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India Mission Trip
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Mission to India - February 2008
Report from Pastor Bill & Nathel Warcholik
& team members Marilyn Heinrich & Ric Pelletier
 
 
Pastor Bill Tucker, President of The Quiet Hour
(a sponsor that partnered with Share Him for the India Mission Trip),
has posted a full report that summarizes the challenges
faced by the 27 teams that were in India with us.
To read that excellent report, just click on



Traffic and pollution are real problems in the many cities in India.
Many people wear scarves over their faces due to the dust and exhaust fumes.
  Our ministry was in the villages.



Hindu temples are everywhere in India. 
Idol worship is rampant as it was in Biblical times.



Cows are considered sacred while people are still struggling
with the caste system - not unlike the problem we have had in the USA
with  racial segregation as we try to overcome the curse of slavery.
 

 

The cattle drive through our audience on opening night made it clear that this would be no ordinary evangelism series.  The local village people had placed our stage next to the road so that the audience was seated in the road.  First the goats came down the road – not too disruptive.  But the cattle drive scattered everyone.  We reoriented the screen and seating so that on the second night the audience was next to the road and the meeting continued during the evening movement of animals from fields to pens in the village.

 

Attendance began with about 85 children.  About 25 adults stayed on the edges with more listening in their homes – interested but not willing to risk the wrath of the Hindus who controlled the village.  They also were reluctant to risk the loss of government subsidies for anyone who converted to Christianity.  Adult attendance gradually increased during the meeting. 

 

A Hindu shrine was located just behind our screen.   Even during the preaching and Jesus video Hindus would go to the shrine and ring the bells while worshipping before the idols. 

 

A nearby village invited us to come over to teach them so we added an early service in the second village and about 45 people came.

   

Two room thatched roof cottages, outdoor “kitchens” with grinding stones to prepare the grain for cooking, absence of indoor plumbing or even outhouses, and bare feet took us back 2,000 years.  We had time-warped back to the time of Jesus. 



But TVs were readily available pumping pollution in even as it ran at the edges of the streets!   But HOPE had come to the village – hope from the proclamation of the gospel and even from the Seventh-day Adventist HOPE channel that was available on cable TV by satellite around the world!   


 
At the end of every meeting, the audience would swarm around us.  They would tap our hands and point to their head.  They believe in laying on of hands!  So our team of four would spend at least a half hour every night putting our hands on the heads of those attending and praying for them.  What a blessing to realize that our hands were representing the hands of Jesus, touching the lives of so many Hindus who were hearing the story of Jesus for the first time!

  

On the third night a man came to us for prayer – he had responded to God’s message and stopped drinking!  He introduced us to his three beautiful teenage daughters and we prayed that he would stay sober to raise his daughters for the glory of God.  They were baptized later during the meetings!


The wife of the former village president came for prayer for their married but barren daughter.  We explained that some barren women in the Bible who prayed and followed God’s will were blessed by God with a child.  Such children often became great in the sight of God!  We prayed.  She returned with her husband who also asked for prayer.  Both were baptized later!  Many others were baptized so that we were able to welcome them into the family of God.

 

Baptisms continued even after we were forced to leave the village a few days before the scheduled end of the meetings.  The Hindus were feeling threatened by the power of the gospel and told us no more meetings.  Then, as has been on the Quiet Hour website (www.thequiethour.org), Hindu radicals incited the police to arrest some of our teams in the city of Tiruvanamalie.  We were in the city of Vellore, and none of our speakers were arrested.  However, in Tiruvanamalie, the radicals formed a mob at the hotel.  After a tense stand-off between the police and the radicals, the teams were able to escape.  We received word at 1:00 am and immediately were told to pack our bags.  We were on buses heading for safety within two hours.  All of us felt saddened because we could not say goodbye to the villagers we had grown to love. 


What a spiritual lesson to learn!  When Jesus returns and we are winging our way to Heaven, we will no longer be able to say goodbye to the lost who are left behind.  How vitally important to say goodbye NOW!  NOW is the time to tell others of our impending departure.  NOW is the time to invite them to commit their lives to Jesus so they will be with us during that great exodus from this planet in rebellion.

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