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Christian School in North India
This is a report on my trip
to India for seven months in 2004 and 2005. I
left Baltimore on the afternoon of August 17th 2004, and after 24
hours in airports and airplanes, I arrived in New Delhi on August
18th just before midnight. [a2]
The school administrator, Swapan Das, [a3]
was there to meet me, and we spent the rest of the night [a4]
traveling by car to Naggal, where I would be living. [a5] We
arrived at dawn, [a6] at
the apartment I would be sharing with Swapan. [a7]
The landlord's daughter greeted us with hot tea. [a8]
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Naggal, [a9]
where I lived, [a10] and
Alipur, where the school is, [a11]
are about a kilometer apart, on opposite sides of the highway [a12]
from Barwalla to Chandigarh. Both villages are in the Barwalla
sub-district [a13] of the
Panchkula District of Haryana State, India.
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From this base, [b1] I was
sent to various ministries associated with the school, [b2]
primarily in Haryana and Punjab states. [b4]
When not traveling for this ministry, I conducted the daily
devotional for the school staff, and preached (usually in the church
which meets on campus) [b5]
every Sunday. Although the school is located near Chandigarh,
in northwest India, the first trip I was asked to take was to
South India {EMAIL}
Vijayawada via Hyderabad, South India
Officially, there is no such place
as "South India". [c1]
However, virtually everyone in India who lives south of the Narmada
River concludes their mailing address "South India" rather
than "India". [c2]
It is a very different place. [c3]
So when I took the 40-hour journey to Secunderabad, it was like
journeying to another country. [c4]
(Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities, so I will be using both
names almost interchangeably.) There were three purposes for
this visit. The first was to investigate the possibility of
routing a shipping container for the school coming from the USA
through South India. [c5]
The second was to meet an participate in a short-term medical mission
there. [c6] The third
purpose my host had in sending me to South India was to keep a
promise he had made when we first met that he would help me
re-connect with the family of my late translator, Elisha
M. Peter, [c7] if
they were still in Vijayawada.
This trip was my first experience with "Sleeper Class"
travel on Indian Railways. [d1]
On previous trips I had always traveled "First Class", [d2]
which is the old un-airconditioned four-to-a-compartment sleeper,
with a latchable door on each compartment. But now Sleeper
Class is on almost all trains, the old First Class has almost
disappeared, and I did not want to travel "First Class AC"
or any of the other airconditioned classes. The
compartments are made to sleep eight, with no doors; the passage just
comes right through, with three bunks on each partition and two on
the other side of the aisle. This is a reserved class, so
theoretically exactly eight persons will occupy each compartment.
[d4] But this is
India; I have seen as many as fourteen adults and six children in one
compartment. I soon came to love traveling this way; by the end
of seven months I had logged over 20,000 kilometers, almost all of it
in Sleeper Class.
But the
first trip was not so enjoyable; [e1]
the young man assigned to accompany me did not understand how to book
a ticket and did not listen to the ticket clerk's advice, so when our
first train arrived in Delhi, it was not in the same station that our
second train would depart from. So we had to negotiate a
auto-rickshaw ride across New Delhi in pouring rain in rush-hour.
[e2] Then I got sick,
so I spent the next 24 hours huddled in my berth bundled up in
blankets in 90 degree heat. The second night I slept better and
then at dawn we arrived in Secunderabad.
My hosts in Hyderabad live in the Ramnagar section of Secunderabad,
just on the edge of the "Ramnagar slum", one of the larger
and older barrios in Hyderabad. [f2]
Hyderabad is one of the fastest growing cities in the world.
When I first passed through Hyderabad in 1983, the twin city
metropolitan area had a population of just under one million.
Now the population exceeds nine million. [f4]
It is expected that it will soon become one of the largest cities in
the world.
The evening of the
day I arrived, I was taken to visit a Christian gathering called
"Prayer House Ministries" meeting in the Hyderabad YWCA.
[g1] It is a
non-denominational weekly prayer and praise meeting for new
Christians. There were about two hundred people present, almost
all of them recent converts from Islam or Hinduism. [g2]
I was asked to speak, so I gave a message from the book of
Isaiah.
The translator there was very good, and my message was well
received.
The next morning,
which was Saturday, my host took me on a train to Vijayawada, in
order to search for Grace Janaki, [h1]
the widow of Elisha M. Peter, and her children. [h2]
I had no address for them; I only had my memory of some landmarks in
their neighborhood. Even if they had moved, I hoped I could
find a neighbor who would know where they were. I knew that
although their house had been in Badavapeta, there is no main road to
take me there, so I would have to start my search in Labipeta. [h3]
As soon as we started to go through town, I knew the search was going
to be difficult. Everything seemed to have changed.
Neighborhoods I remembered as poor and very Indian were now rich and
Western. When we got to M. G. Road (Mahatma Ghandi Road) in
Labipeta, I could find none of the landmarks I was counting on.
There were so many huge new buildings. [h4]
I could not find the Catholic school with its soccer fields nor the
little old leaky watertower which were my main landmarks. Even
the Hotel Khandari was gone, although one building under
reconstruction might have been that hotel. When we went
into the side streets behind the Khandari, it was hopeless. [h5] I
could recognize nothing for sure. Some things looked a little
familiar, but most of what I saw was new construction where the
little homes of people like Elisha had been bulldozed.
Finally I almost gave up. I was overheated, I was still sick, I
was exhausted and depressed. Ten years had passed, everything
had changed, everyone I knew must be gone. But my host would
not give up. [i0] He
hired a pedal-rickshaw for us, and he started asking people to direct
us to churches where he could ask the preacher if he had know Elisha
M. Peter. As I rode, I remembered another landmark, the
gohagudi (cave temple) near the
church. [i1] After our
last fruitless visit to a neighborhood church, the surroundings
looked familiar. I asked if there were any gohagudis
nearby. [i2]
The first one we were shown was not the one I was looking for but I
recognized it so I knew we were close. Then at the next one I
knew it was the one I wanted. [i3]
Many times on past trips I had climbed to the top of this rock to
photograph the city and I had always tried to see Elisha's house from
the top, but it was always hidden behind a tree. I climbed to
the top and looked around. Much had changed, but then I saw one
roof I recognized. [i4]
I memorized the tallest building near it and the pattern of streets,
then returned to the rickshaw.
In a few minutes we were at that landmark. We began asking
everyone we met "Do you remember Elisha M. Peter?".
The third person we asked did remember him, and gave directions;
a hundred feet up the street, turn left on a narrow alley, another
hundred feet, and I knew where I was, fifty feet from the house.
As we approached the front gate, a woman came out who I did not
recognize. [j1] I began to
be disappointed, but as my guide spoke to her she said "I am
Anita." then turning to me she said "Sundaram!".
Within minutes the word had gone up and down the street "Sundaram
is back!".
It was a
real shock to see Rajkumar. He is a complete invalid now as a
result of a motorcycle accident. He spent three years in a
coma, and had only awakened three months before I arrived. But
he has very serious brain damage. At the time of his accident
he was three days away from his college graduation; he had already
been accepted to law school. [k2]
Then Elisha's widow, Grace Janaki came in, [l1]
and we met the neighbors who help care for Rajkumar. Later
Vijay Samrat arrived, so all the family was there except for Sarada
Devi, who was visiting relatives in Visakhapatnam. [l2]
We exchanged addresses and phone numbers, and visited for several
hours. I promised to return soon, then it was time to go.
We boarded the train at around midnight, and arrived in Secunderabad
at dawn.
