Monday: Asia Night

There are also Mennonite Brethren in Thailand and Laos and a conference of 100 congregations in Indonesia which relates to Mennonite Brethren but is not officially MB.

Takashi Manabe of Japan hosted the evening, and greetings were brought by Japanese assistant moderator Shinichi Igusa and Indian Conference moderator P.B. Arnold.

A Japanese choir sang, interspersed with testimonies by three people at various stages of life. Midori Takeda, a young woman, told of growing up in a Christian family, being baptized at 14, wavering in her walk and being brought back through the help of Christian friends. She now enjoys teaching a young Sunday school class. Junichi Fujino, a middle-aged pastor, told of attending Bible studies with MB missionaries in order to prepare to go to the US as a Shinto missionary but discovering that the God of the Bible is the one true God. Michiko Hamana, an older woman, described being attracted to a Christian meeting in 1951 by music and being loved into the Kingdom by MB missionaries.

Phone Keo Keovilay told of returning to Laos and Thailand as an MBMS International missionary to assist the growing Khmu churches there.

The Indian delegation also sang, in Telegu and Hindi.

The evening message, "The Holy Spirit and Renewal", was by I.P. Asheervadam, a lecturer at MB Centenary Bible College in Shamshabad, India. Demonstrating that "the church without the Holy Spirit is dead", he gave the example of the church before Pentecost, which had knowledge about the Holy Spirit but had not yet experienced His power. He then surveyed church history, noting that the church revived when it experienced again the power of the Holy Spirit in Anabaptism, Pietism and the founding of the Mennonite Brethren Church in 1860. "The Mennonite Brethren Church," he noted, "did not separate from the Mennonites in Russia for any doctrinal issues or any power struggle but for more spiritual experience." JC

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