By the end of that year, our friends in Delhi were asking for regular community meetings.  Once a month wasn’t enough.  They were coming out of The Family and needed input and fellowship.  We looked at the team in Mussoorie and everyone seemed to have been called everywhere other than Delhi.

James and Willi left for Goa.  That was an amazing story.  For all those years at Woodstock they had opened their home to students; those who were doing well and those who were in detention for misbehaviour.  Many had moved on and become successful in business.  One young man, from another faith, decided it was pay back time.  He bought a house in Goa and told them they could live in it for as long as they wanted to.  It was theirs.  They moved in and got involved in hospitality, children’s ministry and marriage courses.  What a way to retire.

Jason and Ali and their two little girls, Michaela and Tarryn, were feeling they needed to move to Dublin to start a new community there.  That was a difficult surprise for all of us.  They were so tightly knit with everyone we wondered how we were going to be able to let them go.

Puran and Rebecca couldn’t stop talking about Nepal.  They were eager but also ready to wait for the perfect timing of that move.

Chandra and Champa had moved to Champa’s village in Solan and were doing really well.  All of Champa’s family had joined them as well as others from the surrounding villages.

Raman and Kiron had grown like bamboo shoots.  When they first moved to Mussoorie their Hindi was very rusty.  Raman would panic when he was asked to translate a simple prayer.  When Tony started asking him to prepare messages he got really nervous.  If he was scheduled to speak on a Sunday morning he would wake up with diahorrea and call Tony with, “Tony please can I be released from speaking today?  I just can’t do it.”  Tony’s reply would be, “Raman, you can do it and it’s going to be great.”  He would do it and it was great.  We saw him going from a very nervous speaker to a fiery, confident one.  His translation skills were exceptional and he was able to teach well.  They loved the CNC folk and the love was reciprocated.

I had been feeling for while that we were the ones who should move to Delhi.  After one of our trips, I felt sad that our friends were like sheep without a shepherd.  Tony wasn’t sure. He was struggling with the thought of leaving his jungle behind.  He would disappear into it for hours.  He knew that was not going to be possible in Delhi.  Delhi was everything he didn’t like.  There were no mountains or ocean and it drove him crazy to be there just for a few days.

Tony thought Jason and Ali would move to Delhi.  He had no idea it would be us.  It took him by surprise when God said, “Stop looking around, it’s you.”  That was the clincher.  After all, who are we to argue with God?  He always knows best.  We may not understand it all but we do need to believe that He is always good and He knows what is good for us.

So with that in mind, we stopped looking around and started making plans to move to “The City of Jinns,” the second largest city in the world, where eighteen million people were eagerly waiting for our arrival.  We wished.