Lamp Lighters World Ministries

June 1, 2008

Dear Fellow Laborer in Christ,

            Each month as we write we are always reminded of things back home in the States and how things change so quickly and how it seems change takes place so slowly here. Everything here is at a slower pace than in the States which sometimes is rather nerve wracking to say the least.
            One of those areas is in the construction business. We seem to be so close to completing our first floor and yet so far from being done and is mostly due to tradesmen not coming on time to do the work necessary. But construction is coming along.
            I wonder sometimes maybe God looks at us and says I thought they would be further along than this by now. How patient our Father is with us to grow into maturity to be the people He wants us to be, to think the way He wants us to think, and act the way He wants us to act.
            We are so grateful to God for you, your faithful prayers for us and financial support. We think of this not only when we write the newsletter but throughout the days our thoughts are of how God supplies all we need through you our supporters. We pray that God will continue to bless you as you labor for him in your part of the vineyard.

                                                In Christ, Steve & Shanthi

     CHURCHES START NEW DISCIPLING PROGRAMS

            A couple of months ago we made some changes to help, we hope to disciple people within our churches to be workers not just members. One of the areas has been with the youth groups. We have made the last Sunday of every month Youth Sunday. The youth are responsible for the entire service. Some were already involved in playing musical instruments but we wanted them to develop even more.

            One of the things we have seen in most churches here is that they remain relatively small, mainly due to the fact that the preacher does it all, and that's not good for lots of reasons.

            To be honest this was kind of scary for our preachers too. There has always been the pastor/lay person mentality here that only the preacher can do these things. But it creates a healthier body when ever part does its work. They are finding that it's easier "to do it all myself", as they actually spend more time teaching and training the young people to lead in the services, but are beginning to see positive things happen by involving the youth!

            Now the young people are not only leading, preaching, Sunday school teaching, but also evangelism, pastoral visiting, hospital visiting and follow up of new contacts. Already we have several who are saying they want to go to Bible College to train to become full time workers! This is what we have hoped and prayed about and now see it coming to pass!

            And this also encourages the adults to be more involved as well. We hear lots of positive comments from the preachers and church members over this program so we are praising God for how He is working in their hearts and lives.

                                       

                                                       

                                  MORE  BAPTISMS

            We had 5 more baptisms this month in Koddai Kallar and rejoice over these new babes in Christ. One was our nephew Shadrach which was a real joy to see and 3 others were from one family a mother and 2 of her daughters.
            She has 2 other daughters one who is member of our church and another who is a member of another church in another village close by. Through their constant witness and encouragement their mother and 2 younger sisters accepted Christ.
            We can see a visible, physical change in the mothers face now that she has accepted Christ. And we continue to pray for the father to accept Christ as well.
            During our staff meetings it is always a joy to hear the words; we're doing baptism classes with some of the new people. We have always done this to make sure that the people understand before baptism that this is the beginning of a new life completely changed from their old life. And most that go through these classes are stronger and more faithful because of these classes.

         SOME OF THE BEST MONEY WE'VE SPENT

            A few months ago you may remember we wrote of the van that we purchased.  This continues to be a great blessing not only to us but to the entire ministry! It serves as taxi after church services many times, an ambulance on occasion, and building materials transport vehicle too. So far even with higher fuel and maintenance costs we are not spending much more than when we hired the three wheel taxi's, vans, and trucks to haul things.
            Soon after we purchased the van we had our name and logo put on it. This has been an unforeseen blessing. Now with Lamp Lighters printed on the side at most check points, which there are more than ever, even if we are stopped they only ask a couple of questions and then let us go. Some of the ones close by don't even bother to stop us anymore. Also we have learned that they are not to inspect the baggage carried in an NGO (non government organization) vehicle. So this speeds things up as well, especially when we travel to Colombo.
            How God uses even some of the small what we think of as insignificant
things, like lettering on the van, as a way to bless us.

                    

                                                PRAYER REQUESTS

1.  More faithful workers to join with us and God to raise up more workers within our churches.
2.  Finances to build a new building in Periyaneelavanai and also property and a building in Onthachimadam.
3.  More people to come to Christ
4.  God's continued blessing and protection as things are very unstable politically right now in our area.
5.  Completion of our house so we can better care for the children we keep with us.

                              

                                 SAD DAY FOR US

            This month we received an email from Melanie. In it were words we hoped we would never hear, but she informed us she was resigning as our secretary /office manager. She has been with us in this position from the time we formed Lamp Lighters eight years ago, a lot of work for little pay and has always done an excellent job.
            Whenever we were abroad we really didn't worry about things being done properly and in a timely way. She has always been there for us when things weren't going right and did her best from that end to make sure things went right.
            We will miss her being in this position but know God will continue to use
her in all she does.
              My sister Penny and her husband Ron will be handling things in the office for now. They have taken care of the "personal" things for us and now will do the ministry work too.

