Greetings from rural South India.

April 21, 2007 - Since our report submitted a week ago we have lived through another experience that can best be summed up as a trip back into Bible time.

We (Pastors Mark and Ernie) traveled with our host, Rev. K.C. Kumar, four hours by car through villages of rice field workers. The single lane road wound through villages surrounded by vivid green fields with palm trees as far as one can see. The traffic can best be described as ‘playing chicken’. We have near head-on wrecks after minute or two as we try to squeeze past large trucks on the single lane roads and avoid the pedestrians on both sides of the road. The road is lined with small merchant shops. Along the road we see threshing floors with many workers. They are harvesting rice and threshing by hand.

We arrive at the coastal village named Kothapalam and travel across the single lane bridge onto the island we will stay at for the coming week. We wind our way between the village fishing huts made of mud and thatch and head towards the beach. We are traveling on a road under construction that follows a power line, which was just put in. These people were only just given electricity! The road and power was installed after an application was submitted to the government by the new church we will visit. This new single lane road is being constructed by hand through a marshland. We see a lighthouse in the distance and discover that it is named Sacramento Lighthouse and is shown on the map as being located at Sacramento. This is very surprising since I lived in Sacramento, California for 25 years. We pull up to our village neighborhood - a thatch roof church, fences made out of brush, and around 30 mud huts.

It is surprising to see people living like this and to realize we will be living among them for a week. We have come under the scripture directive paraphrased as, “eat what they eat, walk where they walk, sleep how they sleep, live how they live”. As might be expected, there is no running water. The women walk a ½ mile or so to fetch water from a well-hole hand dug into the sand and carry it back in an aluminum urn on their head. The men sit in the yard waiting till they return. The women cook over a fire all week, three times a day, for 20 men. The shower is a 2-gallon bucket of water used to ‘splash bath’. They heated up the water for the ‘Americans’. Our bed is the cement floor with no mattress, just a blanket on the floor. (Are we tough or what?!) The bathrooms are luxuriously large - hundreds of acres of bushes. Seriously, everyone in the whole village just walks out into the bush. We can’t find any toilet paper because they don’t use any. They take a little pot with water in it and wash themselves after ‘going’.

We start our teaching 1-hour after we arrive. The sessions are started with a great and loud tribal drumming and everyone singing at the tops of their lungs in Telegu. Each pastor takes a turn praying in Telegu before we start. This is our daily routine. Throughout the week the electricity would cut out and come on randomly. There were many hours of teaching in the heat and darkness while the electricity was out.

Whereever we went, people stared at our white skin. People would come look into the church to see the white men. We took a walk among the houses during the week and greeted people and took pictures. One lady invited me into her mud hut for a glass of buffalo milk. As I was sitting in the only chair, I had 6 women and girls lined up at the door staring inside at me drinking the milk. (Could this be real?)

We teach for 12 hours a day and the 15 men are very studious and attentive. We use a chalkboard for lecturing and they take notes on the pads we brought in. Each sentence had to be translated. Our translator got a workout this week. The courses were from the Patriot School of the Bible Pastoral Training. The men had never been to a conference like this; (neither had we!) they were so excited with the material being taught. We provided the food, notepads, and a brand new Telegu bible with leather cover to each student. No tuition or fees were charged to the students. There were many others who wanted to come to the training but it had to be limited due to our finances. The pastor students represented 15 rural churches and were part of the larger Church For The Distant Ministries organization of 250 rural churches. (See www.cfdministries.org ) These men are on the front-line of Christianity in South India.

I neglected to mention that not only do we ‘eat what they eat,’ we ‘eat HOW they eat’. Every meal was rice with something. The ‘something’ was always a sauce containing vegetables, meat or fish or __? The proper way to eat was with our hands. We mix the rice and curry together with our hands and then scoop it into our mouths. At the end of the meal someone comes by with a bowl and a cup of water to pour over your hands.

The impact on the village from our living amongst them was huge. They could not get past the fact that these two Americans were living like them. We got to know each other very well – especially when the translator was close by and we didn’t have to use hand signals. We shared many stories with each other about our respective cultures. Many stereotypes were broken.

On our way back to the city we stopped by another rural church of nomadic peoples. We visit with their church and receive 15 new believers while we are there. These people eat wild birds and reptiles, live in tents, and only recently started wearing clothing.

On the last day of teaching we are honored by the presentation from the pastors of ceremonial garlands. Next, they present us with a ceremonial wrap of a shawl. If this weren’t enough, they proceed to wash our feet. Four men take turns washing our feet. We are humbled to tears.

The pastor students take turns sharing what the teaching meant to them this week. A common thread was, “This teaching was beyond our expectations and the best we have ever had. Thank you. Please remember us in prayer and consider helping us in our ministry by providing us a bicycle or financially supporting us.”  (This seems a humble request given they are serving people living off the land or as a ‘less than $1/day wage earner’.)

It was difficult to depart and we each had to hug one another 2-3 times, shake hands repeatedly, and try to tear ourselves away.

Indian Host Rev. Kumar can be found at www.cfdministries.org. Report submitted by Pastor Mark of Cornerstone Community Church and Pastor Ernie of Tehillah Ministries while on mission to India. The story was first announced in the Del Norte Prospector March 29. The trip is also sponsored by Patriot Bible University of Del Norte.

See the missions report 2005 from the visit by two American pastors after the tsunami >>>

Please consider coming here and ministering to this nation. Our Invitation

May the Lord abundantly bless you for your compassion during this critical time.
Yours bond servant of Jesus Christ.
Rev.K.Chaitanya Kumar,
Founder & President
Church for the Distant Ministries India,

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