A time of relaxation and preparation...

Our first full day in the UAE was Friday and it was a busy one. We went to an Evangelical church service at 10am, which was all in English and there was something incredibly powerful about worshiping Jesus in a Muslim country. At 1pm, instead of attending the Filipino service as we had originally planned, we joined Benjin Joshua’s family at their traditional Indian service which was all done in the Malayalam dialect. Benjin's uncle and father co-pastor the church and Benjin warned our band guys ahead of time that they might want to bring their instruments just in case. It's a good thing they did because we ended up leading worship! All of us girls had to wear head scarves, remove all jewelry and wear minimal makeup in order to respect the conservative culture. There are mats on the floor instead of chairs, everyone removes their shoes at the door and men and women sit on separate sides of the room. The Malayalam people were very welcoming and even allowed Benjin to translate the preaching just so that we could understand.

After church, we all headed to Benjin’s family’s house to eat Indian food and to fellowship. His family has been incredibly welcoming to us and it would make his mother happy if we would allow her to cook all of our meals, do all of our laundry and tuck us in every night. She has the heart of a servant and is definitely like a mother to the whole team.

On Saturday, we slept in and spent the day relaxing around the house. We ventured out into Al Ain to Jimi Mall for dinner in the evening and had some good team time later on.

On Sunday, we visited with Pastor Edward, the pastor of the Filipino church where we will be ministering this Friday. We also took a field trip to Jebel Hafeet, a mountain that overlooks all of Al Ain and then went to the Joshua’s house for some late night Arabic food.

This evening we will be attending another Indian service and are prepared to share testimonies and encourage the church with the word of God. We are looking forward to ministering more this week and are blessed that the Lord has given us some time to relax, recover from jet lag and prepare.

Here are some pictures from our time so far…