Dear All, It's a great joy to send you this report of our ministry in North India last month. This is the first long trip we undertook after returning from the Regional Conference at Singapore in June. This break of almost two and a half months helped me recover to a great extent and although I was worried about the long travel, food and extreme hot climate up in North India, the Lord was with us and worked wonders. We returned safe and sound and here is our report: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India - 20th to 22nd September, 2013: We landed here just the day after a day of huge commotion and congestion in the streets of Mumbai. The city had just completed a 10 day long celebration of the elephant god and had ended it by immersing all the idols in the sea. Considered one of the biggest cities in India and a main business hub, the entire city is dominated by huge slums - poverty, idolatory, prostitution and every kind of vice. On the 20th, we had the first meeting for Tamil pastors, as Mumbai has a huge Tamil population of settlers. Ps. Victor, who had arranged the meetings, told us that he expected only 40 pastors as there was great disunity amongst these pastors and they would not come together. So it was to our great surprise that we found 100 pastors gathered. Ps. Victor himself was taken by surprise. They listened with rapt attention as we taught on the Divine Exchange and lead onto Curses & Blessings, finally teaching a small portion out of Spiritual Warfare and showing them how to warfare in the spiritual realm for their city. After leading them in prayer for breaking curses, we led them on to warfare for their city. There was a great unity amidst them as they did that. You can see them in the picture turning to the four directions and stretching their hands out to pray for the city of Mumbai. At this meeting we were told there were certain pastors who would critcise any preacher and any teaching. They always attended to "find fault" rather than to receive. At the end of the seminar we gave out feedback forms and guess what? the best reviews came back from those very same pastors! Each of the pastors that attended received a pack consisting of Life-Changing Spiritual Power (LCSP), Foundations and Power of Proclamation in Tamil. At this meeting was a young lady, a pastor's wife who had been attacked by a spirit of depression. Not only had she decided she wouldn't continue with the ministry, she also began to discourage her husband. She was desperately trying to leave Mumbai and return to her home town. She attended the first day's meeting and we prayed for her at the end of the seminar. Not quite a person who likes to read books, but having been touched by the teaching, she picked up the Tamil copy of "Power of Proclamation" we gave her and began to read. She then prayed and broke the power of the wrong words she had spoken and set right her confession. The next day she returned to tell us she had been completely delivered and set free! Praise the Lord!
The next day's seminar (21st Sep.) was for the Marathi & Hindi speaking pastors. Ps. Anil Kamle, the coordinator had expected 100 people. However the pastors that attended the Tamil meet, spread the word around that they had been blessed and so in place of the expected 100 people, we had 200 people the next day. More people kept coming and at 10:30 the hall was filled to capacity and beyond. They had chairs in the aisles and every vacant available space. And people still kept coming. So beyond 200 registrations, people actually had to be turned away as there was no place and the food & books would be insufficient. Ps. Victor our organiser promised them that he would soon arrange a larger conference for atleast 800 people in two different areas of Mumbai and that they would all be accommodated then. Mumbai has a larger number of women leaders than other cities, because of an equal work culture here and it was a joy to see many women leaders in attendance on Day 2. Each leader that attended received a pack of books consisting of LCSP, Foundations and God's Word Heals either in Hindi or English as they chose. At the end of the meeting several of the leaders themselves lined up for prayer, having discerned curses over their own lives. Many were healed, delivered and set free that day and were charged to go forth and do the same with all those they ministered to. On Sunday, we ministered at an Assemblies of God church in Vikhroli, Mumbai. Danny spoke in the Tamil service and I spoke at the English service. The church was about to do a big outreach to the city and quite unaware of that, we spoke about "the Harvest Just Ahead." The church was blessed and encouraged that this was truly a prophetic Word for the times ahead of them.
Jaipur, Rajasthan - 24th Sep. 2013 We moved on from there to Jaipur, which is 1000 kms north of Mumbai. Here Rev. Baiju Sukumaran, (Director of one of the Bible colleges on our GGP program) arranged a one day seminar for the pastors of the city. Rajasthan is a spiritually and environmentally dry state. We were told that there were only 80 churches in the city of Jaipur, which is a huge city and that 40 pastors were expected to attend. We had sent 75 Hindi sets and 25 English sets to them and were quite disappointed to hear that. Next morning, when we started the meeting at 9:30 there were only 10 pastors and a few of the Bible college students in attendance. Within half an hour, by the time the praise and worship was over, the entire hall was full and the Bible college students had to be seated on the floor. We had over 80 pastors attending the seminar that day! Their one testimony about the Blessing & Curse teaching and Spiritual Warfare was that it was the teaching they needed for the times. It was exactly what would help them help the people they ministered to. The Spiritual Warfare section helped them to stand together and warfare against the spiritual forces of darkness, that were keeping people from seeing the truth and also against those forces that drove people to work against them and their ministries. Again 100 sets of LCSP, Foundations and God's Word Heals either in Hindi or English, as they chose were distributed. Amongst them was a Pastor Walter Masih. In 2005 he had been targeted by the religious extremist groups and was attacked while conducting a service in his home church. The entire video is on YouTube and can be watched here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhpn7kmqjru. He was so happy and blessed by the seminar and thanked us for coming to a place where few would want to go and encouraging and blessing them with the books. Ps. Walter has now requested that we go to Punjab where his brothers are pastors and will help in organising the seminars there. Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh - 26th Sep 2013 The next leg of our journey took us 513 kms to the east of Jaipur. Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh is an industrial city. Ps. Alwin Joy who was introduced to us by one of our donors, had organised a one day seminar for 100 pastors. A person who had already been blessed by Derek's books, he was eager to have this blessing passed on to the pastors of his city. We were quite skeptical about this meeting as it was being held in a church on the outskirts of the city and many pastors would not want to travel so far. We arrived at the venue (Assemblies of God church) only to find it completely packed with people.
