lMsP Team's visit to North IndiaBen
Dear Prayer Partners
In answer to our prayer of more than a year, four of us of the MsP Team (George Mathew, Jacob John, Biju Samuel and John Benjamin) along with certain members of our families have had a fruitful visit to the mission fields in North India from 23 June to 5 July 2009. God has intervened, first of all, by having enabled the four of us to get annual leave simultaneously sanctioned by our employers during this year which, we had thought, was not possible until two months ago.
We travelled by train from Cochin (Kerala) to Chitharanjan (Bengal) where we were met by Santhosh Thomas and his team from the Bengal Bible Training Institute (BBTI), Jamtara. During our 3-days of stay in Jamtara, despite the scorching heat wave, we were able to visit several villages such as Madhupur, Deogarh, Kano, Banke, Rajbandh and Dunga and met many evangelists along with the believers.
From Jamtara two jeeps were arranged for our onward travel by road. Apart from the nine of us from Kerala, there were five others including Santhosh Thomas (BBTI), two Bible School students (Dumbola and Ranjit) and two jeep drivers joined the Team. Jeby K. Simon (Evangelist from Katihar in Bihar) joined the team later on the way at Malda in West Bengal. The journey to Chamurchi (via. Siliguri) was hazardous and tiresome which took almost 20 hours of driving from Jamtara. Chamurchi and Jaigaon are located at the Northern tip of India bordering the Himalayan country of Bhutan. From Jaigaon, we travelled to Darjeeling, Samukhtala, Kooch Behar, Falakata, Krishnanagar, Barasat and Kolkata. We were able to visit during this trip, 34 evangelists (at their mission fields), a majority of whom were natives (belonging to the locality). Meetings were also arranged in many villages where we also met hundreds of believers. On our return, we also had the opportunity of meeting C.P. Mathew, one of our pioneer missionaries in the State of Orissa, briefly at Bhubaneswar Railway Station. God willing, we will be sharing with our Prayer Partners detailed report of our visit to each mission field in the coming weeks.
The visit was an eye-opener for us inasmuch as we were able to see a great need for the North Indian work. “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” [Mathew 9:37,38]. This need can only be met by "burdened" brethren along with suitably equipped native evangelists raised from the respective areas.
We request all God's people to pray for the people of North India and for God to raise resources and suitable men to carry out this great task. We also take this opportunity to thank each one of you for your prayer and support for the native missionaries in North India.
With warm Christian regards
for the MsP Team
Ben
[In case you are interested to more about the visit, please email me at
ben@bengrace.net]
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