We baptized converts to Christ in a fetid fishpond on one occasion and in the Bay of Bengal on another. These are always moving events because of the potential cost it is to those being baptized.

As always, I took a suitcase full of JuicePlus for the pregnant wives of the pastors and for the mothers-to-be in the Visac slum. When they take JuicePlus, they have better pregnancies and their babies are healthier and weigh in at 7 - 8 lbs, rather than the typical 4 - 5 lbs.

One of my favorite memories is the day we took the slum kids to a water park and then to the ice cream parlor downtown. What fun!

Two of the girls in our slum school have been admitted to the local public school and are at the top of their class. This has never happened before because ‘untouchable’ slum kids have never been allowed to attend school. Due to the Hindu caste system, there would be no reason for an untouchable to get an education. But these two girls’ stellar performance has now opened the door for others to follow. This will, in turn, lead to new possibilities for these children – possibilities of breaking out of the caste they were born into.

The downside of this trip was returning home full of parasites. But I am getting the upper hand and am recovering. It is, I am happy to say, a small price to pay.

In April, Patti goes to Thailand to help deliver the baby of our adopted son and his wife. She will also help as they continue to lay the foundations of their own Children’s Home in Chiang Mai. The next Good News to the Poor report will come from her.

In May, I will head to Fiji and Australia with two of our sons – Alex and Levi. I will be training church planters and missionaries and we will snorkel and fish and minister to small island churches in the South Pacific.

I love my job. Thank you so much for helping me do it.

Peace and all good,

Ken

India 2007

My annual January/February trip to India was both productive and difficult – as usual. My experiences were numerous and intense – as usual as well. You would have to get on the plane with me to fully appreciate what spending a few weeks in India means to me. I hope the following report will be like looking at snapshots and reading over and over again, ‘Wish you were here.”

The accomplishment I am most happy about was securing dental care for over 200 untouchable slum kids. It’s a complicated story, but here’s the short version. A good friend from Australia, Mark Miller, and two of his kids, accompanied me on this trip. He is a dentist. After three days and nights without sleep, I made a navigational error and got us going in the wrong direction, on the wrong road, on the outskirts of Visac. Thanking the Lord for this detour was not an option, due to how hysterically tired we were. But then we spotted the Gandhi Dental College of Visac. I knew we weren’t far from the slum where one of our schools for untouchable kids is located, so Mark and I wondered if we should talk to the college about dental care for the kids. To our absolute, hysterically tired surprise, they agreed to treat all the kids for just the cost of materials. In addition to fillings and extractions, the college is now doing orthodontic procedures on three of our girls for only $100 each. I pay $5000 here in America for the same work on one of my daughters. This connection alone, made the whole trip worth it.

As usual, I taught and preached in various settings - from large conferences (700 in attendance) to village churches. The Indian government believed we needed protection at one of our conferences. So for three days and nights, 15 soldiers with AK47’s stood guard. Even though this was in an area where Christians had recently been violently persecuted, there was no hint of trouble.