Suffering withdrawal symptoms after two weeks of spicy and flavorful Indian food, I ate lunch at the House of India restaurant in Centereach today. It has to be the best deal in town – $8.75 for all you can eat and trust me, the food is really good. Yes I did pig out, I did eat more than I should, but a person has to do that now and again. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t!

Anway, just when you thought there wasn’t one, here’s the real point. I was eating with a guy who’s the salt of the earth – the kind of person who’s the backbone of our church. He isn’t too conspicuous, definitely isn’t seen on stage, but he’s committed, involved and as excited about all that is going on as I am.

Gene Holland has been helping with our Saturday afternoon mobile soup kitchen ever since we started it five years ago. He says it’s one of the highlights of his week and although I started off leading the outreach myself, the fact that I often only get there 50% of the time nowadays has meant that he is now the person who looks after things faithfully and well.

Gene’s a great guy. His Jamaican roots mean that he follows cricket avidly – used to play when he was younger – and so among other valuable contributions he makes, he scours the internet every week to keep me informed on what is happening in the game worldwide.

Our church is made up of hundreds of people just like Gene. They’re not looking for the spotlight. They’ve just caught the vision and are willing to do whatever they can to help make it happen. I’d like to take them all to lunch, but since that’s not feasible I do want to salute them right here.

I took a ride to Flushing, Queens today to meet up with my friend Tony Liston who leads Adventure Christian Community – http://www.adventurecommunity.org – in Davenport, Iowa.

Adventure launched four weeks before we did and any chance to hook up with its progressive pastor is worth seizing. So as he and a couple of guys from his church got off a plane at LaGuardia early this afternoon, I sat down with them at the Paradise Diner to anjoy some good food and fellowship.

The guys are in town for a conference on reclaiming the arts that is being held in Tribeca over the next couple of days, all of which is a bit out of my league but kudos to them for wanting to make a dent in the arts community in darkest Davenport.

I am grateful to God that throughout the years I have been in ministry, I have had good friends around me that I could rely on, bounce things off and laugh with too. Tony’s one of them – he’s a special guy.

Good news – the heating system in our movie theater has been fixed, so we are able to get back to normal this coming weekend. Seems there was a small fire in one of the boilers and then there were fears of a gas leak, thus the last-minute news that we couldn’t get in there last week.

There’s something of an irony in the fact that while service was cancelled here through lack of heat, Gill and I were sweating throughout the morning as I preached at Covenant Blessings Church in Goa, India. It was around 95!

The congregations there are both growing – one in the town of Cangalute where we were staying and the other in Vasco, around 45 minutes from there.

This is tourist season in this vacation state and it seems that Cangalute is to the British what Port St. Lucie is to New Yorkers. It’s the snowbirds’ winter hangout where anyone under the age of 374 feels very much out of place. I have never seen so many Brits abroad – what a scarey looking bunch!

Anyway, as I say the churches there are thriving, but since so many of their members have to work Sundays throughout the main tourist season, it was decided to have a joint service when we were there. There were still over 100 worshipers and it was great to see them all again (this was my fourth visit to Goa). Encouraging the pastor there is an excellent investment of time and energy.

Got back home this afternoon and will post something reasonably intelligent once I get out of this jet lag induced stupour.

Meanwhile, since I have been accused of being a bit hard on my former neighbors, the French, in the past, let me say that having spent 45 minutes in Paris this morning, I have a new appreciation of these wonderful people.

Wondering whether we would make the connection in such a short time, with a change of terminal involved too, we were contemplating the results of missing the flight, which would have been a seat on an Air France plane to Newark six hours later.

So imagine our joy when we were met off the Mumbai flight by a chirpy French lady as dawn was breaking over the Eiffel Tower and discovered her sole purpose as an airline employee was to drive us directly over to terminal 2E and escort us through security and onto our ongoing flight. Nice work mes amis, we made the connection.

I also need to say a word about French cuisine. While airline food stinks the world over, our friends who gave the world noveau cusine really could show the peanut toting US carriers a thing or two about how to serve their passengers. The food on these flights was outstanding – though of course we were flying business class, courtesy of frequent flyer miles and not in the cattle truck we generally occupy – but I must confess being offered a choice of wines for breakfast was a first. Do they really do that in France?

