Sally and Hammad had a wonderfully blessed tour in Canada and New York in August.  Kamran and his family were amazing hosts providing everything we needed and more.

We were blessed with the provision of guitar amps to ensure a good sound for all the performances, we had a wonderful road trip to Toronto from New York with Kamran. Due to unforeseen circumstances we had to stay in a hotel in Toronto and so were able to make an unexpected visit to Catch the Fire church at Toronto airport on Sunday 13th August morning . This was such a blessing to experience spirit-filled worship, testimonies and preaching before then going on to lead worship at Cornerstone Asian Church in the afternoon.

We met up with Luke and Tess, friends of friends in Chesham and were delighted that Luke could play drums with us at Cornerstone church before rushing off to catch a bus to Washington.  God often blesses us with chance meetings that turn out to be mutually beneficial and for his glory.

Having been scheduled to only play 30 minutes worship, we were honoured that pastor Peter asked us to continue for another hour and cut down the sermon to a short homily so that we could continue worshiping in English and Urdu for the whole service.  The Cornerstone technical team were amazing arranging the PA and filming the service. Short extracts have now been released on Youtube so people can continue being blessed by the worship from this event.  Here are couple of songs from this event.

We also enjoyed great hospitality with sister Ester & her family in Toronto and were blessed to be able to visit Niagara Falls and the Butterfly Sanctuary on our travels.

Back in New York we spent a wonderful week with Pastor Pervaz & Sakina, Kamran, Marya and their children Aman, Zara & Eliza. A highlight in the week was visiting Sight and Sound theatre for a production of Jonah, for Aman & Zara’s birthday. Hammad also started teaching Zara to play the guitar and to sing with us.

Saturday evening we performed a concert for Sutun-e-haqq church New York with a full band including Danny on drums, Kamran on keys and a traditional table player.  Hammad’s cousin Rina also performed two songs.

At the same church on Sunday morning heard a moving testimony about how a man had been healed from ankle pain during the concert the night before.  He praised God for the blessing of his job with NYPD and for healing his ankle.   Sally preached on ‘Giving as Worship’ to encourage the church to give sacrificially as Jesus did, to help build their new church. Hammad led the sung worship.

After this service we drove 2 hours to Philadelphia to lead worship for a small church planted by Sutun-e-Haqq.  At this service the worship flowed and Hammad shared the Word of God through his songs and his explanation of their meaning.  Marya’s comment that Hammad was like a ‘lion uncaged’ confirmed previous prophetic encouragement that Hammad received in recent months.

We were blessed by amazingly generous hosts throughout this tour and covered all our expenses from their gifts and CD sales. Praise God!  We look forward to next year and a return visit to encourage these diaspora Asian Christian communities.