How the Gospel Transformed a Community
Seven years ago, while our brothers and sisters were conducting a VBS in a slum in Jammu, we were there on the second day. Reshma, a 15-year-old Muslim girl, came to Sherly and asked whether she and her cousins would be allowed to attend the meeting. They wanted to learn how to sing. Sherly said yes, and invited her, and asked her to bring her cousins also. To our amazement, she brought more than 20 teenagers to the meeting, most of them from Muslim backgrounds. For the next two days they came to every meeting. With great joy, they were singing and dancing and joining in the worship. On the last day of the VBS I remember that I gave an altar call to more than 300 children. Around 40 teenagers responded to the altar call, among them Reshma and her cousins. After the meeting, Reshma and her cousins pleaded with us to visit her small home. There we were welcomed by a group of Muslim women, and with great respect they invited us in and served us tea and snacks. They thanked us for allowing their girls to attend the VBS. They told us the girls really enjoyed the singing. Through them we learned it was very large slum, with over 1200 families and many children with limited facilities. With their permission we prayed for them and blessed the families. As we walked back, we felt deeply sorry for the children. After the VBS as a follow-up, we started a prayer group for young people. Reshma and her cousins started to attend the prayer meeting. Their mothers, without the knowledge of their fathers, sent the children to the meetings. Some of our young people had the idea of starting a tutoring center to help the slum children with their education.
It began with 7 teenagers meeting in a plastic tent in the nearby field. Slowly it grew. On Sundays the tutoring center became a prayer group, then the prayer group grew into a house church. In that house church, the people of that slum experienced our Lord’s favor. When they first came, they were weak, poor, uneducated, addicted, evil possessed, sick, needy, and spiritually blind. As the light of the Gospel shined on them, they experienced our Lord’s favor, His grace, and Jesus established His word with wonders and miracles. Hundreds of people came to the Lord, especially from Muslim backgrounds.
As the church began to grow, persecution also started. Some Muslim clergy and a few radicals burned down our tutoring center. Another time they beat up one of our brothers in the slum for visiting different families. They also filed police complaints, but the slum women supported our brothers and sisters.
Despite all this, today in that slum we have 4 different fast growing worship services in three different languages. Last week Regi and Sherly were in that slum to attend a thanksgiving meeting, celebrating Reshma and 6 of her friends who graduated as registered nurses. It is the first time in that slum that someone graduated. Their parents, all believers now, came and thanked us for their children’s success. We told them that it is our Lord’s doing, marvelous in our sight.
Reshma and her friends are a great inspiration and examples for the other children. The Gospel transformed them, and they are becoming a channel of transformation for others.
In that meeting we met Arun and his father, and 5 of his uncles. They also experienced our Lord’s favor in that plastic tent. Arun’s family is a traditional Hindu upper-caste family. His father and his five uncles are mentally unstable. Everyone that knows them says it is a family curse that has followed them for generations. They were locked up in their homes due to the mental issues. The whole family was suffering, and because of these men, no one was willing to marry from this family, and no one was willing to give their daughters to this family. Arun was also showing some mental discomfort. His mother heard about the prayer meeting and brought him there. When Arun saw many people sitting on the floor and worshiping the Lord, he says “I felt very uncomfortable and wanted to run away from there, but I could not. I fell on the floor, and it felt as if I had fallen on a fire. I started to cry out, how long it lasted I don’t know. When I regained my senses, someone was praying for me. I felt very light and happy.”
By the Lord’s grace and favor, Arun’s father, who had been locked up in a room for 11 years due to his mental issues, received deliverance from the Lord. And not only him, but the whole family was delivered one by one. For their families, it was the greatest joy and miracle, because they had done everything they could for their fathers but without any improvement. According to Arun’s sister “in that plastic tent we experienced the greatest of miracles. It transformed our lives and our thinking.”
Today Arun is the leader of 14 house churches with a total of more than 240 baptized believers. Arun’s uncles are also house church leaders in different villages. Our Lord is using that once troubled family to reach into the unreached people groups among the upper-caste Hindus. The light of the Gospel is spreading through them.
After the Christmas Outreach our brothers were targeted by Hindu radicals and by the authorities in different areas. Threats and attacks on house churches and prayer groups are growing, and the government is putting more restrictions on the house churches. All this is because the church is growing.
Please continue to pray for Ramesh (name changed), one of the leaders in Bihar. He was leading the Christmas outreach, and on January 4th, a group of Hindu radicals attacked Ramesh during a church service. Slamming him against a wall, they broke two of his ribs, hit his head, and when he fell to the ground they stepped on his neck. He was seriously injured and had to be rushed to the hospital.
For the past two months he has been undergoing treatment for his injuries, but he is still in severe pain in his neck. His doctor has referred him for neck surgery, to be done by a specialist. The nearby private hospital has quoted the surgery at between $3000 and $4000, but last week we consulted a Christian mission hospital, and they agreed to do the surgery for half the price.
We all are praying for his healing. Please join us in prayer for his healing.
Help Us Share the Gospel
Hearing testimonies from these unreached tribal areas reminds us of the power of the Gospel we preach, the light of the Gospel that shines and overcomes the darkness. 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