The atmosphere here was completely different to any other meeting we had been in. The leaders here were so thirsty for the Word, you could literally feel them soaking up every word that was spoken. They did not move even for a minute as we went through with the morning's session of 3 hours of teaching. Lunch was completed in just half an hour and they were instantly back to hear more. We were amazed at the desire in their hearts for the Word of God. All the more because they were pastors and leaders and not lay people who are generally more responsive than leaders. As we neared the end of the meeting, we had a big problem! We had despatched only 100 sets of books but there were more than 150 people attending. 90 were pastors and 40 were what we call "field workers" or people who actually go out and stay in villages and work amongst the people there in spreading the gospel. Apart from that were some women leaders and pastors' wives. So all those that came as families were given only one set of books and all those that could pick up books from the organisers were requested to do so as soon as more books would arrive from our office. At this meeting we also met a young lady called Shirley Tewari. Shirley's sister Sharon was the one who was instrumental in getting this seminar arranged. Shirley had been blessed greatly by Derek's messages when she was going through a rough patch in her marriage. She downloaded every single message of Derek's that she could find on YouTube and listened to them over and over again. Then she began to put them on pen drives and give them away to friends, relatives, collegues and any one that was going through a hard time! Since February this year she has given away many such pen drives. That night we had a late night train to Delhi as that was the only way we could get a flight back to Chennai. We requested Ps. Alwin to drop us off at the station early as we could see he was very tired after the busy day and needed a good rest and our train was a good 2 hours late. However he refused to do that and would only take us a few minutes ahead of the train's arrival. It took us only a few minutes to understand why. We arrived at the station and were just preparing to go in when suddenly about 15 to 20 armed men, got out quickly from their cars and escorted their leader to the train. We were shocked! Uttar Pradesh is completely dominated by these kind of self-made mafia leaders we were told. However recovering from the shock we were exceedingly glad that we had decided to come to a place such as this and encourage and bless the pastors who worked in such challenging situations.
New Delhi - Sep. 27th, 2013 In Delhi we would have to wait 20 hours for our flight. So we called Br. Anand Mishra, whose testimony I've already shared before about how Derek's books were the only ones by a foreign author who actually addressed the Indian culture and its problems as well and therefore touched him when he (a Brahmin) decided to follow Jesus. Br. Mishra took us to his home (although he had booked a guest house for us) which I believe was God's plan because he had a divine appointment for someone. At his house, we desperately wanted a rest as we were tired from the travel but soon knew it would not happen because people began walking in to meet us. All of these people were first generation Christians from Sikh backgrounds (Punjabis), Bihar, & Uttar Pradesh. As we were talking to them, Br. Mishra's son unexpectedly dropped in (taking a small break from the school he worked at next door) along with his collegue, an Indian music teacher called Mr. Pathak. Pathak had for several years been a devotee of the goddess Kali (an idol that demands worship with blood). I was sharing with them about Blessing & Curse and Pathak quietly listened. That evening he sent us a message saying he had been asking God to reveal himself but that it was actually his own eyes that had been blinded to the revealed Christ. Next morning as he rode on his bike to school, he felt compelled to stop and read his New Testament (that Br. Mishra's son had given him) and he read a verse from Romans that clearly spoke to him about salvation. He knew that God was speaking to him. When he reached school, Mishra's son was playing the Roman Pilgrimage on a CD player and both of them listened to Derek speak on the exactly the same verse from Romans that Pathak had read as he came to school. Pathak immediately gave his life to the Lord and went to Br. Mishra's church the very next day! Br. Mishra is now arranging a seminar in Delhi in Feb. 2014 so that many more leaders can be blessed by the teaching. Thank you for praying and supporting us. This is the first time we have had more people attending at each place than expected. Generally we are given excuses for the specified number of people not arriving but this time we've seen surplus wherever we go! Surely the harvest is happening now! Blessings, Elsie & Daniel.