The following
Tuesday, Vijay Samrat and Sarada Devi came and visited us in
Hyderabad. [m2]
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Hyderabad and Secunderabad, South India
During that week I got to
know in Ramnagar a lot better, and I came to love the neighborhood.
[n1] It is about four
twisted blocks from a busy market, but the corner where I was staying
was quiet. The streets were only partly paved, and most of the
neighbors had to come to the pump on the corner for water. [n2]
Most of the people passing by seemed friendly. There are a few
Christian families, but most of the area is evenly split between
Muslims and Hindus. My host showed me the apartment they were
fixing up, it was the old part of the house and I found it quite
charming. They immediately offered it to me as a place to begin
a permanent ministry.
My
hosts there run an independent ministry in the slums of Hyderabad and
the surrounding area. [o1]
(The second day I was there they asked me if their ministry could
become part of the "Church of Christ". But they
wanted organizational affiliation, not a change of doctrine. I
wonder how many other Indian "preachers converted" see it
the same way?) That week we visited many of their
house-churches and prayer-houses, giving short devotionals and
praying for families in their homes. [o3]
Visiting homes of unbelievers and praying for them their is a very
effective evangelism tool in India. [p1]
Everyone wants their home blessed, but the Hindu and Muslim leaders
expect to get money for blessing a house. So Christians who
bless homes for free are welcome in many Hindu and Muslim households.
[p2] After a number
of visits, substantive discussion of faith in Christ Jesus can begin.
[p3]
On Sunday, 5 September 2004, we visited the Hyderabad Mennonite
Brethren Church. When they found out I am an ordained preacher,
they ask me to speak briefly. I was not expecting that. I
looked at my daily Bible reading for the day, and it was Isaiah 14,
all about the fall of Babylon and Assyria. [q0]
But in the midst of it is verse 27 "For the Lord Almighty
has purposed, and who can thwart Him?" So I
preached for about ten minutes on that verse, applying it to God's
individual purpose in each of our lives, [q1]
and my message was very well received. It was Communion
Sunday morning, which they hold only twice a year, and I spoke from
the pulpit, which is a great honor. There were several hundred
people there that morning. [q2]
Before coming to India this
time, I had prayed about what to preach. God made it clear to
me that I was to start by preaching from Isaiah. [r1]
So for the first sixty-six days in India, each day was a new chapter
in Isaiah, and whatever speaking I was asked to do was based on a
passage from that chapter. [r2]
Many times it seemed at first that there was nothing in a chapter
which was relevant to that day's audience, but always the Holy Spirit
showed how there was a timely message for that group hidden in the
chapter. [r3]
Frequently the relevance was in a New Testament passage that quoted
one verse out of the Isaiah chapter of the day. [r4]
Rayalasima via Chennai, South India
I was planning to travel to
Chennai that night to participate in a medical mission there, but
there were no tickets available, so on Tuesday night I left for
Chennai (Madras) by train, arriving Wednesday morning. [s1]
Unfortunately, no-one told the people I was coming what train I would
be on, so when I arrived at Chennai Central Station, no-one was there
to pick me up. So there was much panic and confusion for a few
hours. I made phone calls and formulated a backup plan (take
the next train to Vijayawada) but all the while God was saying
"wait". [s2]
So I waited, and after four hours of
sitting in the concourse, a young man showed up and said "Are
you Mr. Grimm?" so everything worked out as far as getting
where I needed to go.
By that
time it was too late to join the team in the field that day, so I sat
around the house (a very nice house in an up-scale neighborhood)
waiting. [t1]
The next day we left early to conduct a "medical camp" in
Rayalisima, the southern region of Andhra Pradesh. [u1]
I was able to spend several hours with a very bright young preacher
there, encouraging him, helping him with some scriptural hard places,
and helping him put current problems in context through a better
understanding of church history.
Early the next morning after that I boarded the train for a
forty-nine hour journey to Chandigarh. [v1] Passing through the
countryside, I was able to see why Hyderabad is growing so fast.
On previous trips, the most notable thing about India was that no
matter where you were, there were people. [v2]
Every small field had someone performing some agricultural task at
all times, it seemed. Now you can look over vast tracts of
large fields of crops and frequently you will see no-one. [v3]
The tractor has replaced the bullock team for plowing, the truck has
replaced the bullock cart for transport, and the diesel pump has
replaced the foot-wheel. Each one of these replacements put up
to fifty men out of work. The rate of
agricultural
unemployment is staggering. The displaced workers must,
eventually (for they resist as long as they can) relocate to the
city. And Hyderabad is in the very center of this. [v5]
Karnal and Ludwa, Haryana, North India
On arriving at Chandigarh,
[w1] I was picked-up and
brought to my room in Naggal. I was given an hour to shower,
shave and pack for five days in the field. Three hours later
(this is India) I was on my way with Ikbal
to his village twenty-five kilometers south of Karnal City, in Karnal
District, Haryana State. No running water. No latrine,
only the rice fields to fertilize. No door on my room. The
water-buffalo tried to get in bed with me one night. [w3]
Really. Treated a five-year-old boy for acute malaria,
successfully. Taught a daily children's Bible-story hour. [w5]
Visited homes, prayed for homes, disputed (gently) the "equality
of all religions" with a Hindu gentleman who was at first
hostile but now is interested in the gospel, answered the questions
of a Hindu young lady who wanted to know about this "Christian
God in the Bible" and gave her a Gospel of John the next
day.
There is currently flood
of evangelism that is sweeping across India. Hindus, Sikhs and
Muslims are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers. A major
focus of this is in the states of Punjab and Haryana, adjacent states
in the northwest of India. Both have passed anti-conversion
laws (the one in Haryana is particularly strict) [x3]
and in both the anti-conversion laws are actually increasing the
curiosity that young people have about Christianity.
After three days, on to Ludwa in Kurukshetra District, the legendary
source of the Bhagavad Gita. Taught at a prayer meeting there,
encouraged the minister. Then I came down with malaria (a very
mild case) and went home to Naggal, many hours by crowded buses.
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Beas and Amritsar, Punjab, North India
A few days later I went to
Beas, 40 kilometers from Amritsar, saw Amritsar, wept at
Jillianwallahbagh (see the movie "Gandhi"), and taught in
prayer meetings, blessed households, etc. [z0]
The Sikhs in that neighborhood are one by one becoming Christians.
[z1] I stayed with a
family who had all been Sikhs until recently, but are now Christians
and are very active in spreading their faith. It was still the
"hot weather", so we all slept in the courtyard rather than
the house. To get to Beas, we took an express bus, which was
just tolerable for the four-hour journey; but on the return, the
six-hour local bus was exceedingly uncomfortable. [z2]
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Then back to Naggal again. [A1].
I had been in India a month, and I needed to write lots of reports on
the state of the mission, and to confer with my elders on how the
mission was to proceed. The result of this was the decision to
begin transitioning my ministry to the south, to Andhra Pradesh where
I had worked before. [A2]
Although the work in the north was
very exciting, for the Lord is doing great things there, it had been
anticipated that it would prove to be a temporary assignment for
me.
Now it was decided to advance the date of that transition.
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Vijayawada and vicinity, South India
Another thirty-eight hour
train ride, and I was back in Vijayawada. [B1]
As soon as I arrived in Vijayawada, [B2]
Samrat and I began planning a series of evening meetings in the local
churches. At the same time, we were formulating a long range plan for
ministry in Andhra Pradesh, one that would extend over several
years. One major question in those long range plans was
location. Where would I focus my ministry? Vijayawada?
