we were able to worship and give thanks in the bus on the ride back. We believe God will use this to bring the bus driver and his family (he has a wife and 4 children) to come to know Jesus. We will determine if and for how long the driver might lose his license (even though the accident was no fault of the driver) and might take a love offering for him. Pray for both mercy and justice to be done in this matter. So that is our day, very dramatic but God's hand is over all of it. Praise Him!
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