On the Mountain Top

We had another super day in India. We started off with an inspiring and encouraging devotional from John 11 which Monte delivered at the pastor’s conference.

We then boarded the bus for the much anticipated visit to the village Rolling Hills has adopted. This involved a true trip to the mountain top. The village is about 1 1/2 hours up a one lane “hair pin” road above the Sharon campus. The good news is that it is paved with the exception of the last 8 km or so. It was great to have a Jeep! On the way up the mountain there were many monkeys beside the road. The area is largely dedicated to coffee plantations and pepper – the harvesting of which provides employment. Land is owned by absentee landlords. It is beautiful and once you get to the village, it is refreshingly cooler than the valley below. There are several tourist hotels on the way up for those that want to beat the heat of summer.

Our adopted village S. Puthur has a population of 425. It is 99.5% Hindu with only 4 baptized believers. It consists of 116 families with a family income of $225 per year. It is rather isolated for them in that it is a 13 km or 8 mile walk to the closest bus stop. The Life Center we will be building will serve a larger network of 15 small villages totaling 8,000 people. The pastor is a 20 year veteran with India Gospel League in church planting.

We were able to see two of the villages. We were greeted warmly in both with the pastor and our guide from Sharon explaining the nature of the difficulty of preaching the gospel in this un-reached area – despite the proximity to Sharon. There is significant economic pressure to conform to the Hindu way of doing things as Hindus own the land and provide the only jobs “in town” despite the rather meager $1 per day wage rate for men and half of that for women; this picking coffee beans – bean by bean - on steep mountainsides all day long. The closest health clinic is also Hindu. Our visits to both villages were centered around the children and Gary did his thing in a wonderful way with the children getting their first exposure to “Jesus Loves the Little Children” and “May the Lord Bless You” in English, puppets and high fives. There were five or six attached to him as we boarded the bus back to Sharon! We did get an inkling of the significance of what a commitment means to this village when Monte prayed over and inaugurated the day care center while we there.

On our return Gary and Monte participated in the ordination of 50 pastors at the conference. It was very humbling for them as they came to grips with what it takes to be a pastor for these barefooted men serving over 30 villages. Puts a lot of things in perspective. Our first communion in India was a great way to end the day – remembering what life is truly about.

We will provide some additional detail on Adopt a Village in a subsequent edition as it is kind of late!

Keep India and us in your prayers. We miss you and have you in ours.
Bob for the boys