A Special Sunday

God has been very busy in the life of our ministry lately. This past Sunday, Nov.14, Bob and I attended the morning worship service at Fellowship Ashram Church of India (FACI) in Valsad. Valsad is about an hour's drive from our town of Silvassa. We were very excited to meet the congregation of FACI church. It is very rare to find fellow believers in our part of India; especially Indian believers.

The area we live in is 35% tribal. It has one of the highest tribal populations in India. "Tribal" means exactly what it sounds like. These people live in remote areas within a specific tribe. Most have little contact with the modern world. When I visit these tribal areas I am the first white person they have ever met. Some of the tribes I have visited did not even have a road to their village until several years ago. The people live in mud huts and raise all their food. Most have little or no access to education. A quality, English education is unheard of. All of the tribes speak a different language from the others. Because Hindi is the national language that is only taught in government schools, most tribes do not even speak Hindi. Tribal people are very suspicious of outsiders and especially Christians. They are strict Hindus and want to keep it that way. For these reasons, it is very unusual to come across a Christian from the tribes. That is where FACI comes in.

FACI has made it thier mission to go into the tribal areas to provide English-medium education for the children. The congregation we worshipped with on Sunday held 12 men from different tribes who are now attending the FACI Bible Institute in Valsad. These men are being trained to take the Gospel back to their villages in their native tribal language. What a breakthrough for these people! We were so humbled to be able to worship with a group of folks on Sunday who are now believers. These people were all previously Hindu. Bob and I both shared our story with the people of how God called us to come be a part of His work in India. Bob also preached a great message that the Lord gave him. I have never been more proud of him! We are so thankful that God wants to use us in India. We are just your average American couple. We have no special training or outstanding skills but what we do have we give to God to use. He does amazing things with average people all the time. Just read Hebrews 11 to see a list of all the average people and what they accomplished through the power of God. It is all Him; we are just the pipeline.

Please pray for our ministry, New Beginnings India, as we partner with FACI to accomplish what God plans for this area. It is our goal to reach the tribal people with the Gospel through education and better living conditions. Big God=Big Plans :)

God's Been Busy Here

We have seen God do some incredible things in Silvassa this past week. As most of you know, we came to India to do mission work. We had no idea what God wanted us to do except move to India and He would show us the rest as He saw fit. Well, He is beginning to show us His plan for our ministry. We have been praying for a year that God would use us to help the people in our remote area both physically and spiritually. We got here and immediately got involved in working with the Red Cross Mobile Dispensary and teaching English at a local school but it still did not feel like these were where God wanted us. So we continued to pray.

One morning as I was going out to visit a children's hostel in another city I was approached by a man who works at the hotel we live in. He had heard that I was a Christian and trying to do "social work" (the Indian term for mission work). He told me he too was a Christian and he had friends who had started a ministry in a region 1 hour from Silvassa. He asked if I would like to meet with the Pastor of the ministry and,of course, I was thrilled. In the meantime, we prayed that God would show us if this was part of His plan for us.

We met with Pastor Saji and could not believe all that he and his people had accomplished in 5 years. He is originally from Kerala in southern India but knew God was calling him to sell everything there and move very far north to reach the tribal people. He and his family moved to Valsad in the northern state of Gujarat. He established the Fellowship Ashram Church of India (FACI). A true Bible-teaching, preaching church focused on improving the physical and spiritual lives of the Indian people. (Sound familiar?!) In 5 years God has built an English-medium school with over 700 children and a hostel that houses 75 children. They have a Bible Institute to train missionary leaders, 150 home churches in tribal villages, and started an English-medium street school. Learning English in India is vitally important to get out of poverty. Only educated, English-speaking people are able to get jobs. The problem is that all schools that teach English are expensive--including govt. schools. The mission of the FACI schools is to offer English lessons to all. If you can help by paying any small amount that is great but you will not be turned away if you can't. They believe God will supply what they need and He has done so amazingly. They cannot explain how they have been able to cover the costs at times except that God miraculously provided in time. One of their biggest investors is a Hindu! Unheard of!! Goes to prove that what God's Word says about Him turning the hearts of ALL people to do His Will is true. God even uses the non-believer to accomplish His Will. LOVE THAT!!

