It was a steamy night, and even though the ceiling fan ran full speed, it was hard to sleep. I felt at times that I was drowning in a river of sweat.
We were woken to cups of tea brought to our room- how to spoil someone in one easy lesson.
A prayer meeting was planned for 9 am at someone else's place. Pastor Kanne had asked me the night before if I could speak for about 45 minutes, including interpretation. I talked about the importance of praying what is God's will rather than our own desires.
We had lunch there before returning back to Pastor Kanne's house.
The afternoon was nap time. The weather wasn't quite as oppressive as the previous day. We had been planning on a shopping expedition later in the afternoon, but a very distressed lady came and a long intensive counselling session took up most of the time.
The evening was given over to a cell group meeting. Again I was the guest speaker, and I talked about how wonderful cell groups are in the life of the church. Josh shared a little bit about his group. It was a very pleasant time of fellowship and prayer together. The girl in the photo is the pastor's daughter, Deborah. She is in the equivalent of Year 11 and has set her sights on becoming an orthopaedic surgeon, and I believe she has the intelligence and the sork ethic to do this. During the prayer time, the Holy Spirit showed me that she would be like the woman in the Bible, after whom she was named- a leader of her nation and someone who would be able to take the nation to places that men knew they should go but were unwilling to do so. Awesome!
I talked to Pasator Kanne about his visions for the ministry. He wants to buy land on the edge of the town to build a church and a ministry training centre. He has a heart for training church planters and evangelists to go to the north east of the island in particular. This is the part of the country most devastated by the civil war. People there have very little left in terms of housing, economic infrastructure, even employment or education opportunities.
Pastor Kanne's wife told me that Negombo is called Little Rome. Apart from the influence of the Catholic Church which is prevalent in that city, many of the rich women have husbands who are working in Europe, especially Italy, and sending large amounts of money home. Living on a Western salary and living in a developing country with its low living costs is having the best of both worlds.
There was rain overnight! It brought much cooler conditions to sleep by. In Narrabri summer rain is often a mixed blessing as it lowers the temperature for a little while but increases the humidity for a few days as the water evaporates. In Sri Lanka the humidity is already close to 100% so the rain effectively cools everything down.
New Life Narrabri 