India and Sri Lanka

I might have known on the flight fron Bahrain and then on the train ride in India from Chennai to Kakinada that this was to be a remarkable trip. There were divine appointments scattered all along the way. Sevi on the plane and then Prahas on the train and Pastor Rao had his own encounter on the way to meet me that resulted in a changed life. The first pastors’ seminar on the cleansing of shame and the five-fold ministry in Kakinada was held high on the third level of a rental building overlooking the harbor on a beautiful sunny day, and they had hung a banner from the balcony welcoming me which when I beheld it became one of my favorite moments of the trip, though there were 4 more seminars (on the same themes but also including teaching on the 7 churches of the Book of Revelation) to come in various areas of India and Sri Lanka including a session with a Bible College class of Buddhist background believers on the five channels of love. (In all I think it is safe to say that over 200 pastors and leaders including some wives were reached in the seminars.) I couldn’t help but notice on the crowded train from Chennai how quickly the passengers bonded in our compartment morphing into a makeshift family for 9 or 10 hours of the trip.
It was much more of a communal experience than a corresponding trip on an American train would have been. The sewing machine we provided for the women’s sewing circle was an encouagement as were the school supplies where we met a little girl weeping for want of a pencil. I gave Pastor Rao letters written to his Sunday School children (hoping to begin some pen pal relationships) as well as a pastor’s backpack for his work in the rural villages. Typical department stores and other establishments employ 10 times the employees that ours do simply out of the need to provide jobs in a country with a population of well over a billion. It wasn’t uncommon to see as many as 5 employees congregating in aisles during frequent lulls in business. The following week in Chandighar to the north Pastor Jagan showed me a neighborhood dubbed Rickshaw Row where so many of the rickshaw drivers lived. Drug addiction and prostitution were rampant and children roamed unattended and at risk in dangerous conditions. Jagan’s heart is to raise up a church there where there are already a couple of believers. Riding on the back of Jagan’s motorbike in teeming traffic is not for the faint-hearted, neither is driving in India at all, though I saw no accident incredibly in 5 weeks, nothing worse than a collision with a dog and a pig. Over centuries India’s throngs have become adept, like China’s, at avoiding collisions. Our traffic sytem though more orderly and highly regulated is, strangely, more accident prone. Jagan’s apartment is a Grand Central Station of church members and neigborhood children coming and going on various errands or visits, and there is really the sense of family and face-to-face fatherhood in his ministry though they have so little in a material way. Many of them seem also to be fighting nagging coughs and chronic health problems yet they soldier on undaunted, much more concerned for my health and comfort than their own. My hosts always insisted that I sleep on a bed even if it was no more than a slab of wood with a thick quilt thrown over it, and often family members would rotate for the privilege of sleeping in the few available beds, sleeping otherwise on mats on the floor with blankets. Dogs and cats often attach themselves to already crowded households but they are given no names or privileges like in the West. It was a blessing to be able to provide slate writing boards in the daycare there for the children who were having to do without them since there hadn’t been enough to go around. Though I mistakenly drank the wrong glass of water and suffered for it, I couldn’t remain in bed Sunday morning for long, hearing the worship songs rising from the sanctuary below was irresistible. I got dressed and made an appearance and Jagan immediately made way and I preached after all!
Back in the south next we ventured to Vellore in the mountains for a couple more pastor seminars on the cleansing of shame and the five-fold ministry. This was the most geographically beautiful part of India for me. One of the pastors in one seminar had lost his church in the flooding and needed funds for reconsruction. It felt good to be able to offer him a significant part of that funding. All along the way of this itinerary I have been able to visit and speak in obscure village churches and home churches, and prayer groups where missionaries like me have never been. It occurred to me as I witnessed their delight in receiving my messages that they have been used to, say, chocolate and vanilla spiritual flavors and here I was bringing them strawberry and peach for the first time! Hence I was followed by some from village to town to village to hear the next message, which were never repeated but always unique to each location. Barnabas was so impressed (and to God be the glory!) that he requested I write the 25 or 30 sermons given and send them by email so he can translate them into Tamil and make little booklets to distribute in India and, hopefully, Sri Lanka. Speaking of which the 4 days on that beautifully green island were the perfect culmination to an amazing journey. It is to this island once known as Ceylon and to Adam’s Peak that Muslims believe that Adam and Eve retreated after being banished from Eden. We passed through a town on our way north where Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and Christians live in harmony, proving to all the world that it can be done! In the town of Kandi there is a Buddhist shrine featuring what is believed to be one of Budhha’s teeth, which he lost presumably from eating hard Kandy. (Just kidding, but not about the shrine and supposed tooth!) My translator, Rev.Tony L., spoke the most fluent English of all the translators, and we were talking and fellowshipping almost continually from which we both benfited and learned much, though Pastor Phillip translated for the final leaders’ seminar on the cleansing of shame and did admirably as the others had. Tony told me of a prayer walk conducted in Sri Lanka on one of the highest elevations and Buddhist temple sites. The organizers had forgotten to bring their shophar to blow but a 3 year old girl volunteered to offer her own substitute. She proceeded eerily to reproduce the exact sound of the shophar which had so impressed her before, using merely her own voice and lungs! In Sri Lanka salvation means deliverance from superstitions like those that surround the gecko. For example if this lizard makes his clicking sound while you’re planning a journey, that journey must immediately be cancelled, but if he makes his sound after some statement in a conversation, that statement must be especially true! In Mallavi Sri Lanka we provided 2 bags of clothing for orphan and refugee children and Bibles in Tamil. Over 100 of those children in the daycare must share one toilet during daycare hours. We also were able to contribute toward the repair of a Pastor Ashok’s washing machine. This is a great blessing for his wife Selvi whose back was injured repeatedly being thrown from a motorbike on bumpy dirt roads as she tried to accompany her husband to minister in the rural villages. She was so soothed by the flute music I played that she thought she heard it in the middle of the night once and came to check my room and found me sound asleep with the flute packed away. A spontaneous praise session on the final night in Sri Lanka in the home of a Christian taxi driver from Colombo punctuated a powerful sojourn there, which they told me repeatedly they’d never forget. (Nor will I!)
Pastor Barnabas informed me that when the apostle Thomas first came to Kerala, India he encountered sun worshippers in a river splashing water high into the air in homage to their god. Thomas asked them why their god didn’t catch the water. He told them he would proceed to throw water to the True God who would catch it. He did just that and the water hovered above defying gravity. From that time many began to believe in the true God and to follow Thomas about as he performed miracle after miracle including one Samsonesque feat of dragging a huge tree from a river where it had obstructed the current, something none could do before him. I think that’s a good note to close with for now, it was thrilling to be in a place where the gospel had taken its grand effect with such impact so long ago!