Note: This web page is not public. Please do not post it, or the link to it, or my full name in text, in any public forum accessible to web search engines. Pakistan is an officially Islamic regime and, although the outlook for us as Christian American visitors is favorable now, and even getting more so with a new e-Visa system launched last month and the return of missionary visas, it has varied in the past, I'm not betting that it will stay that way, and the government has access to the same web search engines that everyone else has. My name is also very unique and easy to search. So, I would rather stay as low key as I can.
Our second trip to Pakistan was very different than the first one. We had accomplished much at CSF Primary School five years before, and they were doing well with the spiritual kickstart that we had done. I told Javied that if we came again we should do pioneer work in other places, so that is just what was arranged for us!
From our airport arrival we spent just a few hours at the Akhtar home, then we loaded up for a four-hour journey to the district of Sahiwal, where we all stayed in a hotel. From there we did four three-day evangelistic seminars in remote, rural villages, often traveling additional, long distances to get to them. Then, after two weeks, we returned to Lahore, did one more three-day seminar in the outskirts of the city there, and then did single-session seminars in various places from that point on. Most of all the seminars were to a mixed audience where we could not be sure that everyone in the audience had even a fundamental knowledge and assurance of the Christian gospel. So, my seminars had to start with the most basic message of the Christian faith.
We accumulated 518 GB of videos and photos over the month that we were there. That is too much to put everything on this trip web page, especially since I repeated the same teaching themes over and over again in the various seminars, so I will show a representative subset covering the various topics I taught on, and highlights of the trip. If you are a Pakistani connected with one of the places where I spoke, and don't see it here on this web page, please don't hesitate to contact me, and I can retrieve and upload those particular videos for you. We did get videos of pretty much everything.
On the first session of the first seminar, in a rural village labeled only as Chak 125/15-L, outside of Mian Channu, we had a mixed audience that included Roman Catholics. I made a comment about the futility of going to a human priest with your sins, which caused a young Roman Catholic woman to interrupt me (5:22 in the video below), pointing out that there were such priests in the Old Testament. I didn't stop with answering that objection, but also mentioned the futility of praying to dead saints, even Mary, the mother of Jesus, who could not hear any prayers, since she was dead and buried in the ground, and then the futility of believing in a place called purgatory, where people are purged of sins that Jesus already paid for on the cross, and so on. During break all this brought the Pakistani leaders into sharp debate with attendees, telling them not to argue. But, meanwhile, I took the young Catholic woman aside during break to explain more (see still photos at 24:30 in the video below), and assessed that she really was a believer who was seriously searching for truth. Partially to avoid more debate, and partially because they were eager for me to teach on healing, they asked me to teach on healing next, so I started teaching on the believer's identity and authority in Christ, leading to my usual routine to call Garrett up to heal some sick person as a demonstration, which he did. Then I did something that would surprise them all. I called that young Catholic woman forward to heal the next sick person (46:51 in the video below), which she did. She had never healed the sick before. I would use this as an illustration in this seminar and in others that it does not matter what religious affiliation you have, but whether you believe. From that point on there would be no more "Catholic" debate. Here is an excerpt from the first two sessions, featuring the young Catholic woman.
I spoke at the residential area of a brick kiln factory where Javied intended to start a second Christian primary school, like CSF at the now-former Youhanna Abad #2 brick kiln factory. Most of the people there were illiterate. They advertised the meeting, using small posters that you can see on the walls, as a healing service. However, I started with the basics again, not wanting to just do a healing service, and moved quickly from the meaning of life all the way through to the new life in Christ (36:28), then a demonstration of the power of the gospel by using Garrett to heal someone (49:23), then got a volunteer from among them (53:50), a seventeen year-old young lady, to heal the next person (54:39). After this point, I had been talking for an hour, so we had to start healing lines (1:01:18), which are in the video and go for another twenty minutes, with Garrett doing one line with Sehresh translating for him, and my doing another line with Javied translating for me. The highlight was when a young boy of perhaps twelve years old or so patiently worked his way up to the front and patiently waited to talk to Javied and me. He wanted to heal the sick (1:15:12). So, I prayed over him, declaring that he would do so, and immediately turned him around to face our healing line. At this point he prayed over and healed several people, one after another, which you will see in the video.
I spoke at the residential area of another brick kiln factory that Javied has been visiting, and would also like to start a third Christian primary school, like CSF at the now-former Youhanna Abad #2 brick kiln factory. Most of the people there were illiterate. Again I started with the basics and moved quickly from the meaning of life all the way through to the new life in Christ, then a demonstration of the power of the gospel by using Garrett to heal someone (1:08:47), then got a volunteer from among them (1:10:59), a man, to heal the next two people. After this, I had been talking for almost an hour and twenty minutes, and there was not even time for healing lines. The brick kiln workers needed to get back to work making bricks. So, I was forced to wave my hand and make a healing declaration over all of them all at once. I did this, then asked them to check themselves out, then asked how many were just healed, and many hands went up.