[B3] Hyderabad? Or
somewhere else? The more we considered this and prayed about
it, the more it seemed that Hyderabad had the greatest ministry
potential.
However, even if I
focused my ministry geographically in Hyderabad, I would still need
to rely on my friends in Vijayawada. [C01]
So a lot of my time in the first week was spent in simply
re-establishing my relationships there. [C02]
We visited Elisha Peter's grave. [C03]
[C04] [C05]
I got to know young adults who were children on my last visit. [C6]
I met all the new children in the neighborhood. [C07]
[C08] [C12]
[C14] I
found a reliable Internet cafe. [C15]
Then for a week Samrat took me around to different churches every evening where people gathered for prayer. [D1] On most evenings we visited two or three such prayer meetings in Krishna District, mostly in or near Vijayawada or Machilipatnam. [D2] The messages continued to be out of Isaiah, by this time I was on such passages as "...I will also make You a light for the gentiles, that You may bring salvation to the ends of the earth." Is. 49:6 and "It is the Sovereign LORD who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me?" Is. 50:9 When some chapters such as Isaiah 51 did not seem relevant to the audience of the evening, I was always able to see a passage which is a springboard to the New Testament, such as Isaiah 51:2 "Look to Abraham your father" which opens the door to Romans chapter 4. [D3]
It was here, using different
translators each night, that both the difficulty of understanding a
translated lesson and the lack of training of the preachers became
apparent. [E1] For example,
once when I said "Let us turn now to III John 9", the
translator, a preacher with thirty years experience and a leader
among the Churches of Christ, said something like "Yohannu
Baptisu" in his translation. I suspected what had
happened; when I later asked some Telugu speakers about it, sure
enough, this preacher had said "Let us turn to the third letter
of John the Baptist."!
On the final night, [F1]
I preached in Guntur District, [F2]
in new church in a village of "the caste that has no men".
[F3] All
of the members of this church are women, they were prostitutes before
they came to Jesus Christ. [F4]
Hyderabad and Kodada, South India
Then I went to Hyderabad by
train, [G01] and
immediately on arrival I was hustled onto a bus along with four Swiss
evangelists [G02] and one
other American and about twenty Indian church workers, [G03]
and we drove about eight hours to Kodada, [G04]
where I was "Chief Guest" [G05]
at a Gospel Meeting with about a thousand in attendance. [G06]
I spoke on the passage [G07]
"And the foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD ... I
will bring to my holy mountain ... for My house will be called a
house of prayer for all nations." Is. 56:6-7 Working
through a very skilled (and very expensive) translator was a good
experience; [G08] I
knew the crowd, which included many Hindus, was getting the
message.
People on their way home from the fields were stopping on the
road
at the back of the crowd and standing on tractors and wagons to
listen. [G09]
Then after midnight we turned around and drove all the way back to
Hyderabad, arriving at dawn. For the entire trip, preaching and
all, I was "out of it" with an allergic reaction to some
peanuts I inadvertently ate. [G10]
On Friday and Saturday were the big "Pastors Seminar",
[H1] mostly
pentecostals, [H2] at
which I was to be a guest speaker but not the main speaker. [H3]
As it was, my lesson was put off and put off again until I gave it at
a street prayer meeting of about 30 people instead of addressing the
800 at the Pastors Seminar. [H4]
This is India; whatever you plan for, it will usually happen
differently. [H5]
Conclusion of North India ministry
Then it was off to North
India again. [I1]
This time I insisted that no-one assist me on my journey, because
some Americans had objected that making arrangements for me was
taking too much of the school staff's time and energy. They
insisted on coming to get me, but I refused, not even telling them
where I would be when, only the day of my arrival.
This time I was able to travel old-fashioned First Class, [J1]
a compartment with only four berths, a latching door, an open window,
and no airconditioning. Few trains have this class anymore; it
is replaced by the lower priced Sleeper Class (which I usually took)
and the higher priced Airconditioned classes. Whenever possible
I avoid the AC classes, not because of cost, but because I enjoy the
open window, and the people are generally friendlier in "SL".
After 33 very pleasant hours of travel, [K01]
I arrived Hazrat Nizamuddin Station in New Delhi; [K02]
not to be confused with New Delhi Station which is in Old Delhi.
[K03] There I
changed trains for Ambala, the "Umballa"
of those who read Kipling. Arriving in Ambala just before noon,
I faced what I knew would be the real challenge of my trip north.
I had to get on the right bus for Dera
Bassi, without any knowledge of Hindi at a place where I could expect
no-one to speak English. [K04]
There were two exits to the train station, on opposite sides of the
seven tracks, I managed to pick the right one to get to the
bus-stand. There on the highway was a line of buses,
I picked one that was not very full and had a "Chandigarh"
sign in the front window because I had been told that all buses
from Amballa to Chandigarh go through Dera
Bassi. "Dera Bassi?" I said at the door, the driver
nodded, and I installed myself on the engine cover behind the driver
so I could see out the windshield. When the bus was full we
left; an hour or so later I saw the sign "Derabassi" and
the recognized the bus stand there. Here I knew I only had to
find a man shouting "Barwala! Barwala! Barwala!" and get on
the bus he pointed to. [K10]
From Barwala to Alipur the standard auto-rickshaw rate is Rs. 30, so
I knew if I just walked over to the "autos" waving a Rs. 50
note in my hand I would soon have a ride, [K11]
even with no Punjabi to bargain with. So in a little while I
arrived safely back at my room in Naggal.
My host here at the school in Panchkula had insisted before I
traveled south that I not make that trip a final move south but
that
I maintain my room in Naggal, and that I return when the American
sponsor was visiting. [L01]
He wanted my assistance in
convincing the American of the need for autonomy of the Indian
ministry. This seemed quite reasonable at the time, as I had
promised
to help my host in any way I could. [L02]
[L03] However, by the
time I returned, my host had decided to handle things differently. [L04]
So we all agreed that I would now move south permanently, and they
gave me a letter blessing my South Indian work. My hosts
insisted that they arrange for my rail tickets, so having given them
my itinerary and ticket money, I returned to Naggal village to pack
all my things and to await a confirmed rail ticket. [L05]
Until now, I had always been quite busy, as my hosts were always
rushing me off to one off-campus ministry or another when I was here
in Haryana, so I had not had much chance to get to know the school
staff. [M01]
But now that my duties with the school and its ministries was
finished, I had time on my hands, and I had time to get to know them
as we spoke together either at my house or at the little shops in
Naggal village where they came to get tea and so on. [M02] Talking to
these staff members gave me a much greater understanding of the
ministry
there. Many of the staff still
identified themselves as being Hindu or Sikh, having only taken on
Jesus as their newest teacher. Those who had made a definite
commitment to Jesus Christ were a very small minority. Another
mission team arrived from America for several weeks of medical
missions about the same time I arrived from the south. But
the medical mission team was hustled back
to America and the medical mission was canceled. [M03]
In the mean time, I was still waiting for my rail ticket south to
appear. It began to appear that nothing was being
done about obtaining it. So I began
working on making my own arrangement. I was in a
very remote place, [N04]
and so I could not arrange to leave on my own; there was no "auto"
stand in the village. I speak neither Punjabi nor Hindi, and the
little Telegu that I know is of little use there. Finally, I
became friends with a man
from outside the village who had a shop in the village. His
cousin owns a car, which he operates as a "gypsy
cab". {EMAIL}
We arranged for a ride to Ambala, the nearest rail junction. The
day of my ride, my car and driver arrived, I piled all my stuff in his
car, and off we
drove to Ambala. On arriving in Ambala, I was able to
get tickets for the next day, so I booked a hotel room for the
night. [N06]
Relocation to Vijayawada, South India
The next day I took the
train to Delhi. My tickets were for the same trains I had taken
on my very first trip south three month before, and I still
remembered not only the difficulty of the auto-rickshaw trip across
Delhi between stations, but also my experience ten years before, [O2]
when taking a cab from the same station Benjamin and I had been
virtually held hostage by an unscrupulous cab driver for a whole
day. But God answered my prayers, I made friends with an Indian
family on the train to Delhi, and when we arrived at New Delhi
Station (in Old Delhi, remember) the family, who spoke Hindi,
arranged for my auto ride to H. Nizamuddin Station (in New Delhi).
