Dubai Church Service Special Event

Saturday, May 4
After our conference today, everyone rested in the afternoon in preparation for the evening gospel Church service event.  It was an amazing experience to worship the Lord with our Pakistani brothers and sister from Sharjah and Dubai. The service began with singing and worship, followed by several testimonies. After the testimonies, we sang some more worship songs followed by prayer. Then one of the local pastors would preach. Most of the service was conducted in Urdu, the language of Pakistan. This pattern would continue for a few times until the main preacher came to give the sermon. Tonight, Pastor AJ preached on The Great Commission from Matthew 28:19-20. Through an interpreter, AJ reminded all of us that while it is our responsibility to share the gospel, it is God's job to bring a person to salvation in Him. A A great and encouraging reminder and very fitting for what our leaders have been studying throughout our conference on The End Times.   Our FB team loves to experience a church service in another country and in another language. It's such a joy to worship in other languages because we get to experience a little piece of Heaven on earth! In Pakistani worship services, the women cover their heads throughout the service. This is different from our practice in the American church. Out of respect for our brothers and sisters in Christ, we chose to honor them as we worshipped together. After the service, we all had dinner together-biryani (chicken and rice with yogurt and mint), water, and a sweet treat, similar to a doughnut hole in a light syrup. It was pretty late by the time the church service ended, around 11:00 PM and we still needed to head home and prepare for our last day. And guess what we hit? TRAFFIC! That's right, tons of traffic. We are grateful for our taxi drivers navigating all of the closed roads, but we will admit that at times it was a bit dicey! None the less, we made it back to our hotel well after midnight. We were exhausted and yet full of joy and filled with God's Spirit as we anticipated tomorrow, our last day.