What Has the Christian Ashram Movement Meant to Me?
My parents took me to my first Christian Ashram during summer break before sixth grade. Missionaries in India, we were blessed to go to Sat Tal, where the Christian Ashram was established. Brother Stanley was speaking, but at that age I was more interested in swimming and boating in the lake. However, there was instilled a sense of the reality of the Kingdom of God.
When in the US during ninth grade, and several years later, our family attended additional Christian Ashrams in various states. Going reluctantly, I departed each Christian Ashram with a newer and deeper understanding of the reality of the Kingdom of God, it’s unity and love
In college and subsequently serving in the US Navy, I became busy with myself. Achieving success graduating college, earning a Naval commission and flying jets off aircraft carriers, and falling in love and getting married I was living my dream. What more could one want?
Let me tell you, my life was not complete, and this during times of success. What of the times in the desert when nothing seemed to go right?
Remembering my experiences with the Christian Ashrams, I knew there was completeness with Jesus and the Kingdom of God. I introduced my new family to the Christian Ashram in Texas, and I built a new relationship with Jesus guided with the books of Brother Stanley. The Christian Ashram had played such a vital role in my Christian growth; I agreed to serve as registrar and treasurer of the Colorado Christian Ashram when we moved to Colorado.
This is truly where I experience the Kingdom of God in miniature – where there is oneness in Christ, all backgrounds and traditions can live as one with Jesus Christ at center. “You belong to Christ and I belong to Christ, we belong to each other!”
JESUS IS LORD!
Mr. John Davis
Estes Park, CO
Registrar/Treasurer, Colorado Christian Ashram
In 2006, I went on a medical mission with LA Volunteers in Mission to Clara Swain Hospital, Bareilly, India.
While there we visited the original Christian Ashram at Sai Tal, located in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. E. Stanley Jones, the pioneer Methodist Missionary, was responsible for purchasing the +330 acres and building facilities that are still being used. To be there, to see, to hear, to worship, to eat and rest, opened my heart and eyes to God's using individuals to move God's purpose forward in the remotest and non-Christian, unfamiliar and foreign environment. His will never stops!
To bring the Christian Ashram and its meaning closer to home, I have attended the last two Ashrams at Trinity United Methodist, Ruston, LA. To be honest, I would not have attended the second one, if the first one had not been extremely fulfilling spiritually.
I really did not know what to expect. What I discovered has again, impacted my spiritual growth in so many ways. The prayer circles and healing service involve the deepest and urgent needs of the participants, and results follow. The visiting evangelist and the scholarly Bible teacher come to preach and teach God's truth. I, nor others, leave without a new commitment to proclaim and study more in our daily lives.
The three days bond friends, creates a desire to be a servant for Jesus Christ and establishes a sincere appreciation for everyone whose lives have begun, ended or served in the Christian Ashram.
Mary Shankles
September 8, 2008