[O4]
There I got a porter to carry my bags into and around the station
(for I has many bags) who was polite, helpful, stayed with me
the whole time I was waiting for the train, only overcharged me about
what I should expect, then after loading my bags on the train, picked
my pocket as I shook his hand goodbye.
The train was late, so while waiting I made friends with a soldier
who was to travel on the same train. [P1]
He was from the Rajput Division, and the Rajputs, from Rajastan,
are Hindus, and very proud of their Hindu tradition. He noticed me
reading my Bible, and began asking me about it. By the time we
parted, I had given him my Bible, and he had promised to read it,
starting with the Gospel of John. The Bible which I was using
that day, which I gave to him, was made to be the same size as a GI
New Testament, so it fit the "prayer book pocket" inside
the left breast of a British (or American) army field-jacket.
The sergeant said "I always wondered what that pocket was for."
[P3]
On the ride south, I was able to have a long discussion of
Christianity with a group of young Hindu businessmen in our
compartment. Some drifted out of the conversation, but one or
two continued with me as I laid out the basics of the Gospel, "He
made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be the
righteousness of God in Him" II Cor. 5:21 This had
become the theme verse for my entire mission trip, and continued to
be through the end. [Q3]
It focuses on what makes the Gospel different from Hinduism (and
Islam) rather than focusing on what makes the Church of Christ
different from the other denominations. [Q4]
A young man in the next
compartment overheard our conversation, and when it was done he
joined me. [R1] He
was a preacher from Delhi in an independent church. It turns
out he had done his final year of Bible College in Baltimore,
Maryland. We spent hour discussing the Bible, and once again
God opened the door to continue the mentoring ministry He had sent me
to India to do. [R2]
42 hours after leaving Ambala (and 70 hours after walking out of my
door in Naggal) I arrived in Vijayawada. I had plans to
relocate to Hyderabad, [S04]
to begin a ministry in the Ramnagar slum of Secunderabad, but I did
not yet have final approval of this plan from my elders. [S05]
Also, there were still details to be ironed out with my
landlords-to-be in Ramnagar, repairs to the house, hiring of
servants, etc. [S07]
While I was waiting,
Rajkumar took a turn for the worse. I was now sharing the
prayer house with Rajkumar, so now I was effectively in a private
hospital ward. Then Rajkumar was sent to the hospital. We
all though he was going to die, the doctors had lost hope. But
Raj pulled through, barely. He came out of this bout of
bacterial encephalitis and septicemia with a paralyzed side, and lost
the few words he had begun to regain. He lost most of the
progress he has made since he awakened from his three-year coma six
months before, but he is still alive.
Death is a constantly present reality in India. [U02]
Hardly a week went by without news that a neighbor or friend or
relative had died. [U03]
Many of these are old, but quite a few are young or middle aged.
[U04] While I
was staying in Vijayawada, [U05]
news came one Sunday morning that a Church of Christ preacher had
died only a few blocks away. [U06]
That afternoon we attended the funeral. [U07]
Indian funerals are almost always held within 36 hours of death.
[U08] There are
no funeral homes; [U09]
a tent is hurriedly rented and stretched across the street in front
of the home and there the funeral is held. [U10]
A truck is rented to serve as hearse; the family prepares the
body.
Christians and Muslims usually bury their dead in India, [U11]
in contrast to the Hindu custom of cremation, [U12]
so after the service at the home there is a long procession to the
cemetery. [U13]
In this case, the man was a well known Church of Christ preacher, was
only in his forties, and had died suddenly; heart disease and
hypertension are very common in Andhra Pradesh. [U14]
The man had left a widow and two teenaged children. [U15]
So many hundreds of people came to the funeral. [U16]
Conclusion of Hyderabad ministry, South India
In the midst of this approval
of my Hyderabad plans came through, [V01]
so I got on a train with Das, my translator, since Samrat was too
busy with his brother to go. We spent a whole day negotiating
about the house, [V02] we
expected then to spend the next three days hiring remodeling
contractors and domestic servants. But instead, the
negotiations for the house broke down.
The cost of repairs was suddenly much higher than originally quoted,
and the rent tripled. Then on top of it all they asked for a
large loan (I think it was Rs 40,000) "until (the next group of
American preachers) gets here", and made it clear that whenever
they asked for a loan they expected to get it.[V3]
We left the house of my former hosts in Ramnagar and went to Das'
uncle's house in Hyderabad to talk it out in private. There I
learned that the family we were negotiating with for the house, my
former hosts in Ramnagar, were in constant communication with my
former host at the school in Panchkula, North India. From him
they had received
an inflated idea of my finances, and had tried to recruit Das, my
translator, into sharing the wealth between them all.
But Das refuses such all offers. We never went
back to Ramnagar. [V05]
However, this left me with
my plans for ministry dashed on the ground again. [W01]
Our rail tickets back to Vijayawada were for two days hence, so I
decided to devote those two days to prayer to beg God to show me what
He wanted me to do, now that two doors for ministry had been slammed
shut in my face after such hopeful beginnings. [W04]
After much prayer, Das suggested that he and Samrat could organize
monthly three-day seminars for preachers for my remaining months in
India. We began sketching the plans for these seminars, and,
upon returning to Vijayawada, [W09]
Das and I, along with Samrat, fleshed out these plans.
Pastors Seminar, Vijayawada, South
India
We would have three
seminars, the first in Badavapeta, Vijayawada, in December on
Joshua.[X1]
In January the seminar would be in Errabalem village, [X2]
in Guntur District just across the Krishna River from Vijayawada, on
Paul's letter to Titus. Then in February we would have a
seminar in Machilipatnam, about 60 miles from Vijayawada near the
coast, probably on Philippians. In each case every day for
three days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) I would teach all day to
preachers, then each evening there would be a Gospel meeting for a
general audience. [X3]
The next three weeks were
spent in Vijayawada preparing for the Preachers' Seminar. [Y2]
Samrat traveled about and made phone calls and invited all the
preachers he knew, both Church of Christ and others. [Y3]
He also made all the logistical arrangements, [Y4]
because I was expected to provide lunch every day for all the seminar
participants. [Y5]
Meanwhile, I crammed my head
with the book of Joshua and the passages covering the life of Joshua
in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Judges, as well as New
Testament references. That meant reading through the book of
Joshua many times in many translations, plus all the other passages
the same way. At the beginning of all this study, I was drawn
to the theme of "Be strong and Courageous" Jos.
1:6 as so many preacher have done before with Joshua.
But by the middle of this twenty days of intensive study, I had
decided that the theme should be "Joshua the
Servant". [Z2]
I would use this seminar to pursue four objectives:
To teach the method expository preaching (using the book of Joshua as a worked example).
To bring the students (preachers) up to a level of competency on the stories of Joshua.
To share the insights we find into how God relates to his people which we find in the book of Joshua and in the life of Joshua.
To hold up Joshua as an example of how we should live our lives as servants.
