Last month we made a long overdue visit to some of our remote tribal mission fields in Rajasthan. Our last visit was in December during the Christmas Outreach, where we spent a few days with them overseeing the outreach and attending public meetings.
We started on March 21, early in the morning and reached one of our mission stations after 14 hours of nonstop driving in Rajasthan. We were received and taken home by our sister who works among the slum children. Over the last 4 years they have been working among the slum children, reaching them with the Gospel and educating them to read and write. I have had the opportunity to teach theses sisters in the Bible college.
Five years ago, these sisters on their Outreach program visited the slums for the first time. They saw the helpless condition of a child who was scavenging little scraps of food from a garbage can and seeing the poor situation of all the children, they were heartbroken. After completing this Bible college training, they decided to start working among children as they felt the Lord was leading them. We too felt it was ordained by God. Exciting Word sent them to that particular area which was spiritually very hard ground. They were faced with many obstacles – humiliation from Hindu radicals, who called them all kinds of bad names and slandered their character. But our Lord gave them favor in the heart of the house owner and his wife (an elderly couple), and they stood with these young sisters.
As we look back today, we can see the amazing move of the Lord through these sisters, touching the hearts and minds of thousands of slum children over the past four years. Many of these children have had to live with the burden of orphanhood when their parents moved to other states for work, leaving the children under the care of their grandparents. Children who don’t get parents’ love, good food or clothes, get an education in name only. In most of the houses in the villages we visited, many people worked in the brick kilns or onion fields for low wages.
One of the most heart-wrenching sights in the slums is the ‘runaway’ motherhood of girls ages 14 to 17, who have to carry the burden of the family. They should be playing and enjoying their life with their parents, but instead they are single mothers or taking care of their siblings.
Children longing for love
When we reached the slum around 9 am, we were expecting only 50 children. We ordered some snacks for them and waited. By 9.30 the children started arriving. We started with a few songs and, as time passed, the number of children began to grow. The number went from fifty children, to a hundred, then a hundred and fifty. Finally, by 10:30am there were two hundred children present. Many children came with their parents, some on bicycles and others on foot, walking a long distance.
At this point, we were in trouble! Our preparations were for fifty children. The meeting was in an open field, under a big bamboo grove. They came dressed in the best clothes they had, but there was no place to sit, no floor (just a plastic sheet), and no sound system. Our sisters had ordered 50 snack boxes but now we needed more than 200, and the sisters didn’t have any more money. I asked them to get the shopkeeper on the phone. I told him that we needed a minimum of 200 boxes. He said he couldn’t do that; he didn’t have enough snacks in the shop. I asked him to bring whatever he could find, and we would pay him. Meanwhile, the sisters told the children some Bible stories, and afterwards I shared the story of the prodigal son for the parents and other adults. When I gave the altar call, 42 people responded, including some young boys and girls.
Finally, the shopkeeper arrived, bringing whatever he could in a big bag. When he saw the children, he said “this is not enough for even half of them!” In front everyone, we blessed the food and served them in leaves. They came in a single file line, and one by one we served everyone. With my own hands I passed out the food, and everyone ate and was filled, and there was enough for us too. The Hindu man who brought food said he had never seen something like this in his entire life. I gave him a New Testament asked him to read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five bread and two fish.
Easter outreach 2025
As I write this newsletter, we are in the last days of our Easter outreach. Our Easter outreach started Sunday, April 6th. In an early church service, we prayed for over 150 men and women in an area and sent them for outreach. We sent out 85 teams, with more than ten people in each team. More than 990 of our House church leader trainees, including previous years graduates, joined in the Easter outreach.
We ask for all your earnest prayers for the outreach, may the Lord use these trainees for His glory and honor. The political and religious situation is rapidly changing. Hindu radicals are on a rampage, and the authorities are acting against Christians. Under this pressure, we are sending this information late and not revealing the details of the outreach.
Please pray for hundreds of public meetings that took place from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
Please also pray for divine provision for the outreach. We need to pay for all the literature we bought for the outreach in the coming months and help with public meetings.
Please pray for divine protection over all the brothers and sisters who joined the outreach, that they may continue boldly sharing the gospel.
Help Us Share the Gospel
As we lead the many new house churches that were planted in the Christmas outreach, please pray for us that our Lord would continue leading and guiding us to disciple the unreached with the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please consider helping us in this task. Without your prayers and support we would not be able to reap the harvest.
To read more inspiring and exciting testimonies of what God is doing among the unreached people groups of India, click the links on the right, and keep reading!
Proclaiming the Gospel…
…until He comes