Mission to India (in retrospect)

     [I'm writing this during my very long layover in Doha, Qatar while traveling back to South Africa.  I did take photos on the trip as I was able.  Once I get home I will attach some of them to this blog post.]

     First of all, I want to express my deep thankfulness to everyone who has given financially to make this mission possible, and especially to those who have prayed for me this past week while I've been in India.  I've heard certain Christians before say that they could "feel" the prayers of others; I can't say that I've ever been able to "feel" others' prayers for me.  But this week I have experienced in a dramatic way the *result* of others praying specifically for me in accomplishing a specific task.  Thanks be to God, and thanks be to all of you (you know who you are!).  And of course, thanks especially to Allison for her primary sense of support and for bearing the weight of parenting and household management while I have been away.  Thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law Andrea who came all the way from the US to be with Allison, William and Cassia in my absence.  And thanks to my host and his family for all their gracious and warmly inviting hospitality they showed me every step of the way.

     This mission to India was by far the most intense cross-cultural trip I've yet taken. It was equal parts hard work and good fun, meaning that I was working extremely hard the whole time and having an inordinate amount of fun doing it. I was hosted by Rev Samuel Jacob, who operates an organization called Harvest India (harvestindia.in) which exists to provide pastoral training and operational support to local church leaders in four Indian states (out of 29 total states in the country). The purpose for the visit was to teach a 3-day pastor's training seminar with the objective that the attendees would acquire further skills in studying/teaching the Scriptures using Gen 1-11 as the sample text. Much, if not most, error in biblical preaching/teaching stems from jumping too quickly to conclusions about what is meant in the biblical text without taking sufficient time and effort to read carefully and observe the text first. [Careful reading and observation are genuine skills; and they are actually quite difficult to develop and master, yet absolutely necessary for sound teaching of the Scriptures.] An additional benefit of using a control text to teach these skills is that the learner, after participating in such a workshop, is then equipped to preach and teach that particular book or section of text. I have found in my experience that this is a very effective teaching method, but it is both difficult and demanding for the teacher. I had taught this material before in 2015, but in a single morning session. This time I was excited to teach the material over a span of three days and give it the time it really needs for maximum effectiveness.


TUESDAY

     After a long layover in Doha, Qatar, I boarded my flight to India right on time only to sit on the airplane for more than an hour waiting for a mechanical repair to be done on the aircraft. [I was very thankful for in-flight movies during that time!] On top of this, after arriving at Bangalore there was a logistical delay in getting my visa to enter the country. My host needed to journey without me to an important meeting in Hyderabad, so he sent his manager to pick me up and take me to his house where I ate breakfast and drank some coffee. Then I went to my rented room for much-needed sleep after two consecutive red-eye flights. I went back to my host family's house for dinner. My host family lives in a four-story building, where they operate a refuge home for vulnerable children. They take care of 15 girls, who live with a house mother on the second level. My host family lives on the third level, and the manager and his family live on the first level. [I never went up to the fourth level, but I think they used it for storage.] Everyone on the premises gathers for an hour every evening for devotions, and they asked me to do the speaking that night. I read (in Hebrew) the story of Isaac on the altar from Gen 22 – interpreting into English, of course – which thoroughly delighted both me and the children! At various points in the story I would stop to comment, explaining how this story offers us a picture, very much like a photograph, of what Jesus did for us on the cross. After that I went back to my own room for the night.

Photo with the girls at the Macheseh Refuge Home

WEDNESDAY

     After traveling for a full 36 hours then sleeping some of the day and all through the night, I was fairly well-adjusted to the new time zone. [3.5 hours ahead of South Africa – yes, you read that right, 3.5 hours. I don't know why India is 30 minutes different than the rest of the world, but it is!] My host was still gone at his meeting, and the rest of my host family was going about their normal weekday activities, so I spent the first part of the day sitting at the table in their house doing some of my schoolwork and getting ready to leave for the conference. Later on, I was very thankful to have this day of down time before starting my work, because I could tell that it really made a difference in my energy levels for the remainder of the trip.  I was able to carry a pretty heavy teaching/preaching workload for several days in a row without getting physically fatigued.  I needed to take a short propeller-plane trip that day from Bangalore to Vijayawada for the conference, which wouldn't have been a problem except that many taxi drivers had gone on strike and my host family didn't know. So we had an interesting hour or so of trying to get a taxi to the airport, wondering if I would be able to make it to the airport on time. We eventually found one, and I got to the airport with time to spare. I had a brief adventure going through security that time – they made me take my umbrella and computer charger cord out of my backpack, and then they sent the bag throughout the scanner a second time. I don't know why. But when it went through the second time, I picked up the umbrella and charger, put them in my bag, then walked off without picking up my computer which was still in the plastic tray! It wasn't any more than a minute or two later that I thought to check my backpack to make sure that I had put my computer in it, then I realized my mistake and ran back to the security checkpoint. My computer was still in the plastic tray, the security person was watching it for me. [Thanks be to God, and to that security guy, for merciful kindnesses!] Once I arrived in Vijayawada, I was picked up at the airport by the family of the woman who pastors the church where the conference was being held. We all went to her house and ate a delicious dinner rice and curry with chicken (which is pretty much what I ate all week long – fantastic!). By this time it was getting quite late, so they took me to my rented room for the night.