This last objective is especially important in the context of a
preachers' and pastors' seminar, where people see leadership and
servanthood as opposite to each other, and
see their own role as leaders, not servants. [Z6]
On the night before the
first day of the seminar, we had scheduled a prayer meeting. [aa01]
I had made it clear that it was not to be like a typical Indian
"prayer meeting", which are primarily evening preaching
sessions with a bit of music and precious little actual prayer.
Rather, we would get together to pray for God's purposes to be
fulfilled in the three days of the seminar. I expected that the
local preachers, especially the Church of Christ preachers in the
neighborhood, would want to come. But I was disappointed.
Only Samrat, his mother, sisters, and brother-in-law showed up, with
me and Das the translator. But we prayed, and God answered.
[aa11]
The next day, [bb00]
men began streaming to the little prayer house in Badavapeta.
[bb01]
I put on my new Indian clothes and greeted seminar participants as
they arrived. [bb02]
Finally we got started. [bb03]
Preaching and teaching from 10 AM to 10 PM for three days, everything
now seems like a blur. Of course there were breaks every couple
of hours, [bb04]
but I did all the teaching, I did not alternate with
anyone.
Everything I said had to be translated by Das, as only about 10% of
the participants understood English well enough to follow me.
[bb05] This
meant that I had to pause after each statement so Das to
translate it into Telugu. [bb06]
Which meant I had to be thinking of what I would say next while
straining to follow the rough gist of what Das was saying in Telugu
try to to catch any major misunderstandings, while simultaneously
watching the audience to see from their faces if we had lost them
altogether on a difficult or hard to translate point. [bb07]
It is very exhausting, and very fulfilling. I managed to
cover the entire life of Joshua in three days and still have one hour
left over on Saturday afternoon. This hour I used to teach on
the mode and meaning of baptism, which had nothing to do with the
lesson in Joshua, but had everything to do with the cultural context
in which half of the audience were Church of Christ preachers and the
other half were preachers from other denominations. I managed
to challenge everybody's thinking on both sides of the aisle.
[bb12] [bb13]
[bb14] [bb15]
[bb16] [bb17]
[bb18]
From the beginning almost everyone present was very pleased with my
teaching. [cc01] but
there were a couple of exceptions. On the second day we
had one problem; a couple of young men from the Church of Christ came
after lunch (having missed the first full day and half of the second)
and after one hour began complaining that they had not heard the
"Apostles Teaching" being taught. When asked what
they meant, they said that I had left out all mention of the mode and
purpose of baptism, the proper name of the
church, the doctrine of the trinity and the titles, roles and
qualifications of elders. The lesson they had just heard had
been a detailed exposition of the defeat of Israel
at Ai, the sin of Achan, and the subsequent victory at Ai and Bethel,
and the lesson to be learned on how hidden sin effects the life of
the church. [cc02]
I will grant that it was not the kind of teaching they were used to;
many of the participant said that they had never heard Bible teaching
like this, that focused on one topic. It seems that in most
Indian churches the same list of topics must be covered in every
sermon; the real trick for a skilled preacher is to make the same
points week after week and still keep it interesting, the
tour-de-force being to prove the same points using a new and unique
set of verses. [cc03]
Anyhow, these young men were quite discontented with what they
heard. They confronted me about this during a break. At
the end of that break, before I had re-entered the prayer house, the
meeting resumed and, as usual, began with a session of volunteer solo
singing. Then an elderly woman got up and began singing her
solo. Half of the group gathered were blest
by her message in song, but the Church of Christ definitely were not
feeling blest, they fidgeted and squirmed in their seats and threw
glances at me. I was uncomfortable as well; I was making
gestures to my translator to bring it to an end if he could, but his
hands were tied by culture and courtesy. Suddenly the two
complainers got up and, shouting something which roughly translates
"Those who are faithful to the LORD will leave now!" they
stalked out of the building and across the courtyard toward the gate
to the street. [cc04]
Many of the Church of Christ preachers began to get up and leave, not
because they agreed, but because they were afraid they would be
singled out for censure by their ultraconservative colleges if they
stayed. But I was ahead of them to the gate, I latched it, then
turning to face them with my back to the gate I said "If you are
going to leave now you have to talk to me about it first. I
intended to say to them "If you want her to stop, you wrestle
her off the podium - then you can defend your rudeness toward an
elderly woman to your neighbors" but I never got the chance.
As soon as I spoke, they went back into the prayer house and sat
down. [cc05] (I had
not actually locked them in; there was another gate standing open,
but it was down a long passageway by the kitchen, perfectly suited
for slipping quietly away but no good at all for making a dramatic
exit.)
In the meantime Das
had interrupted the woman's song and she sat down; I went in and
resumed our Joshua lesson; I was too angry to speak about the
incident yet. About an hour into the lesson, at a question time
one of these young men questioned me in front of the group about the
woman singing - "How could I let her do that?" I
responded by saying "Are you proud of what you have done?
You forced me to be rude to a woman I should have respected as my own
mother. Are you proud of that? You humiliated her in
front of this whole group, and you are continuing to humiliate her by
what you are saying now. Are you proud of that?"
Then going on to compare and contrast their behavior to that of
Priscilla and Aquila toward Apollos, I continued in the "you
brood of vipers" mode for about five minutes. [dd05]
When I was done, the Church of Christ preachers sitting near them had
edged away, and they had no reply. Those two young men did not
return the next day; several people made comments that their presence
was not missed.
In discussing
this incident the next day several of those in other
denominations said that they had never (before hearing me) heard a
Church of Christ preacher teach Bible without concentrating on
criticism of others. [ee06]
I, on the other hand, had focused the lessons on how we could apply
these lessons to ourselves, and particularly how these lessons
highlighted my own uncorrected faults. This is a problem in
prevalent in the Indian churches, but particularly in the Churches of
Christ - sanctification is just not taught. [ee08]
A minimal set of rules - church behavior, no smoking, etc. - is
taught, but no obligation to continually allow the Holy Spirit to
keep changing me to conform my character to the character of
Christ.
At the end of the
third day, as I said, there was an hour left, so I taught on baptism.
[ff11] So now when
those two young men say that I never taught the Apostles Doctrine on
baptism, those who stayed for the whole seminar can correct them and
say "If you had stayed for the whole seminar, you would have
heard his lesson on baptism".
When all the teaching was over, [gg20]
I was wreathed with flowers and presented with gifts. [gg21]
But the greatest gift for me was the testimonials that followed.
[gg24] Instead
of the traditional pro forma thank-you for
my lessons [gg25]
(which is usually used to enhance the prestige of the one doing the
thanking) [gg26] a
long line of preachers got up to tell how these three days of
teaching had opened their eyes, [gg27]
how they had never heard such teaching, [gg28]
how it was going to change their lives. [gg29]
I lost count at a dozen men. [gg30]
One preacher had over thirty years seniority and is over fifty
churches and said he had never in his life heard teaching straight
from the Bible like that. [gg31]
I think one of the best ways to judge the success of a meeting like
this is the progress of the congregational singing. At the
beginning, the five women in one corner out-sang the 25 men present,
[hh26] which is about
usual in India. By Saturday afternoon, the thirty men in our
closing session sounded like an army.