Here is a video excerpt of my teaching on water baptism. I emphasized that this is the responsibility of the person making disciples, not the one being discipled. See my web article on this topic.
We had water baptisms on several different occasions in several different places, typically on the last day of a seminar. Most of these were in irrigation pools that fed farm land. The last one was at CSF. The first person we baptized at CSF was a 110 year-old woman (24:43 in the video).
My seminars covered a number of topics. In the long seminars, I usually started out by challenging people to consider the meaning of life, why they were living as Christians, whether they were just pursuing the things of this world, including food, water, shelter, and having children, like the animals, or had a greater purpose. This ended with the point that the reason for continuing to live (as opposed to dying and going to heaven, a better place) was to reach the lost while there was still time to do so, that this was the heart of God and the heart of the Christian gospel message.
Another consistent topic that I covered in the long seminars was a description of the New Covenant vs. the Old Covenant Law of Moses vs. no covenant. Many Christians think and live with an Old Covenant mentality or, even worse, a mentality using Job as a model, who had no covenant with God to begin with. Job would have wished to have been a partaker of the Old Covenant Law of Moses, and the people of Israel under the Old Covenant Law of Moses would have wished to have been partakers of the New Covenant. Even the prophets of old longed to see the revelation of what we see now.
Another consistent topic that I covered in the long seminars, right after the teaching on the covenants, was about the reference at the end of the book of James where it talks about Elijah acting like us (and not the other way around). This also leads into the definition of prayer being broader than the way it is defined in both English and Urdu, not just "talking to God," but προσευχη, a vow toward something. When Elijah "prayed" that it would not rain, he was making a declaration to wicked king Ahab, and that was before God spoke to him, which had nothing to do about the rain, but about his hiding in the Kerith Ravine and God commanding the ravens to feed him. See my web article and video on the definition of prayer.
Another consistent topic that I covered in the long seminars was the definition of "church" and "worship" in the New Testament scriptures. In Pakistan there was the same mindset of church-centric Christianity and a music-centric concept of worship as here in the West, whereas the scriptures label us as an εκκλησια, an "out-calling," and Jesus re-defined worship as happening not here nor there but "in spirit and in truth." I spent about fifty minutes on this teaching, after which we were expected to have healing lines, since this was the evening session, so the last ten minutes of video show the healing lines. I was disappointed that I could not get any volunteers to heal the sick, this time or the previous evening, and only a scant few when I taught and initially demonstrated on that subject in the second seminar session the first day, especially considering many of them were Bible students. It showed the passivity of an audience that was content to just be "hearers" of the word. See my web article and video on the definition of church, and my web article and video on the definition of worship.
Another consistent topic that I covered in the long seminars was the illustration by Jesus about the two men who both built houses, the wise one on the rock and the foolish one on the sand. Both heard the words of Jesus, then one put it into practice and the other did not. This led to showing the difference between faith and works using the example of Abraham in Rom 4 (Gen 15) and James 2 (Gen 22), that faith, which God sees immediately and by which we are justified in the sight of God, results in works that men, angels, and demons can see, such that we are justified in the sight of all of creation by our works apart from mere profession of faith. See my web article on faith vs. works.
Another consistent topic that I covered in the long seminars was about stepping out in faith. I used Luke 17, where the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith, and the response of Jesus about the mustard seed and the parable of the unprofitable servant. See my web article on this. I also used Javied's faith and accomplishments as an example.
In the last session of the seminars (the last evening session) I would usually summarize everything I had been teaching about, which in the following video I did for the first 24 minutes. In this last session, I then spoke about not asking God to give you what he has already given you, not asking the Holy Spirit to come when he already has, not waiting to hear from God when you see an obvious opportunity in front of you (illustrating from the parable of the good Samaritan), not praying for God to send revival (you are alive and are supposed to go revive what is dead), not asking Jesus to come to be in this place (since Jesus is already in you and you are in this place), and again challenging people to go out of the church, find their mission, and do work of the gospel. I also recount a question one of the leaders had asked me in private regarding whether "we" heal the sick (bringing attention to ourselves), answering from the account in Acts 3, and also Gal 2:20.
We went to visit the CSF sewing vocational training center in Lahore. This is just a short video clip showing the sewing center.
