Written by Paul J Bucknell on September, 18, 2019
Prayer Letter #333

The Spirit at Work

Dear Prayer Partners,

Each trip, in spite of the challenges, provides amazing scenes of the Lord spreading His gospel to the nations. Nothing will or can hold back the church from her purposes. I feel like a person in the stands watching a fast-moving race. The race, in this case, is how the Spirit takes His Word and directs, stirs, and sends these workers of His throughout the world’s largest unreached people group—the Bengalis.

My heart rejoices in your support for this STM mission to India. I didn’t know how the budget would work out until all the data and funds were in—today. Praise God your generous giving enabled all the expenses to be met. The team in India made some sacrifices which reduced the budget. For example, instead of using the more expensive retreat center’s catering, they bought food to prepare and serve. Imagine doing this for 90 people for 3-4 days in a city of 14 million people. Thank you also for your prayers that helped us all to wonderfully sense the Spirit’s teaching presence in our midst.

See some of the exciting scenes in India where Paul could see God working!

What should I report? I wish I could tally how many times these pastors, church planters, and evangelists pushed themselves into awkward moments, using their very limited English, to personally thank me for the messages. The series on the Holy Spirit powerfully strengthened these men and women for the upcoming challenges in their ministries.

Now that I am home, I need to take a chunk of time and prepare the Bengali resources, videos, audios, and handouts for others who did not attend to use. My external hard-drive recording the first seminar and the first part of the second seminar died. Any advice in reviving a hard drive would be appreciated. Please pray.

Praise

The two seminars were well-attended (90 at each) and the budget made!
Thank the Lord that I was very healthy despite the loss of sleep due to jet lag.
My stamina and feet held up to the challenging schedule. The longest day included 7 ½ hours of teaching (standing barefoot) along with a question-answer time.
The Lord powerfully worked through this series on the Holy Spirit to bring much clarification and personal strength to the attendees.

Pray

Hopefully, I can process these new resources this month. Pray for the recovery of the needed videos from the bad hard drive.
Pray for me as I preach this Sunday on John 2:18-25—not a particularly easy passage to preach!
I will teach Oct 6 and speak at a mission conference later in October.
Daniel will be getting married on November 2nd.
Linda’s left hip got better! But now pray for her right hip!
Do keep praying for grace as I work to complete a book as well as finish one or two articles each week.