Several days after the seminar I was given the translated sign-in
sheets for the seminar; fifty-five preachers had attended, about half
of them identifying their church as Church of Christ. [ii6]
Nepal via West Bengal and Bihar, North-East
India
My visa to India
is for ten years, however, it carries a restriction that requires me
to leave India for at least two full days every 180 days. [jj1] My
two best options for meeting this requirement were Kakarvita,
Nepal or Columbo, Sri Lanka. For a
time I considered flying to Columbo and spending Christmas weekend on
the beach there, even though it was more expensive, in order to avoid
the dangers posed by the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. However,
after much prayer about this, I was convinced that God wanted me to
go to Nepal, so on December 26th I set out by train to Kishanganj,
Bihar. The plan was that I would visit a friend there, and with
his assistance travel overland into Nepal. [jj3]
Kishanganj straddles the
border of the Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal. My
friends father is a Free Will Baptist minister living in the Bihar
side of Kishanganj. After two days on the train, I arrived and
my friend met me at the station. [kk1]
The next day, I spoke at a
belated Christmas celebration at a small church on the Bangladesh
border. The next few days taken up with preparations
for crossing into Nepal, learning about the mission there, and with a
lot of Internet communications related to the momentous events of
that week (which will be covered in more detail later). [kk2] On
Friday, we learned that one of the oldest and most beloved of the
Free Will Baptist preachers in the area had died, so on Saturday we
all went to the funeral. The funeral was in a remote village
amidst the tea plantations of Darjeeling District in West Bengal.
I was quite an adventure, because the taxi we hired kept getting flat
tires, and in the end stranded us in the middle of nowhere. So
someone had to leave the funeral to come and fetch us, then we had to
get a ride from someone else after the funeral back to the main
highway where we could hire another taxi to take us home. All
in all, a very long day. [kk4]
On Sunday, I spoke in the Free Will Baptist Church, then on Monday we
left for Nepal. First we traveled by bus from Kishanganj
through West Bengal to Siliguri. There a taxi was waiting for
us to carry us into Nepal. Then a short ride of ten or twenty
kilometers to Panitanki, on India's border
with Nepal. [ll2]
Through Indian immigration to get my passport
stamped "Exited India", and across the river to Kakarvita,
Nepal. On both sides of the river immigration and customs
seemed to be almost on the honor system, with no barriers, just an
office near the road.
I
stayed three days in Nepal,in a little hotel on a commercial back
street. All around me were betal-nut
warehouses, and the air was full of the
pungent fragrance of betel. Kakarvita
is, among other things, a smuggling center, and much of my time when
I was not in the Internet cafe was spent sitting on the riverbank
watching a long line of heavily laden bicycles smuggling betel across
the riverbed into India. [mm2]
On my last full day in
Nepal, led by the Spirit I followed narrow streets down to a little
hamlet on the river's edge. There, as I walked
down a very neat and clean narrow street between thatched huts, a man
suddenly said as I passed "Do you know P. K. Das?" I
did not understand what he had said, so he repeated "Do you know
Philip K. Das?" [nn1]
Then I realized
he was speaking of my host in Kishanganj; but how did he know me and
know who I was staying with? It turned out that he was a Free
Will Baptist preacher, a Nepali living here in Kakarvita, and he had
seen me at the burial two days before. We went to his home, and
spent a very pleasant hour together.
I was at that time preparing my lessons on Titus for the upcoming
second seminar, so I shared part of the lesson with him. God
had in a completely unexpected way given me an opportunity
to continue my ministry of mentoring preachers. [nn3]
Also on that day the Nepali army fought a
"major battle" with the Maoists about two kilometers from
my hotel, 36 Maoists and two policemen were
killed. I was down by the river at the time and never knew it
had happened until I saw it on the news that night. [oo2]
After three days in that
charming town I set off on my own back to Kishanganj. The hotel
arranged for my taxi to Siliguri, but from there I had to take a
bus. The taxi dropped me on the highway, then I flagged the
next bus and got on. I had left Kakarvita at noon, but it was
dark by the time the bus arrived in Kishanganj, and it was hard to
see enough to get off at the right stop. The next day I started
the two-day rail journey back to Vijayawada. [pp3]
I arrived in the small city of Tuni [qq11] in northeastern Andhra Pradesh late in the afternoon. [qq12] The Lifeline of Hope Childrens Home in Tuni is in the Church of Christ prayer house, [qq23] in a residential neighborhood across the river from the actual city of Tuni. [qq24] When I arrived, [qq25] playtime was just beginning. [qq26] This gave me a good opportunity to see the children acting naturally, [qq27] and it was immediately clear that the children were happy and healthy. [qq28] I was able to spend that evening [qq29] and all of the next day in Tuni [qq30] photographing the childrens home [qq31] and surrounding area. [qq32] I am very impressed with this facility, [qq33] and with its director. [qq34]
Moving back a few weeks in time....Tsunami Damage Assessment, South
India
On the morning of
26 December 2004, I was awakened at 6:30 AM by noise in the church
building. [rr01] I
thought "I know we are having church early today, but that is
still hours away; why do they have to be stacking chairs so early in
the morning making all this racket?", then I went back to
sleep. At 8:30 when I got up, I was told there had been an
earthquake, then I realized that the sound I had heard was not chairs
being stacked but the prayer-house doors rattling in the earthquake.
[rr02] I
immediately, once I saw on BBC that the epicenter was at Aceh,
knew that the eastern coastline of India was at high risk for
tsunami. Less than an hour later it struck. We were not
in danger, being about a hundred kilometers inland, but the entire
coast of Andhra Pradesh state where I was was affected. [rr03]
The tsunami
zone extended for a thousand miles along the eastern coast, the
southern tip, and a small part of the southwestern coast of India of,
with a small gap that was protected by the "shadow" of Sri
Lanka. [rr04] But the
tsunami zone was narrow, at most a couple of kilometers wide, in
most places only a few hundred meters wide
(a couple of football fields). [rr05]
In general, the tsunami damage was light in the far northeast near
Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state,
increasing in severity southwestward to a maximum at Nagapatnam
(Point Calimere) a few hundred kilometers
south of Chennai (Madras) in Tamil Nadu state. [rr06]
However, local geography played a major role in affecting tsunami
damage; one coastal village might be devastated, while another a few
kilometers farther south was hardly touched. (The Andaman and
Nicobar Islands were also devastated, but that, like the other
countries affected by the tsunami, is beyond the scope of this
document.) There were over five thousand tsunami deaths in
mainland India, mostly in Tamil Nadu. [rr07]
The most immediate need for those in the USA who were beginning to
mount a tsunami relief effort turned out to be on-the-scene
information. [tt01]
So while I was still in Nepal I dispatched my translators and helpers
to the coast in Krishna and Guntur districts to begin assessing the
tsunami damage there. [tt02]
We started there because these are the home districts of my workers
and they are familiar with the coast there. The day after I
returned to Vijayawada, I went to the coast in Krishna District
myself, and the next day in Guntur. [tt03]
In the mean time, due to a misunderstanding which is hilarious in
hindsight, I came to understand that the higher-ups in disaster
relief in the Church of Christ in the USA wanted me to coordinate ALL
of the major Church of Christ disaster relief for India. Not
that I wanted so big a job, but if they can't find anybody else to do
it... [tt04]
What had happened was that when an Indian preacher asked for aid US
from Churches of Christ for churches "from Chennai to
Kannyakumari" I was asked to
"handle it".[uu01]
Now in the first place, while I suspect now that by "handle
it" he meant handle that one preacher, at the time I thought
he meant handle "from Chennai to Kannyakumari". [uu02]
In the second place, the person in the USA who said this did
not immediately recognize the names "Chennai" and
"Kannyakumari", while I was by this time so
Indianized that I had forgotten that most
Americans would not know these names. [uu03]
Perhaps they thought we were only talking about a couple of adjacent
villages. But to say in India that you are handling the tsunami
relief "from Chennai to Kannyakumari" is like in
America saying you are handling the hurricane relief "from
Savanna to Key West". [uu04]
Since I was already doing needs assessment in Krishna and Guntur
districts in Andhra Pradesh, once ten more districts in Tamil Nadu
were put on our plate, we went ahead and
tossed in the two districts in between, and thus we set out to
coordinate efforts over a thousand miles of coastline. [uu06]
We decided to start by
preparing a report on the districts we were in, while at the same
time training brethren in Tamil Nadu to prepare
needs assessments for those districts. [vv01]
By the time the big misunderstanding was cleared up, the report on
Krishna, Guntur and Prakasam districts was nearly complete, and we
had made valuable contacts among the churches in Nellore District and
Tamil Nadu. [vv02] I
am still proud of the report we put together for those three
districts. {EMAIL}
We were able to firmly establish that the impact
to
members of the Churches of Christ was orders of magnitude larger than
previously estimated. [vv03]
We had established that there were many dozens of Churches of Christ
that no-one had known about among the rural poor of the affected
regions.
