Hyderabad, India
November 2001 brought me to Hyderabad, India. I went with a group from our church, and we were ministering in Hyderabad with a local church, Living Word Life Center and Elim Ministries led by the Rev. Dr. A. John Shabdam. Never have I ever felt so stretched to my capacity and so very inadequate as when I went to India. These are the times that we HAVE to depend on God, for in ourselves we can do NOTHING.
But now, I think I understand a little bit of what John Hyde felt as he served as a missionary to India... He was a prayer warrior, and his heart was for souls. He would pray for souls and cry out to God, "Father, give me these souls or I die!" He asked God to first give him one souls a day, and then two souls a day, and then four... It was reported that when he died, his heart had shifted in his chest from the left side to the right, and many said it was because of the agonizing travail and the prayers that he said for the souls in India.
One fifth of the population of the earth lives in India, second in population only to China. We went into the women's prison in Hyderabad, and ministered to the women and children there. Yes, there are children living in the prison too. They are allowed to live with their mothers until they are five years old. Then the state takes them away, and they are adopted out. But these little children live there behind the four walls of the prisons, and they are just as much incarcerated as their mothers. We gave away blankets to the women and sweaters to the children, as well as Bibles.
We also attended a children's peace rally in conjuction with many of the schools there. The officials said that there were about 3,500 children in attendance, and they performed some of the native dances and music, and they marched in uniforms. Very colorful indeed... A couple of the people in our group were asked to speak at the rally, along with some of the leading officials in the city. Our Pastor Nick Kinn was allowed to give the invitation to receive Jesus, and by all accounts about 2,000 of the children prayed to receive Jesus. The Gideons, and organization of Christian businessmen, donated 3,500 Bibles in English and Telegu for us to give away during the rally and throughout the trip.
One of our team members went on a train trip to another city, and while he was there, an young girl that had been paralysed in her arms since birth was healed, and raised her arms up in the air to praise God.
One young man that I was witnessing to, told me that he would think about what I had said, and not even fifteen minutes later, Pastor Nick Kinn took his hand, and he backed up into the wall. "Your eyes," he said, "They are just like search lights. It is almost like you can see right through me." Then he prayed and recieved the Lord Jesus.
While we were in India, there was a plane crash in New York City, and we didn't know if this was the result of some insane act of terrorism, or an accident. We were in a mall area where they were having a carnival of sorts, and after I heard the news, I turned around and saw two young men standing in front of me. I asked them if they had heard the news, and they had. I started to witness to them that they could know for sure that they would go to heaven someday. Their eyes got really big, and they said that they had just been talking about that very same thing. They said that they were of the Islamic faith, but they had some questions about what their faith had been telling them, and that they wanted to learn more about Christianity. They prayed and received the Lord, and then we gave them a Bible. They clutched the Bible to their chest, and thanked us profusely. They couldn't get over the fact that they had just been discussing this and then God brought them into our path.
We also traveled through out the slums and the gypsy villages in the outlying areas, as well as doing street ministry and puppet shows in the city. You have all seen the pictures on television of the starving children, but the media does not do it justice. There is no way to prepare yourself for the sights and sounds and the smells of poverty, and it breaks your heart to see children with their hair turning color because of malnutrition, and the flies and the stench of people living in filth. There are villages of people living literally on top of garbage dumps, with smoldering piles everywhere, and if one of them dies, they leave them where they fall, and that is their final resting place. One little baby in one of those places, oh, my heart went out to it. The father was holding it in his arms, and it was crying weakly. I kept patting it on it's back and trying to sooth it in some way. The father told me that the mother was dead, and I knew in my spirit that that baby was not long for this world. I wish that I could have taken it back home with me. Flies everywhere, biting and oozing sores on the children. How can you describe it? I thank God that I live in America. We can go home to our houses and apartments, our soft beds, but they have nothing. They lived in flimsy tents, with scraps of fabric and polyurethane thrown over a couple of sticks. I wondered what they ever did when the monsoons came...
There are many good charities to give to, and if God moves on your heart to help these people, He will show you who to give to and where to give to. They say that the Christians are the only people who help them. The Hindus believe that the reason that they are there is because they were wicked people in a past life, and this is their penance. This is their fate. Let's show them the love of God, working is us and through us.
The following pages have many photos of the faces and native costumes. I hope that they will be burned into your heart even as they have been mine. May God put it on your heart to pray for India... The people of India, from the poorest to the greatest have very warm hearts, and are the most polite and courteous people that I have ever seen. May God raise up laborers for the harvest in India.
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