I cannot tell you how excited we are that God has lead us to the people of FACI. After meeting with them several times we believe God is leading us to partner with them and believe God for GREAT things for the people of Silvassa. There are so many wonderful stories I could share with you about what God is doing here. One that really pertains to us must be told! Pastor Saji and his wife Janet have tried 5 times to get a visa to the U.S. They made the necessary appointment in Mumbai and were turned down by the consolate all 5 times for no real reason. It can be very difficult for Indians to get a visa. It is totally up to the one person you meet with at the consolate. It still blows my mind that the fate of your travel visa can be in the hands of one person! Can you imagine? He can deny it for any reason. I'm sure most visas are obtained by bribs since that is such a basic way of doing things here. Pastor Saji has gotten visas to many other countries and just recently returned from the UK but God kept shutting the door for him to go to the U.S. Pastor Saji told us that he prayed and told God that if He did not want him to go to the U.S. then bring some Americans to him!! That was the same time we were praying that God would introduce us to true believers in India. Did I mention we are the first and only Americans to live in our region!!! Now you tell me that isn't God!!!!!!!
He WILL work all things together for our good in His time and according to His Will!

Needless to say, we are overwhelmed and humbled that God wants to use us to do something very big here in Silvassa. The schools that FACI has are about 1 1/2 hours from Silvassa. We have felt all along that God wanted us to start some type of school and mission here in Silvassa. Pastor Saji has prayed for a long time that he would be able to start a school and missionary work here as well! No telling what God is going to do now that He has joined our ministries to work together. Please pray that we will all listen and follow God's direction for this new project. I know in my heart He has something HUGE planned and can't wait to see it happen!

Our website for New Beginnings India is still under construction but you can go to the website for the Fellowship Ashram Church of India and check out what God has done there. It is
www.feaministry.com

Keep praying for us! God answers prayers!

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Each day I see new things that I want to tell everyone about; too many to remember. India is such a vastly different world than what most of us have ever experienced. It is one thing to see pictures or films but quite another to live amongst it.

Several days last week I rode into town early in the morning. Early is a relative term. The daily schedule in India is quite different from the U.S. They do not go to work until 9:30 or 10:00am and get off at 6:30 or 7:00pm. Most restaurants do not even start serving dinner until 8pm. We usually have the dinner dishes washed in America by then! While in town those mornings I saw families with small children picking through a large area where industrial trash and construction waste had been dumped. Both times the families were looking for simple, small objects that they could use for living or to sell for a small amount of money. Broke my heart to see this. Life is so hard for most of the people here. It truly comes down to survival. So many struggle here to get the basics for daily living that we take for granted and even waste!

Water is so necessary for life and yet so hard to get in India. They do not waste a drop of it. The amount we waste by letting the water run while brushing our teeth they use for an entire day!! I watch people "bathing" outside their huts from a communal water bucket. Frankly, I am impressed they make the effort. I now understand why there are so few western-style, public toilets in India (less than 500). It is because it takes precious water. Imagine being thirsty and all you had to drink was rainwater you caught in a holding tank or unclean water pumped into your area from a local river. No, it is not purified between the river and the spout! Since it only rains 3 months out of the year I wondered what happens when the rainwater in the holding tanks is gone. They told me they use the water that is pumped in from the rivers and then wait for next year's rains. I sometimes feel ashamed that I always have a bottled water with me wherever I go. Do the people seem to resent this? Not in the least. They are the poorest, happiest people you will ever meet. I am always treated like a special guest wherever I go; even in the remote villages where I am the first white person they have ever seen. On a funny note, the children are scared of me at first. They are so amazed at how different I look and will stare for a long time. Everything is fine if I don't stare back or smile or try to talk to them. Then they start to cry! Had two tiny ones cry just last week. They are so shy and cautious and I have to let them ease into talking to me on their own terms. Nothing like most children in America who will smile and laugh at you. I don't take it personally since they do it to Bob as well :) Usually the ones who are about 5 or 6 yrs. old are just fine and a little more confident to approach us.

The rice fields are being harvested right now. I watched them plant those rice fields in June and it is neat to see the crops coming in now. Everyone who lives on the farm helps. If the children go to the free govt. school in the morning they work in the rice field in the afternoon. Same thing for any husbands who might work in the factories. They all use a hand-held sickle (hooked blade) to cut down the rice plant. The stalks look just like wheat that grows in the U.S. The stalks are dried in the sun and placed in big stacks that end up looking like round, tall, grass huts. (See the picture above) As the top layer of the stacks dries the rice is beaten out on the threshing table; just like you read about in the Bible. One threshing area I saw in town was "high-tech'! They had a huge fan that blew at just the right angle so that when the rice was beaten out the chaff blew away. The rice is gathered, put in large bags and stored outside. No worries about it getting wet since there won't be any more rain until next June or July. Not quite sure about pests and rodents and frankly really don't want to know! I am sure that the food we eat here at the hotel is completely sanitary--that's my story and I'm sticking with it!