[vv04] In
addition, we now had a team of about a half-dozen
workers who had been rapidly but thoroughly
trained in methodologies that would be invaluable in the next phase
of our work. [vv05]
Once it became apparent that we were not
expected to be major tsunami relief coordinators, the was a few days
of lull in our work. [ww01]
We could not just pitch in and start doing local relief, first
because we had insufficient cash on hand to do it, and second,
because in order to get information from local preachers for the
needs assessment, we had stated that we ourselves would not be
distributing aid from America, but that this information would be
passed on to others. [ww04]
One of the great
difficulties with the tsunami relief efforts was the jealousies and
envyings between local preachers. [xx01]
Many time the focus was more on "how much money will pass
through my hands" or "how much credit and prestige will my
ministry get" rather than "how can we do the greatest good
for the greatest number of the most needy". In this
environment, information is power. [xx02]
That is why we promised that we would not be the distributors of
aid. Because if we were going to be the distributors,
then why should the local preachers help us, when all that would mean
is that someone else other than them would get to handle the money
and get the credit and prestige? [xx03]
Another difficulty in
tsunami relief is that when the car breaks down, you are in the
middle of nowhere. [xx09]
Tsunami Relief
Planning for HHI, South India
In a few days we were back to work, this time with a different
mission. [yy01] Healing
Hands International of Nashville, TN, was preparing to send a
team to begin tsunami relief work for Churches of Christ in the USA.
[yy02] They had been
shocked by the jealousy, envy and strife
within the Churches of Christ in India communicated to them in
emails. [yy03] They
needed someone to prepare an itinerary for them
that would cover the tsunami zone fairly and would not give all the
control to just one or two local preachers.
[yy04] As one of them
said
later "When all of the important somebodies in the church are
fighting to be HHI's "sole representative" in a country and
so enlarge their own ministry, prestige and power, HHI seeks out the
"nobodies" who are not striving and works with them." [yy05]
And I was the most "nobody" Church of Christ
missionary in India, and my workers are as "nobody"
as it gets. So HHI asked me to arrange the accommodations
and itinerary for the five-man HHI team's two week visit.
[yy06]
I spent most of
my secular career working among software
engineers, [zz01] and it is
said that "Managing software engineers
is like herding cats." But herding cats is easy
compared to getting Church of Christ preachers in India to
cooperate. [zz02]
Almost every preacher two whom we explained what was
happening with the HHI team responded "Just tell me what
flight they will be on and I will meet the plane and handle
everything for them." This sounds like a generous
offer of assistance at first, but it is not [zz03]. What they are
really saying is "Let me be the sole filter of their Indian
experience. They will see only what I want them to see, hear
only what I want them to hear, go only where I want them to go, do
only what I want them to do, and most important
of all, spend money only the way I want the money spent."
[zz04]
When I would tell them that all Indian preachers, great and small,
would be given the same opportunity to meet the team to show them
around for at most one day, etc., many of them would get highly
incensed. [zz05]
So we
spent hours and hours on the telephone making arrangements for
lodging and meetings with preachers and trips to the coast, [AA01] met with
preachers from the length and breadth of Andhra Pradesh and from
Chennai (some of them very cooperative, some of them not very
cooperative), all the while gathering a longer and longer list of who
was doing what tsunami relief where. In the middle of this I
held a three-day preachers seminar in Guntur District (see
below). Once I began to get a grasp of the big picture of
what the Indian churches were doing in tsunami relief already, and
what was glaringly undone, [AA03]
I could start sketching in an itinerary
for the HHI team (which was actually three itineraries, because we
planned to split the team three ways to cover more area). [AA04] Then
we went to Nellore City, [AA05]
met with local preachers and began to get
them organized and cooperating for the tsunami effort, and visited
tsunami damaged villages on the Nellore District coast. [AA06] From
there we went to Chennai and repeated the process. After that
we went to Kakinada to verify some important information concerning
church leaders in that area, which allowed me to spend a day in
nearby Tuni at the orphanage (see
above).
[AA07]
Finally, with the itineraries complete, hotel reservations made, and
more than a dozen different rail tickets purchased, we headed back to
Chennai to greet the arriving HHI team. [BB02]
Tsunami Relief Work with HHI, South India
The area of
tsunami damage in India is over a thousand miles long and in most
places about a hundred yards wide. [CC01]
The area of
economic damage
is the same length, but about a mile wide; that is, that
most of those who lost their livelihood due
to tsunami damage live in villages within a mile of the coast. [CC02]
In most places on the coast, extending inland for about five miles
from the beach is a sparsely populated region
of tidal floodplains, salt marshes and sandy wastelands, with a
patternless maze of poorly maintained roads. [CC03] Many people who
live on the "coastal highway"
five to ten miles inland are completely unaware of the thin line of
villages on the narrow dune line between this wasteland and the
sea.
Even among the few who know of these coastal villages, still fewer
know how to get to them. [CC04]
And those who have visited these
coastal villages, generally have visited only two or three and have
no idea that the village they visited is only one of many in that
region. [CC05]
Many of
these villages are populated by "tribals",
especially of the Yanadi tribe, one of the "Scheduled Tribes",
who are even lower on the Indian social ladder than the "Scheduled
Castes", the "untouchables". [DD02]
Because of this,
and also of their migratory lifestyle (as fishermen, they follow the
seasonal migrations of the fish), in many places they are not
recognized as part of the community. So local officials
frequently issue them neither voter registration cards nor ration
cards, and do not count them in the census. [DD04] Therefore even
the
government had little accurate knowledge of the population of the
tsunami affected zone. In addition, many times this led to
tsunami relief being withheld from those tribals who suffered loss, {EMAIL}
while the same aid was being given to others who had suffered little
or no loss. A delegation of government officials would rush
from village to village, and wherever they saw flattened houses and
broken boats, they declared that village "tsunami affected"
and therefore eligible for aid. [DD06] But
to avoid fraud, aid could only be given to those proving residence in
the village. So rice farmers and tradesmen and so forth on
unaffected inland or high ground relieved
aid upon producing a voter registration card which proved their
residence in the "tsunami affected village", while the poor
tribals, with no such cards, whose flattened houses and broken boats
were the basis of the aid, received
nothing. [DD08]
Within
the church it was little different. Many preachers and church
leaders assured us that "no Christians had suffered loss in the
tsunami" because they were unaware of the presence of Churches
of Christ among these coastal villages. [EE03] In some cases
this was
honest ignorance. In other cases, it was a stubborn and racist
refusal to acknowledge such socially low persons as their brethren in
Christ Jesus. [EE05]
Most church leaders in India cannot imagine church growth happening
in any way other than the way they themselves grow churches. [FF01]
One church leader assured us that there were no American preachers
working among the tribals in the coastal villages, because they are
so remote. And so, because there are no American preachers
campaigning there, [FF03]
there cannot be any Churches of Christ there.
