We woke up Monday morning excited to head out for our first day of ministry in one of the Indian villages surrounding Aurangabad. We met our team and received our assignment, a small village named Domegaun. We met up with our driver, an amazing guy named Taj (we'll talk about him more in "The Team" post), piled in his jeep and hit the road.
We thought it was going to be a short 30 minute ride to the village but were surprised to find that the village was actually about an hour and half away. It took even longer the first day as we made some stops along the way and missed a turn. We used the time to get to know each other better and the time passed by quite quickly.
When we arrived in the village, we had the driver drop us off at a little store by the side of the primary road through the village. This was one of only two stores and was basically just an outside counter that you could walk up to and someone would pull what you needed. We saw three men sitting on a bench outside the store and figured we would start by witnessing to them.
We had been told not to do any open air preaching but instead to focus on just talking to small groups of people. What we didn't realize was how quickly the villagers would flock to see the Americans. Am started sharing with the three guys but people just kept gathering and gathering around us. She had to start over a few times for all of the new people. By the time she finished, we had 75 children and 20 men gathered around us. Here is Am sharing with the people and a picture of us posing with them:
A teenager approached us while we were talking with the people and asked if we would come to his house for lunch. Ordinarily we would have turned him down as we planned to use the lunch hour to get away and talk about how things were going and how we would spend our afternoon. But this teen had a cross necklace on and we were intrigued. His family was made up of believers and he explained that his grandfather had been a pastor in a small church across from his house. But when his grandfather died, the church stopped meeting.
The family treated us extremely well and invited us into their home. They brought Am their Bible which was extremely dusty. She gave them a firm lecture on the importance of reading the Bible and not letting it just sit on their shelf. We spent an hour or so visiting with the family and they gave us a tour of the village. It was a fantastic start to our time there!
While on the walking tour of the village, the leader of the Hindu temple came out and was a little on the hostile side (he was drunk). The gals were on ahead when he started making a ruckus but it was really amazing to see the men from the Christian family quickly surround me as if to protect me from the man. I probably outweighed each of these men by 40 pounds but they felt responsible for me. Here is a picture of our team with the Christian family and one of me sharing with a Hindu man as we started out on our walking tour:
The village was divided into two sections so after our tour we drove down to the lower section. When we got out we were instantly drawn to a lady who was one of the most precious ladies I have ever met in my life (and I know Am agrees). She was so excited when she found out we were missionaries. She was older and explained that she had struggled with a lot of health problems years back. A missionary had come to the village and prayed for her. She said her health instantly improved and she no longer had to take all of the medications she had been taking for years. She brought us down to her house where we found another family of believers. In India, Christians make up just 2% of the population. Those statistics were pretty similar for this village as well. We can only attribute it to God that we managed to end up at two Christian homes on opposite sides of the village that first day. This would become extremely important on day two in this village. Here is Am with the lady I mention above and me hanging out with some of the men from this house:
When we returned the next morning, we headed for the house of the first family that we had met the day before. We had arranged to be able to speak in the local school. When we arrived at the school, we were dealt a little bit of a surprise when we were told that we couldn't share the Gospel with the kids (which was the whole point of us being there). We were only allowed to share "moral stories" with them. We were not sure how to proceed so one of our translators said he would do the speaking. This turned out to be a HUGE God thing. Ten minutes into his speaking, two well dressed men entered the school and you could see a look of fear come across the headmaster's face. They quickly got chairs for the men and had them sit down. Our translator finished speaking and we got up to leave. The men followed us outside and then started asking our translators questions. I could only stand and watch as I had no idea the meaning of the conversation, except that it was not good.
After a while, the men turned their attention on me and started to ask me questions. They wanted to know what we were doing there, why we would choose to visit a village and not just stay in the cities, and what we were doing in the school. They recorded my answers using a cell phone and then started asking Am similar questions. Eventually they left. We decided to go ahead and take our lunch break so we left the village and found a quiet spot to sit. This is when I was filled in on the conversation. These gentlemen worked for the government and one of the men was a part of the group that limits Christian activity in the country. They were looking to catch us on a violation of our visa so they could make us leave the country. Had one of us been the ones speaking in front of the school when the men had arrived, we likely would have been sent back to the U.S.!
We knew the men would be monitoring the village (and someone from the village had clearly called them) so we had to decide how to proceed. I called our team leader back in Aurangabad and we agreed that as long as I felt our team was safe, we could proceed. We couldn't really evangelize anymore in the village but we really felt that God had led us to these two families of Christians as we could spend the rest of our time their discipling them and building them up to do the evanglism among their friends and neighbors.
We decided the home in the lower part of the village was the best meeting place as we could not be seen from the road and it was far from the school where the incident had taken place. We had so much fun studying with these families and really fell in love with the people. Am became very close with a 17 year old girl named Jesthrie from the second family who had such a heart for Jesus. She was one of the few people in the village (which was classified as a slum) to make it to college. She hoped to use that college experience for God in full-time ministry. She was the type of person who, with God's help, could change India.
We spent the rest of our time in Domeguan studying with the believers (and many non-believers who wandered down to the house) and doing some children's programs. As always seemed to be the case, we would plan on only speaking to a small group but they tended to grow in size until the area was packed. Here are some additional pictures from our time in Domegaun:
I love the last picture above because you can see the emotion on Am's face. The lady to her right is singing a worship song in the local language and it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. If I wasn't cut out of this picture, I am sure you would see tears streaming down my face!
The original plan was for us to spend the entire week in a single village but because of some concerns regarding safety, the decision was made to send each team to a second village for two of the five days of ministry. It was absolutely heartbreaking for us to leave Domegaun. We truly loved those people and felt so attached to them after such a short period of time. They will forever remain in our hearts and prayers!