    I have been truly blessed working with Steve & Shanthi and all the supporters!  Thank you for the opportunity to get to know some of you in person and others through your mail!  May God Bless each of  you as well as Lamp Lighters!          Melanie.  

Lamp Lighters World Ministries

May 1, 2008

 

Dear Brothers & Sisters in Christ,

            As I sit and write and count the months we only have 6 months left of
our stay here before we return to the States. It doesn't seem possible that a year and a half have gone by. We had made plans before we came as to what we would like to accomplish during our stay this time but things haven't worked exactly as we had planned. We simply ask for you to continue to remember us in your prayers and pray that we will accomplish all God wants done!
We've gone from very cool and wet to very hot. The heat is normal for
this time of year, but never seen rain like this before. It rained hard again               2 days ago so our humidity is pretty high too.
We do thank God for you and ask for his blessing on you for your faithful support and prayers for us. We pray that God is using you for his glory and honor where you are serving him there as well.

            In Christ, Steve & Shanthi

     THE FIRST TIME EVER IN SRI LANKA

          Each month the youth from our 4 churches get together for a full day program of worship, teaching, fellowship and some fun.  This is coordinated by a young man in our Koddai Kallar church, Niranjan.
         He came to us as a Hindu to help with book work and such after the tsunami and within a few months became a Christian. He truly has a heart for Jesus Christ and has taken the youth program on as his way of serving God, and doing a very good job I might add.                                                                                                            

       In March we helped him with a wiener roast. Now this is nothing new to most of you but they had never seen or heard of anything like this before. We had tried a couple times before but always had to cancel it for one reason or another.
We had hot dogs of course, ours here are slightly different than in the States, potato salad and cole slaw thanks to recipes emailed by my sister Penny. With a few adjustments to the recipes, since some things are just not available here, we got everything pretty tasty, and marshmallows.
There were over 70 youth several new youth along with preachers and wives that came and several who showed up just to see what we were doing so we invited them to join in.
Everyone loved it especially roasting the marshmallows afterwards.   They kept asking for more long after they were all gone. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun too. Before we left that evening they were all asking when we would do it again.
We wanted the kids to have a good time but also a chance for them to reach out to others inviting new kids, which they did as well. Please pray that these new comers will see Jesus Christ lived out in the lives of our youth.

                                                             

RESURRECTION SUNDAY BRINGS NEW PEOPLE

Of course in March we celebrated Easter Sunday just as you did. In all our churches they had good crowds and most had new people who came for that  service.
All four churches have had an increase in attendance through this first quarter by God's grace and blessing. And there have been baptisms in all the churches as well.
One of the reasons for this we believe is that all our preachers set goals for this year in evangelism, discipleship, and challenging people, youth especially, to enter the ministry.
Every church now has more people involved in the labor of ministry than ever before and we are seeing the fruits of that. One preacher is even saying and praying that they on their own want to plant a new church in another village within the next year.   We praise God for the enthusiasm and for the new people who are coming and those who have accepted Christ.
I have always said I didn't want to just be an American preaching in a foreign country but to instill in the hearts of our preachers the need for evangelism and discipling. This is something sorely lacking in most churches in Sri Lanka. By God's grace we are seeing this begin to happen in our churches.

           PRICES CONTINUE TO ESCALATE 

We've mentioned before that our prices have really gone up in the last few months and they continue to rise. This is really taking a bite out of our budget caring for the kids in our home. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining just the facts as they are. We just got an email from our preacher Rennie in Trinidad saying that food and everything else there is much higher as well. From what we hear things are like that in the States too, global inflation I guess. But God is faithful and He will continue to provide all we need.

                  NO SHORTAGE OF WORKERS

We've found over the years there is no shortage of workers who want to join with us. We've had several in the last few months in fact. Most times it's a matter of they want a monthly check, sorry to say, or someone who will support what they want to do where they want to do it.
I'm not saying that all are greedy or that they are unwilling to accept instruction or work where we want them to. God has given us co-workers here that are truly a blessing and are working hard for the sake of the Gospel.
One of the requests we frequently make from you is that you will pray for more workers to join with us in ministry here. We ask for God to do this everyday in our prayer time. There is such a need here in our area for churches to be planted and workers who will do the work of an evangelist!
Sometimes as we drive through our area we pray for and discuss villages where there is no church or only one small church for literally thousands of people. We just were in an area like this a few days ago. Hundreds of new homes built after the tsunami, literally thousands of people living in that area and not one church. Oh how we need to take Jesus' instruction seriously, to pray for workers to enter the harvest fields which are ripe and ready.
We think of this quite often even in the villages where we are presently working and even though our churches are growing there are tens of thousands in these villages who have not yet heard of the love of Jesus Christ. Please pray with us for faithful workers!