THURSDAY

     My host arrived in Vijayawada early the following morning after traveling all night by bus from Hyderabad; he came and got me from my room and drove me to the conference. Most of the churches I saw in India were more-or-less house churches, usually no more than a large room built either on the side or on top of a house. This one was no exception: in fact, in this case the church (or "prayer hall" as they call it in their Hindu-dominated culture) looked bigger than the actual dwelling, which was where the pastor lived. Some people were already there when we arrived, singing praise songs with drums and tambourines.  All three days the group was split about 60% men and 40% women, and by the third day the number of attendees was between 50 and 60 persons.  My host said that it is typical during a multi-day event like this for some people only to attend for one day, but overall the number usually grows over the duration.  The attendees appeared very engaged, although appearances can sometimes be deceiving to a foreigner (like myself) in these kinds of situations.  But I felt like the day went fairly well.  After eating our dinner, a few of us (including my host and my interpreter) went outside the city a bit to attend an evening open-air service held at one of the Harvest India churches.  Most of the streets in India are quite narrow, and it seemed like the whole neighborhood came out.  The improvised a "stage" by hanging a large piece of fabric over a pole stretched across the entire street and then set up mats and chairs for people to sit right there on the street.  [It was in a small neighborhood, so no vehicles were going through!]  At the advice of my host, I preached a relatively simple salvation sermon from John 3.  Afterward, we hung around for a bit to chat with some of the people, then went back into the city to sleep for the night at our various places.

"Church on the Street" in the outskirts of Vijayawada, India

FRIDAY

     This day felt to me like the most impactful of the three.  In the morning session I lectured on the comparisons/contrasts between Noah and Adam in Gen 1-11 and how the stories of the two of them, when juxtaposed (as they are presented in the text), demonstrate vividly the gracious character of God, the nature of His covenant with us as humanity, and the shape of the whole salvation narrative of the entire Bible.  Over the mid-day break, my host encouraged me in my skill at teaching (Praise be to God!) and told me outright that he wanted me to come back again next year to teach the material to theology students at the seminary in Bangalore.  I thanked him for his kind comments and told him that I'd have to think about coming back...but I felt very encouraged by his positive feedback and extended invitation to return.  While we were eating lunch, my interpreter came in from talking with several of the attendees saying that many were talking excitedly about what had been discussed in the morning session.  Several, he said, were "banging their heads" that they had come late and missed the previous day!  In an attempt to help combat the afternoon heat and accompanying drowsiness, the attendees spent the afternoon sessions working in break-out groups, which produced interesting and lively group discussions afterward.  Like the previous day, we spent the entire evening at a church service on the outskirts of the city, and I preached a sermon on the story of Jacob's relationship with God, and how it goes through various stages with its crisis point being his wrestling match with God, where God changes his name to Israel.  Even though the time was quite late by the time I finished (almost 10pm) and no one had eaten dinner yet, I felt like the sermon had been very encouraging to those listening (again, praise be to God!).  Afterwards, my interpreter and I sat down, and I glanced over at him while he took off his glasses and wiped his brow.  I was thinking to myself that he looked kind of tired (interpreting is very difficult work) and that I needed to make a point to encourage him.  Well, the pastor of the church closed the service and everyone stood up to start bringing out the food.  My interpreter, who is Indian and a career missionary within India) came over to me with visible tears in his eyes.  He embraced me in a giant hug and cried.  Between sobs of joy he said, "I'm so happy!  I'm so happy!  God's Holy Spirit is with you, brother.  Thank you!  You must come back to India to keep preaching these things!"  It was one of the greatest expressions of affirmation that I have ever received.  We ate dinner and went back to the city, and I went to bed with an unspeakably profound sense of joy and gratitude to God.

