India, Part 2: The First Village

Sorry for not posting all too frequently. I was counseling at FCBC's Jr. High Camp last week, and I hope to do a post on that soon because I witnessed some truly awesome things that God did there, but I'll try to keep things in order and post about one event at a time. And at the moment, there are at least three more India posts I have sketched up in my head, so on we go...

I got at least one "complaint" of sorts that my last post was disappointing because he really wanted to hear about what actually happened in India and, already being valiantly up to date with my life, he didn't actually learn anything new from reading that post. So I was going to dedicate this second post to all my fellow teammates on this trip, but that might be passive enough to draw another complaint, so I'll switch the order of the posts around and jump straight into what happened in the villages right now...

Going into this trip, I was prepared with the understanding that it would be a very straightforward and direct sharing of the gospel. I was very objective and checklist-minded, ready to mechanically draw a crowd with my guitar, preach the gospel using the Evangecube, and ask if anyone wanted to accept Christ. Easy as 1, 2, 3! Bam, bam, bam! I thought we were trying to get to as many villages as we could and bring the gospel to as many people as possible. (There are a LOT of villages and thus a LOT of people in India!) I thought I didn't have time to stop and get to know people and sympathize with their stories. I thought I'd leave that up to God and the power of the gospel. But God decided to leave it up to me, His chosen hands and feet.

Our team split up and went out two by two, plus a native Christian translator or two. I ended up being paired with a sweet older lady from Maryland named Kathi. She was actually one of the team co-leaders who works for e3, the global missions organization that we were partnering with. So when we were on route to the very first village that we visited to evangelize to and she said that the first thing we should do was just to walk around and pray, I didn't argue aloud, but I internally wondered if it was really necessary. Yet as we wandered around and attracted more than a few bewildered gazes from the village people, we came across several Hindu structures (e.g. altars, temples) and sensed the strong Hindu influence that was present.

Not the exact same one that Kathi and I saw, but one of the many Hindu structures that our team saw throughout the villages. Photo credit: Gina Edmond.

After a while, I did finally get to go down my checklist. As we found a sort of village center, I began playing a few worship songs with my guitar, and as I began to draw a curious crowd of locals my songs between interspersed with hopes and prayers that God would save these people before me. I was starting to get pumped, thinking to myself, "This it it! This is the reason that I came here! This is it! I'm going to share the gospel with these people and see salvations!" So I shared... and no one accepted Christ. Hinduism was too deeply rooted in their hardened hearts, and they could not accept the idea of there being only one, true God rather than their many, many gods. Interestingly enough, at least one man (and probably more) actually knew some parts of the Bible, and sang (by memory) a passage from the book of Psalms to us. They knew about God, my God, yet they could not accept Him as the only God. It was frustrating to me that these people seemed so close to salvation, and yet so far. This first village yielded three main reminders to me: (1) knowledge alone does save; (2) no matter how much or how little time you spend with a given person or people, sharing the gospel must always be relational; (3) not everyone is sent to reap; some sow, some water, some plow; yet all are necessary to result in harvest; we must trust in God's sovereign timing along this process to make Him famous.

OK, I'm really tired now, so I'll talk about the other villages later. Good night.