Good job my French friends. I always loved your country!

Just got back from the pastors’ conference we have been conducting over the past three days and have succeeded in setting the cat among the pigeons. I taught Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church Conference material and really stretched the minds of some of the guys who were there.

All of them were very appreciative and they certainly had a lot of questions. One of the pastors leads a network of almost 700 churches and he wants me to come back next year and teach the material to all of his pastors, so we’ll see how that works out.

Have had no internet access for days, so am catching up now. Will take Gill out to dinner tonight – Valentine’s Day! – and then tomorrow we fly to Goa for a few days which will include ministry in the church there and a lot of meditation on the beach!!!

Very purposeful trip so far. Thanks to all who are praying for us.

India is a remarkable country, with some of the most obliging and capable people you could ever hope to meet. It’s a place where they offer you tea or coffee when you walk into a store, treat you like you matter and don’t talk on their cell phones while they’re ringing you up at the checkout.

I brought some artwork with me to have banners made for our upcoming series and a few other odds and ends and could hardly believe the sequence of events. The graphics were given to the printer yesterday afternoon and by 9.00pm, I was looking at quality 8 x 6 banners, all good to go. How long would that take back home? And by the way, you get them here for around one twentieth of the price!

We went into a leather shop today and Gill was looking at jackets. They didn’t have exactly what she was looking for in black, but explained apologetically that they could measure her, make it and have it delivered to us free of charge tomorrow – again at a fraction of the cost in the U.S.

Talk about customer service!

They’re smart enough to know that they are here to serve people and that is something they do real well. It’s not all about how good they look, how well their products are displayed or whether they themselves are having a good day. The store owners know they exist to meet the needs of the men and women who walk in the door.

That’s a dying mentality in the west – sadly.

It’s a dead mentality in the self-absorbed American church too. Mercifully in recent years God has been reminding a lot of people in our own country that our purpose has to be his purpose, which is to serve those that are lost.

Customer service needs to be our first priority.

Twenty four hours from now I will be sleeping soundly (I hope!) in Basil and Cathy D’Souza’s apartment in Mumbai (Bombay), India. Less than 20 hours door to door – can’t be bad. I am so glad that Delta finally saw the sense of introducing a direct flight instead of dumping their passengers somewhere in Europe and letting a partner airline pick up the cash for taking them the rest of the way.

This will be a good trip, with four major focuses -

1. Participating in Basil’s church’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations over the weekend as the keynote speaker.

2. Teaching the Purpose Driven Church conference to 40 key pastors next week, who lead networks totalling 2,000 congregations. This with the understanding that they will take the material and teach it to these network pastors.

3. Visiting the church in Goa that has been doing so well.

4. Sitting on the beach in Goa and reading a book for a day or two.

Looking forward to Gill traveling with me on her first visit to this great country. My ministry in India has often coincided with her missions teams going to South Africa, but February is clear for her so we’re jetting off together.

Will blog along the way whenever I get chance.

They said he was too nice to win. They said he just didn’t have what it takes to succeed on the biggest stage of all. But last night in Miami Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy became only the third man in the history of the NFL to hold aloft the Vince Lombardi Trophy as both a player and a head coach.

I guess “they” aren’t as smart as they thought they were!

He doesn’t scream on the sidelines, doesn’t rant and rave and no one has ever heard him curse, apart from one occasion when he used the title of a TV sports program – The Best Damn Sports Show Ever. Teased about that, he gave the assurance that it would never happen again.

I’m glad the Colts won Super Bowl XLI. Not just because they’re a good football team, not just because Dungy and Manning have been slagged off for too long as big game losers, not just because I’m fed up with seeing the Patriots swagger to the podium.

I’m glad because it was a victory for values and a great triumph for a coach who makes no secret whatever of his faith.

The quote of the night goes to Coach Dungy -

You can win doin’ it the Lord’s way.

I love it!!!

Tomorrow is a huge day – imagine church and the Super Bowl both in a twelve hours timespan. And in case anyone is not sure where I stand on the latter -

GO COLTS!