Amazing Easter services across our congregations. Huge numbers came out to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour. I was speaking at the East on the Friday morning service. Over 1000 were present and it was an awesome service concluding with families and friends gathering in groups to take communion together. I'm thinking we may need to add a dawn service next year in the East and South to cope with the numbers wanting to attend.

Sunday was the same, with South with its largest Sunday attendance filling both services, North it's second largest, the East was huge in all three services and I spoke in the City which was also well attended. Marilyn and I caught the first half of the first service and the last half of the third in the East. Caleb's preaching was outstanding and Richard did a great job of putting the service and stage together.

Mike and Liz have headed off to the UK to attend the UK Elim Conference. Mike will also be speaking at Kensington Temple in London Christian Life Centre Birmingham.

Marilyn and I are just taking a couple of days away at our Bach in Mangakino with our daughter in law Virginia and grandson Hunter. Hopefully the beautiful Easter weather will continue another few days. 

We arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday March 13 and spent the first night in Colombo. Thanks to the generosity of some of our folk we enjoyed really nice accommodation in Sri Lanka. They were worried Marilyn would be roughing it. India was back to reality though. The visit to Sri Lanka was to view the land that we were looking at purchasing in Colombo to build a training centre, but I didn't feel right about the land or the way it was to proceed, so we will look at other options. I really would like to see us focus more on the north of the country which has suffered greatly with the war.

During our time in Sri Lanka Pastor Suresh from Colombo accompanied us and we preached in his churches on the Sunday. The first couple of days we went to see some of the tourist sites. We visited the Mountain of Life (Jeevanakanda) Girls Home. This is a great work established by a South African couple, that takes in girls that have been sexually abused. The courts send girls to them. Amazing testimonies, very impressed and worth any support we can give them. Pieter and Louie Ter Haar have been doing this work for over 20 years but still have to fight each year with immigration to stay.

Our first stop in India was the TVGM children's home in Trichy led by Bro. Christopher. We have invested in the Home and in a van here, in what is a very good work. I was impressed with Christopher's son Stephen who has been educated in the States. (In all the areas we are working there are bright young leaders coming forward.) Christopher has a big vision and is worthy of any support we can give.

We then visited GEMS Ministry in the north of India at Bihar. This is an incredible ministry founded by Augustine Jebakumar. Before he came to Bihar it was called the graveyard of missionaries, but there had been two Elim lady missionaries who had been there for about 30 years and saw no fruit from their ministry; not one person saved. But they prayed that God would send someone. Augustine reluctantly responded to a vision from God. The ministry today would be among the largest Christian work in India with evangelism, church planting, discipleship training, education, hospital services and many other social services touching many thousands. What we saw was amazing but it only represents about 5% of their total work. The story reads like the book of Acts. I really liked Augustine; his passion and vision was inspiring.  His son Eddie is to attend MTC this year. 

Back in Chennai we spent a day training the Elim Pastors on the Friday. Last year we brought Pastor Sam's son Joseph over to our conference and the fruit of that was obvious. He has really risen in leadership. It was a good day and we had a very good question and answer time in the afternoon. I have invited Joseph to come to conference again this year and to bring his wife. On the Sunday we preached in different services and locations. We only met with Pastor Sam one evening and then he was off to take a team to Israel. 

We also caught up with Dr. V G Selvaraj. Selvaraj is an extremely wealthy businessman who also preaches and plants churches. We got to be chauffered around Chennai in the latest Jaguar for an afternoon. Having Marilyn with us brought some perks.

It was good to have Boyd along; he is a key to future relationships in Sri Lanka and India with these new young leaders coming through. Viki is outstanding in this environment. His planning is immaculate and he has broad acceptance across a wide range of Christian leaders. 

I have been fortunate to attend two seminars over the past two days led by two great Christian leaders. On Monday night Marilyn and I heard Dr. Ben Carson speak at the Telstra Clear Pacific Events Centre. Dr. Carson is a world renowned Neurosurgeon who wrote the book “Gifted Hands.” He is famous for his ground-breaking work separating conjoined twins. He was outstanding at this meeting and I hear also on TV and talk-back radio.

Then on Tuesday morning our Pastoral staff went to hear Pastor Bill Hybels from Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. Bill is a world leader in Christian circles especially on subjects like leadership. His Global Summit conference is repeated around the world is attended by over 120,000 leaders in over sixty countries. He is one of my favorite speakers so it is a real treat to hear him live in NZ.

Next Tuesday Marilyn, Boyd, Viki and I are off to Sri Lanka and India. We are in the process of purchasing land in Sri Lanka for a training centre and we also want to strengthen our ties in India where we have a strong church. Please keep us in your prayers. Hopefully I may get a chance to send an update to you from there.

On Friday night the Elders and key leaders met to plan our way forward keeping in mind our BHAGS. (Big hairy audacious goals). We have had to expand on some of them since we set them a couple of years ago as we had grown past them in some areas. We also received word that the Prime Minister will come an open our new school in April. Some of us slipped back around to the church after the meeting to catch the end of the youth service. The place was packed and buzzing with over 400 young people from across our four congregations. 

We are holding discussions with the Pakuranga Golf Club at the moment on purchasing some land off them for sports fields for the college. The timing is not great with all the other developments but hopefully we can work out something that would be of mutual benefit. It would give us another 1.5ha which is just a bit bigger than our 159 Botany site. This would give us around 17 acres of land in Howick which would be amazing. Keep us in your prayers.