(From Keenan Tong, a member of the 2015 India Team)
As promised, now that I've had a few days to process everything that happened last week in India, here are a few final prayer requests for India:
1. Praise the Lord that so many of the people with whom we shared Christ accepted Him as their Savior! It was so refreshing to see people immediately recognize the truth that is Jesus and act upon it. That kind of genuine open-heartedness just doesn't occur in America. It's as if these villagers were waiting their entire lives to hear about God's love for them!
- How to pray: Pray that the seeds fall on good soil and these new believers are filled with a passion to grow in their faith. That they are diligent in gathering to study God's Word and putting it into practice in their lives. That they would learn that prayer is not a cold ritual but rather a way to communicate with a Savior that wants a personal, intimate relationship with each of them.
2. India is considered a semi-closed country to Christianity. The current party in power there is pro-Hindu and anti-Christian. We had to be discreet about sharing the Gospel in the villages. Our team even had to change meeting places in one village when the initial house we were scheduled to visit was setting us up to lead a Bible study in a courtyard right next to a road. Too many people were gathering around us there, so it was deemed risky by our Indian teammates and we moved to another place deeper in the village away from the road.
How to pray: Believers in India risk everything to follow Jesus, from family relationships to even their lives. Our local pastor, Raj, became a Christian and was kicked out of his house because of it. He was just 14 years old at the time. Pray that God gives believers in India the strength to cling to their faith despite the risks. Pray that they will never forget how special it is to be known and loved by the Creator, how that is worth sacrificing everything for.
3. The caste system in India is a social structure where people are automatically born into a class. In one village, we saw how it affects the people there. On Tuesday, we visited a home where we shared the Gospel with people from around the village. A good number of them accepted Christ, one of whom was a teenage boy who invited us to his home the following day. So on Wednesday, we went to this young man's home and spent time there. What our team noticed was that the family who live at the house we visited on Tuesday did not come to the young man's house on Wednesday. The Indian nationals on our team realized that it was because the people from the first house were from a lower caste. It would not have been appropriate for them to enter the young man's home since he was part of a higher caste. On Thursday, we made a point of visiting both houses.
- How to pray: I spent time with children at both houses and they were equally sweet, bright, and eager to learn more about Jesus. You would never know they were members of different castes. Pray that the people of India find their identities in Christ and their worthiness in His grace, not a man-made social system or anything else of the world.
Please continue to keep India in your prayers not just now but year-round! This trip touched me deeply because I really connected on a heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul level with the people there. They may be from a different culture and speak a different language, but they are children of God and have been created in His image, just like us. That unites us across all barriers. Amy connected so well with a couple of the women that they asked her to name their babies! :)
Again, thank you so much for your support. If you'd like to hear more about my experiences in India or learn how YOU can be a part of next year's team, please don't hesitate to reach out!
P.S. some bonus highlights/lowlights:
1. One night we went to dinner at a local food court where you have to load money onto a card before purchasing anything from the vendors. I had this awesome goat masala dish but the vendor kept coming over and telling me something in Hindi about my card and the money on it. Since I'm fluent in Hindi (I'm not), I thought he was saying that I still had leftover money on my card even after ordering my meal. I kept replying that it was okay; I was fine with leaving money on the card since I had only loaded the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars onto it.
After leaving the card on the table, I had already walked out of the food court when the local pastor on my team, Raj, ran me down with the card in hand. In his limited English, he kept trying to tell me something about money and the card. Because I'm charitable, I insisted he exchange the leftover money on the card and keep it for himself.
I found out the next day that what the vendor and my pastor were trying to tell me was that my meal cost more than the amount I had loaded onto the card and I needed to load on more money. They didn't want me to dine and dash! Fortunately, another American on our team was still at the food court after I left and covered the rest of my bill. I am dumb.
2. One of the local Indian pastors knew just enough English to tell me I look like Obama.
3. On our first day out to the villages, we were delayed at least an hour along the way when a group of guys decided to chop down a huge tree along the road and angled it to fall directly onto said road. We asked our translator Joy if this was normal, he shrugged and replied, "It's India." 