After we visited the CSF vocational sewing center, I did a single, one-hour seminar out in an open area across the street. This was right next to a huge mosque (the building in the background in view of the camera), and you can hear the Muslim prayers from the building's public address system, starting at 31:00 in the video. Interesting: The prayers start broadcasting just as I am telling people that they should not want Jesus to come yet, but should pray, "Wait, wait! Give us more time to reach the lost!" In this seminar I again started with the meaning of life, the insufficiency of the Law of Moses, moving on to Christian responsibility, faith that results in action, ending with crediting Javied for his faith (which resulted in action) in starting several Christian ministry ventures, explaining that anyone there could step out in faith and do that, ending with the story of the wise vs. foolish men who built their house on rock vs. sand: Both had in common that they heard the word of God but one put it into practice and one didn't.
We visited the adult education class at CSF, where illiterate adults were learning to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. I spoke briefly to them, encouraging them that their time investment was worthwhile. At the end, one woman came up to give a testimony. She said that we had visited her home and that I had spoke blessings over it, and that from that time their household saw God blessing them in many ways.
This meeting at CSF was advertised as a healing service, so I got right to the point and walked through the usual routine of explaining from the scriptures, demonstrating using twelve year-old Garrett, then getting volunteers from the audience to heal the sick. The teaching was just under fifty minutes, and then we did another fifteen minutes of healing lines, dividing into two healing lines, with me at one with Sehresh translating for me, then Garrett at the other with Javied translating for him. For the healing lines, in this video, I showed three camera views simultaneously, wherever I had the views available.
In the last Sunday church service for CSF I spent about forty minutes speaking first about what love is, explaining how 1 John 3:16 defines it, that they should be prepared to lay down their lives for anyone else, including Muslims in Pakistan, Hindus in India, or anyone. Then I spoke about being free from fear and how the devil is like a roaring lion, explaining the analogy from how lions and domestic cats behave. After I was done, there was a question from a man about laying down your life (32:40) and I explained further that Jesus did not lay down his life for any believers, because there weren't any yet, and everyone had either turned against him or abandoned him.
This is a short video showing some of the residences at the Khand village brick kiln factory.
This is a one-minute video of Javied speaking about his vision to create a church, school, and sewing center on the premises of the Khand village brick kiln factory.
In this video Adriel and Garrett were entertained by a couple of machines used to chop animal feed.
Pakistanis are diligent to iron their clothes. When the electricity is out, what do you do? In this video Isham uses a pot that she heated on the stovetop to iron clothes.
Here is a short video of a couple cooking food with a fire-pot and sticks in a sheltered open enclosure outside their house.
No one in America can imagine. Urban traffic in Pakistan makes downtown Boston or New York City traffic look like some little old ladies out for a leisurely Sunday drive. The roads have cars, motorcycles, rickshaws, vans, bicycles, donkey carts, pedestrians, and even livestock, all weaving in and out, the vehicles all driving aggressively within inches of each other.
We were having this funny conversation with Sehresh and her husband, Sharoon, in the car about police in Pakistan, so I got my smartphone out to have them repeat what they told me. It was funnier when they were spontaneous and matter of fact, but in this video re-take you will get the idea. If you are an American and you think the police here are self-serving, or even too often corrupt, you just haven't been to a third-world country.
Here is a seventeen-minute video of Javied and I walking from his house to another house about fifteen minutes' walk away from him in the same urban neighborhood (Bahar Colony, Lahore). I used a Garmin VIRB camera, which I held in one hand at waist level, so as to be discreet, rather than using my smartphone. "An American walking the city streets in Pakistan?!?" We turned many heads as we were walking along. At one point, 10:44 in the video, some people on the street stopped us so that they could photograph us with them. At another point, 9:35 in the video, some young boys saw us and were so fascinated with me that they followed us all the way through the rest of our journey across the neighborhood. At several points, such as 10:07 in the video, I stopped to talk with the boys, and at 13:06 we found out that we were passing by the boys' home, which they excitedly pointed out to us.
This is what the rural villages that we visited looked like.
Improvements have been made to the Akhtar house since we visited in 2014. With life insurance money from the 2013 death of his wife they bought bricks and other building materials, then with their own manual labor remodeled their house. Now it has more rooms, and we were able to stay there, instead of in a hotel this time, with our own room and king-size bed that all three of us slept on, while the rest of the family squeezed into the other beds and couches. In this 2019 video I show 2014 inset video clips for comparison.
We survived another month-long stay in Pakistan and returned in good health!
I produced a documentary with a background music track for Jamshaid to show in American churches, to document the CSF mission and seek financial sponsors. It is 12:23 in length. The second half of this is a personal video testimony from me.
This is the short version that does not have my video testimony or even my face anywhere directly in it, but only my narration. It is public on the CSF YouTube channel. It is 6:52 in length. Do not post my full name with the following YouTube link in any public forum accessible to web search engines.