Again we are privileged to tell the story of how the Gospel transformed an entire village, even touching the heart of a Hindu radical. God’s love knows no boundaries, nor does His power have any limits. And sometimes he uses us while we remain unaware.
A Village With a Reputation
Two years ago one of our outreach teams was invited by a local church to do an outreach around a small town. This town was a popular pilgrim destination, where many tourists came to worship at the local shrines. On the outskirts of the town was a village inhabited by tribal people. Since they were mostly uneducated, “outcast” people, they were involved in all kinds of illegal activities. The two primary occupations of the villagers were drug trafficking among the men and open prostitution among the women. None of the local people wanted to visit the village. The only outside visitors were tourists who were customers of the tribal people.
This village is inhabited by people who are part of a tribal caste. The traditional occupation of these people is any kind of work that can be classified as “entertainment,” including dancing at fairs, performing as street acrobats or street musicians, and tightrope walking. Unfortunately, this occupational category also includes prostitution, human trafficking, and the like.
In this particular village, prostitution was their main source of income. It had been a tradition in this village for over 100 years. The children of this village live with their mothers and rarely know who their fathers are. The men in the village do not engage in any significant income-producing work for the majority of their lives. Their accepted incapacity to earn as high an income as the women, adds fuel to the prostitution business. Over time, the men in this village have become accustomed to a ‘comfortable’ life with negligible responsibilities. When asked about prostitution, the men insist that it is by choice, and not by force. But in a young teen girl’s mind, who has witnessed nothing but their ‘family business’ as the only skill they know, there remains very little choice. The girls believe that marriage ruins a person’s life and being a married woman is like being a ‘mule’; therefore they willingly choose to accept prostitution as their means of support.
Innocent Outreach Workers
Not knowing anything about this village or the people, our outreach team went out carrying literature as they usually do, intending to share the Gospel in the village. They
went two by two to the houses in the village, and people gladly received them. With great smiles on the faces of the villagers, they were thinking that our brothers were their customers. But when they found out that they had come there to share the Gospel, the villagers cursed at them and verbally abused them. Our brothers endured all this treatment and continued visiting each house.
At one particular house, two of the brothers knocked at the door and a lady came out and invited them to come in. She asked them to sit down, thinking they must be her customers. Still not realizing that something was odd about this village, our team members sat down, handed her some literature, and began to share the Gospel with her. While they were sharing, some other women and children from the neighborhood also came to hear. As our brothers continued, more people from the neighborhood joined. Our brothers went on sharing the Gospel for more than half an hour. Finally, with the people’s permission, they prayed for them, said goodbye, and went to the next house. As the team members went from one house to another, they met with varying responses. Some people opposed them and verbally abused them, but a few of them received them well, and a few heard the Gospel through them. Still in the dark about the village, our team members invited people from the village to attend the next Sunday service at the local church.
When the teams returned to the local church, they shared their experiences in the village. The pastor explained about the village and the people there. He said, “I was going to warn you and tell you not to go to that village, but now you have already gone.” “Do not go again to that village,” the pastor strictly told them.
Unlikely Disciples
The next Sunday, two village women came to the church service and the outreach team recognized them. After the service the young men introduced them to the pastor. The pastor talked with the two women and they requested special prayer. These two women began to come to the church every Sunday. They also brought other people from the village with them, which, as you might imagine, made some of the regular church members extremely unhappy.
At this point, the pastor had no choice but to rent a room in their village, and to start a weekly prayer meeting there. He met with a lot of resistance from the tribal people. They did not want Christians to come to their village. The men of the village even went and complained to the Hindu radical groups against the church people. But God in His mercy began to move in the lives of the people. The first meeting in that village started with 5 people; today there are more than 85 baptized believers and every Sunday around 150 people attend the service. They are truly saved and transformed by the love of Christ. At present, hundreds of people have abandoned their sinful lifestyles and are living honorable lives in the community.
Just a couple weeks ago, one of our teams was in that village for a baptism service during the day, followed by a public evangelistic meeting that night. Nineteen people were baptized, and around 300 people attended the evening public meeting. Being summer, most people sleep on their flat rooftops, trying to stay cool. We estimate there were another 300 villagers listening to the Gospel message from the rooftops. At the end of the night, many responded to the altar call and came forward to give their lives to Christ.
The Village Earns A New Reputation
But the most touching moment of the night came when the local Hindu radical leader, a man who is well known in that area and who was well aware of the activities in that village, and also well aware of the weekly Christian meetings, came to the stage at the end of the public meeting and asked permission to speak.
He addressed the people saying, “As far as I know, this village is well known, but for all the wrong reasons. But over the last two years, since these people have started their prayer meetings in this village, I have witnessed tremendous change in the lives of the people in the village. I always thought and preached that Christians convert people by bribing them, but now I have seen that the message of the Gospel changes and transforms people’s lives. The people in this village lived in sin and utter darkness for generations. We thought they would never change but the Gospel has changed them. I never thought that the Gospel had that kind of transforming power, but today when I look at most of your lives and how you have been transformed, I am convinced that Jesus is God and He heals and transforms the lives of people.“
That evening, after the meeting ended, we invited that radical leader to join us in the back room, where he surrendered his life to the Lord and accepted Jesus as his personal savior! The following day we started a tailoring center for the women to be trained in and to make a living for themselves and for their family. Thirty-eight women from the village signed up for the training!