This picture is of the mountain that stretches to the sky behind Sharon Gardens! We truly are in an oasis, a sanctuary that feels so peaceful and encouraging! In the morning we will leave to go into the town of Salem to the offices of the India Gospel League where we are nvited to share with the staff prior to the beginning of their work day and our Women With a Mission National and Local Leadership Conference. We covet your prayers that the Holy Spirit will impact each heart with the very message intended just for them!
What a joy to share with the IGL staff, some of whom are not Christians! It is a joy to serve those who have served us so graciously and magnificantly!
Just as I finished writing what i would share, I saved it to post here for your prayers and reading pleasure and it saved something else over it and somehow the text disappeared! I am just very grateful that i had printed it out first! Not today, SLICK!
Recoverd the text if you care to read and pray that God will use it to grow His Kingdom!
Stretching and Growing
What a joy it is to be here in Salem with you! My name is Belinda Kendall and this time when I came to India I purchased a 10 year VISA!! Afterall I have been coming for ten years! And each year we tour the offices and I am overwhelmed with your servant’s hearts and gracious attitudes! The incredible welcome is so warm and honoring! Indeed we feel so very special to be with you!
Thank you so very much for your work that makes the other work for the Kingdom! What you do matters to so many! Some of you with whom I have had the pleasure of partnering I know personally your amazing contributions and stand amazed! You are gifted and extraordinary folks and I commend you and applaud you for your diligent effort and skills!
We left the USA on Sunday morning and flew first to Newark, N.J. and then to New Delhi, spent the night and then to Coimbatore this morning and were escorted and transported to Sharon Gardens last night about 7:00 p.m. (Many of you in this room made every detail of that time possible and were very aware of exactly where we were and what we were doing because you made every part of it possible.! Thank you!)
Last night as we were eating dinner across from our gracious hostess, Prati asked if any of us would be interested in sharing this morning. The more I thought about it, themore the desire grew within me. Then it dawned on me, I have visited this facility and these offices countless times but I have never spent any time sharing with you! And after being here more than a dozen times I feel like you are nearly family! So I thought it would be appropriate to share a part of my story with you. It is my prayer that it encourages and / or inspires you.
Some of you may have been around long enough to have met my husband, Pastor Gary Kendall. It has been 12 years since he has traveled to India and he has only visisted twice! In 10 years I have been here more that a dozen times! It was Gary who has always been the brave and courageous one! He was raised in the home of parents who were missionaries and he grew up with a THIRD WORLD CULTURE thinking that that kind of life was normal.
And Gary was the one who traveled to the foreign lands for the first 20 years of our marriage while I focused on raising the four little missions we had in our home! Eventually, they began to grow up and older and God presented the opportunity for me to venture to India! Gary and my brother-in-law, Dr. Scott Green encouraged me to do it!
So finally I found myself on the ramp on September 8, 2001. My husband, Gary and two sons: Jeremy and Luke walked me to the very entrance of the jetway. I was in denial up until that point-now I was faced with the fact and finality of leaving them behind and it became very real and overwhelming to me! I tend to be a little dramatic anyway. As I was parting from Gary I asked him desperately, “Honey, will I come back?” To which he replied, “I believe so.”
“But what if I don’t,” I choked on the possiblity and ever the romantic/ dramatic went on, “If I don’t come back, will you come after me
“Absolutely!” He declared and sealed the promise with a passionate kiss!
Good enough for me, what else could I ask, I boarded the plane to meet and travel with a team of women of whom I knew noone! I did not know anyone in the country to which I was traveling, nor anyone on the team I was serving! I was growing in my trust and my adventure was only beginning. When we arrived a group of us went to eat while we were awaiting the arrival of the rest of the team. We had only been sitting at the table a short while before Rev. Samuel Stephens entered the room and announced that he needed to tell us something. He confessed that he did not want to share the news that he had learned but that he knew we must know. So he began to share what the rest of the world was watching over and over and over in disbelief as two of America’s own jets filled to the brim with fuel and passengers were used as missiles to assault an attack on the World Trade Center Towers!
We were of course in shock and sat in disbelief. It was what Rev. Stephens said next that encouraged me and comforted me. Sam relayed to us a dream that he had experienced a while before. In the dream he had seen the two towere snd heard God say to him, “These two will fall.” Samuel said he was greatly perplexed and didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that revelation. So he told his mother and mother-in-law and asked them to pray.
When I heard this story, it gave me great comfort that this man with whom we were traveling and investing was a man who heard from God and listened. And though I was afraid, I was at peace. There were some anxious times in the next three weeks before we traveled home. However, God grew me up in faith and trust in Him because He sustained me!
I know that He will do the same for you!
What are you afraid of? What would it take to walk straight toward that fear?
What are you willing to do or not do because of fear?
Beth Moore says that we are not growing unless we are stepping outside of our comfort zone.
I want tp show you how a sign states it.
This picture was taken in Macu Tower in March when I traveled there with my daughter prior to teaching English as a Second Language for two weeks.
No, I didn’t jump! I haven’t grown that much! Maybe next time. But I did go out on the ledge, high above the city and walked all the way around it! Scary? Kinda, but more exhilerating than anything!
One more story: I did not grow up around the water and I don’t know how to swim very well so I can be very uncomfortable in the water. However my husband LOVES it! So had an opportunity our entire family to go snorkeling and the kids could not believe that Gary would pay money for me to go because they were certain that I would not go into the water. So when the time came I was the last one perched on the side of the boat, everyone else was paddling around, bobbing up and down and enjoying the sun and the ocean and the incredible world beneath the surface. It took lots of coaxing and patience but eventually I scooted off of the edge and safety of the boat into the deep blue sea! Instantly, fear gripped me and I began paddling frantically and holding my head above water, working hard to stay upright. A man from the boat yelled, “Hey Lady, look down! You are missing the show!”
Talk about missing the point! Sure enough my googles were still above the surface of the water and I couldn’t see a thing beneath the waves. Cautiously, I placed my face donned in mask flat to the surface of the water and the view below took my breath away! There were hundreds of bright yellow, orange and all colors of incredibly beautiful fish! And then there was the magnificient coral reef below! I kept my head underwater mesmerized until they finally had to flag me down and pull me, the last one, back into the boat because it was time to go.
When I think about how my fear paralysed me, I realize that I could easily have missed the entire underwater wonderland!
I challenge you to think about what you are afraid of and what is limiting you in areas of your life that could be a whole new world opening up right beneath you that you could completely miss out on if you don’t take the courage to plunge into the deep end and look way down!
Perhaps there are emotional or physical fears but perhaps it is spiritulally that you might be curious but a bit afraid of going any further with God. Or maybe you haven’t started the journey with Him.
I invite you to take some time and contemplate what God might be saying to you. Could it be “Look down! You are missing the show!”
I am so thankful that God gave me the courage to walk down that ramp 10 years ago this week and travel to a land halfway around the world to a people I did not know but who have enrched my life and stretched my way outside of my comfort zone!
