Calcutta (Kolkata)

Learning about the Hindu culture, 
forming cohesion among the teams

The teams visited a Hindu temple, Mother Theresa's grave, an orphanage, and spent time in prayer for each other. This prayer time ended up lasting for about 5 hours. Each person sat in the center of the circle and was prayed for. Someone had a word for Chris, and spoke that this trip was going to be challenging for him. Chris found in the end that this came true because the area his team went to was "hard ground". They did not see as many people receive Christ as Lord, which was challenging for Chris to experience. He found God was teaching him to trust in times of "sowing seed" rather than seeing a large harvest. Another neat way God used this prayer time is that the hotel staff ended up waiting to serve lunch to the group and during this time they watched the group praying. Afterward, some of the staff came forward and asked to hear more about God.

Assam (Karbi people group), part 1

Visiting small villages to share the gospel 
and plant churches

The large group broke up into three teams. One team went to Siliguri, set up a medical clinic for a couple of days and shared the gospel in villages around Siliguri. Another team went to Sikkim, at the foothills of the Himalayas, visiting Buddhist areas and sharing the gospel wherever possible. Chris' team flew into Guahati, then took Jeeps for 3.5 hours to some remote villages and camped in tents on the property of a church that had been established in the area. The plan was to go to nearby villages each day (20 - 50 homes) and share the gospel through translators. These villages had been closed to
local Christians, but were more receptive to Americans coming in to talk with them (something new and different). A couple of challenges were discovered along the way. The translators were Christians from a church in a neighboring area, who had sent a full time missionary to work and were committed to making follow-up visits for discipleship and establishing churches. However, it turned out that these translators did not speak the local language, so the Christians spoke English and translated to Naganese, then spoke to a person from the village who knew a language similar to Naganese, then translated to the local language. The other challenge was that the villages started a three day festival involving drinking, sacrifices, and late nights, making them somewhat inaccessible for the team to witness to. The team was able to get in a day and a half of witnessing before the festival started, and Chris said he felt the first village they went to had been particularly prepared by God for hearing the gospel. It may have been that God's intention was for them to go to this area specifically to see this one village come to know Christ, as well as to sow seed in some other areas.

This first village, where the team saw a harvest, had seen many people in the village show interest in accepting Christ as Savior, but the people were afraid of being thrown out of the village. However, a couple of members of the team shared with the village elders and saw them and their sons accept Christ. The local Christians believed this village would be an appropriate one to work on planting a church, since the people should be more willing to come and commit their lives to Christ if the village leaders/elders had also accepted and would be less likely to throw them out.
Assam (Karbi people group), part 2
Prayer walks and encouraging the local
church

After two and a half days of sharing the gospel with villages, the Hindu festival started and the group was no longer able to share with people. Instead, they worked on doing prayer walks in some of the villages. This was a good opportunity to encourage the local church, which has been seeking to evangelize the area for around 20 years.

Toward the end of their time in the Assam area, locals began to hear talk around the village that there were negative feelings toward the missions team, so the leaders felt it would not be safe to do any more prayer walks in the villages. Instead, the group spent one day with some church members visiting the Kaziranga National Wildlife Refuge. On the last day in the area, the team hiked through a forested area with some waterfalls. They met a Brahman who lived near a large waterfall and who worked on building shrines in the area. The team had an opportunity to share with him and thought he didn't accept Christ as Lord, Chris felt it seemed like his eyes may have been opened a bit and perhaps a seed has been planted.

Overall, this time in Assam was definitely a challenge for Chris, since it was frustrating to not be able to continue the work they had come to do once the festival started. However, he was glad for seeing God work in the first village where they had visited. He also recognized that the team had been able to visit all the villages the team had planned to visit in that first two and a half days. The missions team could have visited more villages, but the local church would have had a hard time trying to follow up in more villages. The two or so churches that the group is planning to plant and support is probably just the right amount for what they can handle. Aside from the spiritual challenges of the trip, Chris was very comfortable and stayed healthy for the whole trip. The team had been told they would be doing "extreme camping", but it turned out that they camped on the property of the church planted by the Nagaland church and wives of the Nagaland missionaries prepared a wonderful spread of food for them each day. Apparently dog is one of their delicacies, so if you want more details about that, you can ask Chris.

Siliguri

Meeting back with the rest of the groups, 
celebrating what God has done

Chris and his team then had a 4 hour bus ride back to Guahati, then an 8 hour overnight train ride to Siliguri to meet back up with the rest of the team. The train was an interesting experience, sharing a sleeper compartment with at least 9 other people. However, the sleeper car was better than the general area, which is apparently basically a boxcar where they will crowd as many people in as they can and sometimes there is standing room only.

When the team made it back to Siliguri, they had an opportunity to visit with the family of an American missionary who had been helping the camping team with their evangelism work. Then the other teams arrived and they had a time of sharing stories about what had happened for each group. One neat story that came from the group in Sikkim was that one day they were going to have a special tea prepared for them, but the preparation took a lot longer than they expected. Thus, the team was delayed by a few hours in their plan to go up to a Buddhist monastery. However, because of this delay, they were in the area of the monastery at a different time and ran into a group of students being trained to be tour guides. They were learning the history of the area, but were also interested in talking the Americans they saw. The group came over to the missions team and asked if they would be willing to share with the students about what had brought them to the area. The missions team was more than willing to share and they saw pretty much all the students accept Christ as Lord and Savior!

Nepal

A day of exciting work in a different 
country

The team drove to the Nepal/India border and spent about two hours getting through Indian customs and then going through Nepal's border entry. However, the team was able to meet up with a local church group and go out to a village to share the gospel with them. Chris' group had the opportunity to meet an elderly woman and her 20 year old granddaughter (who had a newborn child). These two women accepted Christ after hearing the gospel, and then mentioned that the elderly woman's husband was in another house nearby, but was very ill. The group asked if they could meet him and pray for him, and they were taken to him. The group shared the gospel with him and the man accepted Christ as well. Then the team prayed for healing over him, as he had been paralyzed in both legs and blind for the last two years. The interpreter shared that the man told him something amazing...before the team had prayed, the man had seen only blackness, but after the prayer for healing, he was able to see light and could discern shadows from the people moving around him! Praise God for his healing work!

Travel Home

God continues to sustain through a long 
transition to get home

The total trip was 16 days...2 days of travel to Calcutta, 2 days in Calcutta for training and team building, 1 day of travel to local missions areas, 6 days of Evangelism work, 1 day of travel back to Siliguri, 1 day in Nepal, 1 day of travel to Singapore via Calcutta, 1 free day in Singapore, and 1 day (a full 24 hours) of travel from Singapore to Portland via Los Angeles. Chris was tired when he got home, but glad to be back (and his wife was very happy to have him home!) and joyful in all the work God had done during the trip. He kept the team physically safe, taught them a lot about trusting in him, gave them wonderful fellowship among the team and with the Christian nationals, and gave them the opportunity to see over 600 Indian people profess faith in Christ (among the work of the three teams in different areas)!

In that day you will say: 
"Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; 
make known among the nations what he has done, 
and proclaim that his name is exalted.

Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; 
let this be known to all the world.

Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, 
for great is the Holy One of Israel among you."

Isaiah 12:4-6