Mission Accomplished

Last week’s high adventure got a little bit higher this week. If you are a regular sipper of Fresh from the Brewer, you probably know I am in the anything-but-boring nation of India.

Oh Cowcutta! How I wish you could see some of what we are seeing over here. In fact I have posted some videos on YOU TUBE and if you do a search for Troy Brewer you should be able to find them without a problem. There are several fun little snippets of some of the site and sounds of our mission’s trip.

For the past ten days, my daughter and I have been in a whirlwind of activity and travel. It started with a 2 hour flight to Chicago and then a 15 hour non-stop flight to Deli. We flew straight north from Chicago and got back into daylight over Canada having seen the sun actually rise from the West before we flew South over Siberia. Once past mother Russia, we flew directly over Afghanistan and a few other stans. I had all I could ‘stan’ of the economy section of American Airlines flight 209 way before we hit India. I’m sure my skinny daughter was tired of me spilling over into her seat as well. Thank God she was with me or I might have gotten closer than a married man is allowed to get to somebody else.

Mission Accomplished

I have the privilege of leading and Pastoring a great group of people at Open Door Ministries. My wife heads up a ministry called SPARK which is an acronym for serving, protecting and raising kids. Between the two of us, we support or fully fund orphanages on four different continents. So a big part of this trip is to see and minister to the kids here. The house where I stay is also a home to hundreds of little boys and girls who would otherwise be victims of neglect or even worse. We have also visited another home for children way out west of Vizak. It’s just a fun thing to get to do.

But in my heart, the ultimate reason for this trip or the purpose of the actual mission was a chance at visiting the persecuted Christians in the state of Orissa.

Last year, the communist gorillas attacked a Hindu commune and killed the Hindu Priest there. The Hindu hierarchy used the occasion to do its best to get rid of Christianity in the region by announcing the murder had been perpetrated by Christians. What happened next was nothing short of an attempt at genocide. Backed by money sent in from Hindus working in the United States, they gathered thousands of radicals from all over the nation. They paid them a wage, liquored them up, handed them big sticks and transported these thugs to the villages of Orissa where for weeks the murdered, molested and brutalized anyone suspected of being a Christian. Not a person in the world would lift a finger to help these people. Even the Indian government set back for more than five days before the first response or rescue attempt.

Last night we were at a church which had actually been torn down in the uprising. More than 400 people gathered outside and sat on the ground for the service. I told them they were heroes to the rest of the church. I told them they were not alone... I told them we loved them and looked up to them. I did the very best I could do to try and relay how important, significant and precious they are to the body of Christ. It was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.

Remember them in your prayers. They really are worth remembering.

A Guy Worth Forgetting

Haters have always been around. The famous French writer Voltaire often spent his expensive ink and wasted life writing about his hatred for God and God’s people.

He too wanted to wipe out Christianity. Full of Communism and himself, he wrote from his library in Paris, “I will go through the forest of scriptures and circle the trees with my words so that in 100 years Christianity will be a vanishing memory.”

A few years after his death, the British Bible Society purchased that same library and filled it from top to bottom with thousands of copies of the Bible he so hated.

Christians will suffer persecution but never annihilation. Jesus himself illustrated the point through His death and resurrection…You just can’t keep a good man down.

Contact the Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

HIGH ADVENTURE

The last time I worked on this column, I was sitting at home where I always write. Tonight I am pounding with my incredibly agile two fingered writing style from literally the other side of the world. I am currently in Vizak India on my third mission’s trip to this amazing country; this time accompanied by my daughter Meagan.

Good googly moogly! What an amazing difference 12 times zones, 2 continents and a couple of oceans can make. Yesterday Meagan and I hired a guide to drive us out to see the world wonder known as the Taj Mahal. It was a four hour drive from Delhi to Agaba, crammed full of near head on collisions and near misses with everything from ox carts, rickshaws and pedestrians to crotch-rocket motorcycles and dump trucks.

We saw camels going down the highway and even an elephant. Not your typical Sunday drive through Johnson County. We stopped at one point to pay a toll and these guys with monkeys came running over to our car. Within a matter of seconds, there were five baboons in my window. I don’t much like monkeys and had a bad experience with a baboon in Uganda several years back so I was not happy when one of the guys opened my door. After an exchange of heated words and my needing an exchange of drawers, I got the door closed and off we went.

