Ministry with Santa

Since getting back from Haiti, I (Jacob) have been trying hard to connect with my disciple Santa. He’s been faithful ever since I’ve known him (we met and started doing ministry together back in April or so), but for the past couple months he seemed to be dodging me. I had just about given up on him and was walking outside to start searching for another potential disciple, but Santa’s mom saw me and started motioning toward her apartment (she doesn’t know any English) to indicate he was actually home at the time. So I met with him and worked to re-awaken a passion within him.

Apparently his disciple Buddhi Man had become really busy with work and didn’t want to do ministry anymore. But in the past week Santa and I have met with a new guy, Ram, a couple times and have cast the vision to him. So Santa is discipling him, meeting with him at least a few times a week to help him live a Kingdom life. As we talked with him, Ram was excited about the idea of sharing the gospel with his friends. Next steps with him are probably to go through repentance with him and teach him spiritual disciplines.

Also, about 3 months ago I sat down with Santa’s Hindu dad, Bal, to minister to him. To give some background, Santa came to Christ about a year ago, and Santa’s mom converted a few months after that. Even though Santa would minister to his dad week after week, his dad’s heart remained hard as stone. And when I met with him he was just as stubborn; the logic he kept coming back to was, “I was born Hindu, and I will die Hindu. I want you guys to continue following Jesus, but it’s just too late for me to change my ways.”

So anyway, after that conversation, God started convicting Bal that he’s bringing his family down, whereas he should be helping and leading them; as he described it to me, he basically felt like he was being a stick in the mud. Last week, then, he had a dream where Jesus showed him how his wife and son are both in the book of life, but he is nowhere to be found in the book. Bal wanted to be with his family, so he asked Jesus to write his name in the book, and Jesus said, “It doesn’t work like that. You must go, change your life and follow me, and then come back.”

So last week, Bal finally decided to give his life to Christ! And he has put all the Hindu things out of his home and stopped praying to the Hindu gods. Santa and I hope to meet with him later this week to teach him the basics of Christianity.

Please be in prayer for these guys, so God’s Kingdom will be multiplied here. Pray that Bal would understand that Christianity is a relationship, not a set of rules, and that he would lead his family and be a light in the community. Pray that Santa would have the wisdom and diligence to effectively disciple Ram, and that Ram would become a man of discipline and character in order to shine his light effectively. Thanks!

Camp Follow-Ups and Keystone Academy

A couple quick updates…

Everyone on the team has worked hard to follow up with each of the 100 kids or so that went to camp, and we’ve been encouraged to see so many remaining faithful after their transformational camp experience. 3 of the guys that had prayed to commit their lives to Christ wanted to be baptized, so we did that a couple weeks after camp.

One of our main goals in following up with them was that we could help the kids to be super passionate about establishing the Kingdom around them as they go back into the school system. And now many of the kids have 1 or 2 classmates that they’re focusing on sharing the gospel with. A few of them have even tried sharing the gospel with their teachers. Please be praying for receptive hearts!

There are also about 7 kids from camp that were identified by the counselors as leaders, so we’ve been meeting with those guys and girls once a week for leadership development.

And one of the counselors has been intrigued by our model of discipleship, so she’s hung out with us a few times since camp to see what our ministry is about.

On a separate note, because of some logistical issues we decided not to continue Keystone Academy this year (the school we started for refugee boys), so we spent a few weeks meeting with the previous students to prepare them to go back into the public school system. We believe Keystone Academy has successfully molded them into godly leaders, so we’re excited to see how they influence the schools they go into. Anyway, please pray that all those boys would not fall back into their old lifestyles, but rather would bring a fresh move of the spirit to the school system. Thanks!