Many Indian Church leaders have assured me that without American
support and supervision, the Church of Jesus Christ cannot grow or
thrive in India. Without American help, God is helpless to grow
His church. But God seems to have had other plans. [FF06]
Wherever and
whenever a people group find themselves without hope, there the hope
of the Gospel shines brightest.
[GG01] For those
who think they are
self-sufficient, it takes great effort to convince them of their need
for Jesus Christ. [GG02]
But among those who know they are helpless,
the Good News of Jesus spreads like a prairie-fire in a dry
field.
And so it has been among these fishermen. [GG03] So the churches
among
the fishermen were not, like other Indian
Churches of Christ, started by American preachers on campaign or by
Indian preachers supported from America. Rather, they were
started by unpaid young men from the villages who, after being
baptized into Christ elsewhere, [GG05]
returned to their native villages and
started a church among their friends and relatives
there. Unlike the overwhelming majority of the Church of
Christ in India, [GG07] who
grew up in some Christian denomination, these
are direct converts from Hinduism. It was these Christians who
bore the brunt of the tsunami. [GG09]
On the morning of
14 February 2005 Samrat, Shekher and myself
took the train from Vijayawada to Chennai. There we made final
arrangements for the welcoming meeting by Indian preachers for the
arriving team from Healing Hands International (HHI) to take place
the following evening.[HH02]
We had gone to great lengths to arrange
this meeting, and to conceal from all others the exact time and
flight of the arriving team. [HH04]
In the
first place, I knew that
the team wanted to begin their time in India with a team meeting to
finalize their goals and itineraries before setting off for the
field, and this could not happen if they were surrounded by Indians,
each with their own agenda, from the moment they arrived. [HH06] In
the second place, at least seven different Indian preachers and
church leaders, each in competition with each other, had each stated
that we should hand the team over to them and let them decide who the
team would and would not work with.
So whoever was the preacher who went to the airport to meet the HHI
team would at least have the advantage of
have their ear first, and would expect that this entitled them to be
the team's official handler. [HH08]
If we picked one preacher to be
the first to meet the team, whoever it was, the others would consider
that we had shown favoritism toward that preacher. So we
determined that no preacher would be first,
that all , great and small, would meet the team at the same time, and
that everyone would, at that meeting, have equal opportunity to greet
the team. [HH10]
The
next morning we set out early for the airport. There, after the
confusion and delay one comes to expect in India, we met the HHI team
on their arrival from Sri Lanka. [II02]
Only one Indian preacher had manage to bypass our plans to give all
preachers equal access to the team; once we
had shed this uninvited attachment, we
proceeded to St Thomas Mount, which overlooks the airport.
There we were able to get to know each other, and to pray together
for our work in India, on the same spot where the apostle Thomas
spent his last hour on this earth. [II06]
That evening, at our hotel across from
Chennai's Engmore
Station, more than a dozen preachers gathered to welcome the team
from America to India. After the meeting, each member of the
team was introduced to their translator and guide, and they began
going over the final details of their itineraries. Railway
tickets and cellular telephones we had purchased
in advance were distributed to team members and guides. [JJ9]
The following day, the
team members began leaving in three directions. [KK1]
John Sproul and Parker Polidor went north
to Vijayawada to survey the tsunami damage in Krishna and Guntur
districts in Andhra Pradesh. Roberto
Santiago and Jake Birdwell went south to
survey the damage in Tamil Nadu. [KK2]
Team leader Dave Goolsby and myself began visiting government offices
in Chennai, meeting with those officials of the Indian government
responsible for tsunami relief and for the coordination of the
operations of NGOs such as HHI. [KK3]
Two days later we went north to Nellore to organize
the work in Nellore District. Each team then on arriving in its
base city had to make their way by hired car to the remote regions
of the coast where the needs are. [KK4]
Several days later we
all returned to Chennai to compare notes. Plans were made for
the following week, rail tickets were changed, air tickets purchased,
team assignments were shuffled on the basis
of the first week's findings. On Sunday we divided up to three
different churches so that no one church could portray itself as "The
Host Church of American Tsunami Relief".
[LL6]
Then it was back to the field. Two team members flew to the
remote Andaman Islands. Others flew south to Kanyakumari (Cape
Cormarin) to augment the tsunami relief
efforts there of the Chennai Churches of Christ. [MM02]
One team member went north to Ongole to
organize the relief efforts of the Church of Christ in Prakasam
District. Dave Goolsby and I returned to Nellore to continue
the work of organizing the churches there. [MM03] Food
distributions
were begun, arrangements were made to purchase fishing nets, a boat
was presented to a church in Tamil Nadu, and other boats were
ordered. [MM04]
After one final day of wrap-up meetings in Chennai, we departed.
The HHI flew on to South Africa, and I took the train back home to
Vijayawada. [NN2] A
very capable Indian gentleman and two assistants had been hired to
continue administering the work, solid plans had been made, a process
for transferring funds and for insuring accountability
was established. Now the project of succoring the Christians
and their neighbors hurt by the tsunami would continue. My job
had been to put the Americans from HHI in touch with the Indian
Christians who could make it happen, and I had done so.
[NN7]
Turning back the clock about a month....
Pastors Seminar,
Guntur District, A. P., South India
In the midst of all the surveying of tsunami damage and planning for
the HHI team, [OO1]
I still had the ongoing Pastor's Seminar program. [OO2]
The seminar in Machilipatnam on Philippians in February had to be
canceled, [OO3]
because it coincided
exactly with
the arrival of the HHI team in Chennai, and I was needed there.
We were able, however, [OO4]
to shift "Tsunami Central" across
the Krishna River to Errabalem, [OO5]
in Mangalagiri
Mandal, Guntur District and hold our
January seminar on schedule while
continuing the tsunami coordination work. [OO6] Errabalem was a
more remote location than Badavapeta, Vijayawada, [OO7] where the previous
seminar was held, so attendance was lighter at the daytime sessions. [OO8]
However, [009] the evening
gospel meetings were well attended, [OO11]
and there
were several who came forward for the invitation, [OO12] and three were
baptized into Christ. [OO13]
The subject of this seminar was the book of Titus. [PP01] The daytime
sessions were again a worked example of expository preaching through
an entire book of the Bible, [PP02]
and were geared for preachers and
pastors. [PP04]
Because the participants this time were almost entirely from other
denominations, [PP05] and
because the subject material was in the New Testament, much more time
than in the Joshua seminar was devoted to our initial response to God's
offer of salvation. The greatest part of the lesson were on the
role and work of the evangelist. [PP07]
The seminar was a great success; all those who attended felt they had
learned something, and all desired me to return again. [PP09]
Depart India via
Delhi
Once the
American HHI team had departed India (leaving a newly-organized
Indian team to continue the work), it was nearly time for me to
return to India as well. [QQ2]
A friend came down to Vijayawada to
accompany me up to Delhi; the same young man whose apartment I had
shared in Haryana and whose family I had stayed with in Bihar on my
way to and from Nepal. The journey north was uneventful, and in
the early hours of 7 March 2005 I boarded my British Air flight
back to Washington DC via London. [QQ9]
Kenneth
A. Grimm
Edit: 8 April 2007