A few minutes later the 109 degree heat had me pull over again to get a new bottle of water. We had to walk past a guy playing with a cobra with his left hand and holding some kind of a giant boa with his right. There were all kinds of orange-clad Hindu priests inspecting worshippers at a giant cement statue of a blue sword-wielding monkey god. I just stopped and looked around for a minute trying to take it all in. With all of this said, I have not even began to describe how extremely different the sites and sounds of India are.

This week’s confessions of a highly-caffeinated Christian come perking with a little Indiana Jones music in the background.

I think God loves for us to live a life of high adventure. The road to making a difference is sometimes lined with the unusual and can sometimes be a little overwhelming. God is not always found in the familiar, safe and comfortable. I think it’s better to be familiar with Him and His presence when we are a little overwhelmed with our environment and circumstances. Instead of inviting us into safe and comfortable places He offers to be our safety and our comfort while pointing to a barbaric way and saying, “every place the soles of your feet touch, belong to you, you own it so go get it”.

So get up and get out there and live your life while you still can. To live a life that is boring and insignificant is just as silly as living a life without God altogether. God set you free for freedoms sake the Good Book says, not to spend life on a couch.

I speak blessings on you and next week I’ll write you from some place that is a little everything except boring. I pray for you and appreciate you doing the same for me.

Contact the Brewer at www.OpenDoorMinistries.org

Texans and Tall Taxi Tales

It was a little after 5 in the afternoon when our plane touched down at DFW. The squelch of the tires on the tarmac was one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve heard in a very long time. It had been a month and over 22,000 miles since I last saw Texas and as we taxied to the gate I could hardly wait to kiss my bride and eat an enchilada…in that order.

After a month in India, I have never enjoyed a traffic jam like I did from the airport. Not a single rickshaw or holy cow blocking the highway. It was awesome. All of the Brewer clan went directly, on the right side of the road, to my favorite Tex-Mex joint. It was a lot like what I imagine heaven to be. Family, fellowship and guacamole.

This trip to India was my most successful mission to that part of the word yet. We actually stayed at the orphanage we support and spent a lot of time with my 300 kids. We visited our leper colony and hosted more than 50 pastors at an encouragement conference. I was able to hire an Indian band to back me and one Monday night we did a praise and worship concert for as many people as could stand a song in English. What a hoot!

It was powerful and life changing but it was not without incident. When you travel throughout the world, really anything can happen. Third world countries can be dangerous places and you have to really believe God for protection on so many levels.

Taxis in one form or another have been around for as long as there have been people that needed them. By the end of the 19th century, cars began to appear on NYC streets and it wasn’t long before a number of these cars were hiring themselves out in competition with horse-drawn carriages. Although these electric-powered cabs were slightly impractical with batteries weighing upwards of eight hundred pounds, by 1899 there were nearly one hundred of them on the streets.

Progress has always had its price, and on September 13th of that year, a sixty-eight year-old man named Henry H. Bliss was helping a friend from a streetcar when a taxi swerved and hit him. This gave Bliss the dubious distinction of being the first American to die in a car wreck, and giving cabbies a first glimpse at a reputation they would soon solidify.

I have been in taxicabs all over the world. I think that London has the Best taxicabs and San Francisco has the craziest cab drivers, or at least the funnest. I don’t mind hoping in a cab from time to time so it didn’t bother me to take one from the domestic airport to the international airport in Bombay.

I thought a cab ride through the rugged streets of Bombay might be fun. You never know when you might come across a rope trick or maybe even a cobra charmer. It just so happens though that the cab that my son and I climbed into Bombay was not actually a cab but part a small crew of thieves that looks for gullible fat white guys to rob.

The bottom line is that we were not taken to the airport but the bad part of town where our driver picked up a cohort and commenced to rob us. There is a whole lot to this story but let me tell you this. By the time it was over, we were safely at the airport, with our passports and luggage intact. It really was a miracle.

These confessions of a highly caffeinated Christian only go so far but let me give God glory for giving me and my 16 year old son the ability to overcome those robbers. They got away with a few dollars from Bens front pocket but with a lot less pride and a few less teeth after it was all over with.

My suggestion to the robbers is to not tangle with two men of God from Texas. Especially ones nearly crazy from a lack of enchiladas. If you know my grandmother Francis Millican, please don’t tell her this part of the story. I’m in enough trouble for going there anyway.

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield."
Psalms 91:1-4