Singing at the evening worship service

SATURDAY

     The third and final day of the conference went very much like the first two, although I could tell that everyone was starting to get fatigued from three straight days of workshop activity.  In the first session, I lectured on the narrative thread of prophecy in the OT starting with Gen 3:15 and illustrating how the Genesis narrator deliberately sets up the Messianic line with each successive generation.  This tension continues throughout the OT, with successive miniature climaxes with each of the covenant recipients – Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally, Jesus (of course!).  I then held a long Q&A session and wrapped with some concluding guidelines concerning reading/observing and preaching OT texts.  We finished a little earlier than the other days, and my host and I flew back to Bangalore from Vijayawada that evening.  That concluded three solid days of literally nothing but teaching/preaching, eating, preparing, and sleeping.  Very full days, but very good days.

Pastor's conference in Vijayawada

From left to right:
Pastor Arunah, myself, Israel (my interpreter), one of our drivers (regretfully, I never learned his name)

SUNDAY

     After breakfast on Sunday morning, my host and I visited a church around Bangalore that is part of the Mission India network.  The folks in this particular church were from the northern part of that state who had all migrated into the city to work.  They sang a bit differently than the conference participants, using multiple instruments including drums, tambourines, finger cymbals, and even a hand organ.   I preached a sermon on Exo 17 and the story of water from the rock – another one of the OT 'photographs' of Jesus.  After a three hour church service, the pastor and his family plus my host and I went to the house of one of the parishioners and ate a delicious lunch.  We had a very pleasant visit, although all the conversation was in Kannada (the local language in Bangalore) so I just sat and listened a laughed along when others laughed.  [It's not a bad strategy if you want to enjoy yourself in conversation that you don't understand!]  In mid-afternoon we went back to my host family's house and relaxed for the rest of the day.  My host told me that the youth meetings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday had been cancelled, so there really wasn't any work for me to do those days.  I was able to change my return flight two days earlier to arrive home on Wednesday mid-day rather than late-night Thursday.  I finished the day by reading in Hebrew for devotions that night the same story from Exo 17 that I had preached earlier in the day, which again was a big hit with all the children.

Church service in Bangalore, India

MONDAY

     My host had told me earlier in the week that he wanted to take me to the Biblica office in Bangalore.  [Biblica is the new name of the International Bible Society, and they translate/revise/publish the NIV Bible.]  So on Monday I met and talked extensively with two Indian gentlemen who are currently working in Bible translation in India – one with Biblica and the other with Wycliffe Associates.  Those were extremely productive conversations in which we brainstormed about possible solutions for helping Bible translators in country continue to develop their Hebrew skills in order to make them better translators.  After talking for quite a long time with both of those guys, we decided that there are two next steps to take: first, a similar kind of weekend workshop should be held for those translators who already have some facility with Hebrew so they can learn some more grammar with specific focus on how to most effectively dovetail Hebrew grammatical knowledge with biblical language software that is used in the translation process.  We further decided that such a workshop should be video recorded to distribute and use for Bible translators in country to continue to hone their Hebrew skills.  Lastly, I took an inventory of the Hebrew resources in the libraries in the Biblica office as well as the local evangelical seminary (see photos below).  I suggested a few more resources that would be tremendously helpful for them to have – a total of twelve books between three respective libraries.  It was an extremely exciting day for me, full of wonder and possibilities.  I joked with my host that God had brought me to India to teach the pastor's conference, but really, God had brought me to India to meet those two men.  I hope that God presents a way either for me or someone else to administer the type of workshop that they need and deliver to them the Hebrew resource books that are lacking in their libraries.  That night for devotions I read the story of Moses and the snake on the pole from Num 21.

The South Asian Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS)

The dedication stone of the library at SAIACS

     Afterward, it was time to get my things together and get ready to go to the airport to catch my red-eye flight out of the country.  Even though it was quite late when we left (about 11pm), I think 5 or 6 of the girls insisted on going along to the airport with my host, his wife, and myself to drop me off there.  Everyone said goodbye, they all went home, and went and got my boarding passes for the long journey home.

     Today (Tuesday) I have been in the airport in Doha for most of the day waiting for my next red-eye home to Cape Town.  Even though I'm eager to get home, it has been nice to have a day of down time to be able to write up this mission report while all the events are still fresh in my mind.  I'm tired now from not having slept very much last night, but I feel quite energized in the reminder that God is always "up to something" in the world, and He continually invites to join Him in His mission work.

     Finally, let us bless the Lord.  Thanks be to God.