    CONSTRUCTION ON HOUSE CONTINUES                                             

We're can finally see the light at the end of the first tunnel, completion of the downstairs section of our house. It will be so nice to have an actual kitchen again, to be able to move some of the kids back into the house and regain use of our living room which has become food storage/ bedroom/construction material staging area.
It has taken it seems a long time but actually has progressed well in spite of all the rain, pray that God will provide the necessary funds to complete the upstairs portion as well.

Happy Easter!

Lamp Lighters World Ministries
 Joplin, Missouri

March & April 2008

Dear Fellow Laborer in Christ,

February seems to have slipped past before we even realized it!

Our weather here has been fickle to say the least. We’ve been having usually heavy rain for this time of year and then we’ll have days when it is hotter than usual. Then we’ll have nights when it gets as cool as it usually does during monsoon season and we reduce the fan speed and sometimes sleep without it. Because of all this many people are having lots of trouble with sinuses, colds, fevers, flu etc. We’ve had our share in our household as well.

I had 2 days when I had fever along with violent chills like I’ve never had before. The doctor gave me some antibiotics as he said I had a viral fever. Anyway they seemed to work and after a couple of days I was back to my normal self.

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m complaining as these things happen to everyone everywhere we just had a lot of it all this month.

We do thank you for your faithful prayers and support for us. God is blessing us through you and we pray that he will bless you as well. We pray for you frequently that God will use you where you are to his glory as well.

                                                In Christ,    Steve & Shanthi

 

SITUATION WITH WAR GROWING WORSE

We hope that you will remember when you pray for safety for us and all our workers and families here because of the war going on.

Things have really taken a turn for the worse within the last few months especially. More police and military checkpoints have opened up making travel more difficult and time consuming. All buses now must unload and show identification and the bus and any bags or packages searched.

There have been numerous shootings, bombings etc. from both sides in our area more than I ever have seen and much closer than before as well.

This past Sunday I had just stood up to preach in the Mahiloor church with Shanthi translating when we heard a large explosion not far away. Later we found out it was a suicide bomber headed down the main road about 1 ½ miles from us.

He was carrying a bomb to detonate at the nearby military camp. Before he got there some men of the Karuna group, the split off from the LTTE which are now allied with the government strange I know, they saw him and became suspicious and stopped him. As he could not escape he set off the bomb killing a few of them right in front of a small Hindu temple and close to a government building.

A couple of weeks ago there had been some information given that the Foursquare Gospel church in our village was hiding weapons on their property. The military rolled in one evening with about 100 soldiers. The literally dug up the entire church property and arrested the preacher, his wife, and children. Later they released his wife and children but continued to question him throughout the night. He and the church were NOT involved, but this is just another problem no one is beyond suspicion.

Because of all these things everyone is noticeably on edge. Peace seems further from a possibility than ever before. Please pray for this country and it’s leaders.

                                        

FIRST TIME EVER

We celebrated one of our kids birthdays this past week, Sowmia turned 12 years old. We had celebrated her birthday in past years but this year we did it on the correct day!

Up until just a few months ago we never had her birth certificate and no one knew her date of birth. They had always said she and Darshini, her youngest sister, were born on the same day but that turned out to be incorrect. She was thrilled of course as now she didn’t have to “share” her birthday with her sister.

All of the kids are doing well, but to be honest they are a handful, well more like a houseful!

We love them and do all we can to try and help them in their studies. Each goes for special tutoring classes which are necessary here due to the poor quality of the school systems. Most of all we try to instill in them a love for Jesus and it is a joy to hear them singing Christian songs on their own while they are washing dishes or their clothes or whatever.

Vijay the oldest, whom we were having some problems with a few months ago, seems to have turned a corner in his growing up and is much happier than a few months ago.

Please continue to pray for all these kids in our home.

 GOALS SET BY PREACHERS FOR EVANGELISM

Every year we encourage our preachers here to set goals for what they want to see happen in their respective churches.

I was always taught if you aim at nothing you’re sure to hit it.               

We have always told them to set God sized goals, those things they can say God must be involved in it for this to happen.

This year we have finally gotten through to them I guess and we were very happy to hear all their plans during one staff meeting, especially for reaching the lost.

They also set goals in discipling other workers and leaders in their churches.

They have indeed set some high goals and God will have to be in them for it to become a reality. Everyone has hit the ground running and with God’s help and blessing we look forward to seeing many souls brought to Christ this year.