Love India Mission Report | Pastor Gary Johnson | TAMI Global | 17th June 2023

foreign [Music] when I first saw this slide right here it broke my heart you can go to the next slide when I first saw this slide right here it broke my heart every single one of those red dots that you see up there represents an unreached people group less than one tenth of one percent Christian with no significant Christian witness no gospel Outreach to each and every one of them as you can see there are red dots all over the globe there are unreached people groups everywhere you go in the world but look at India the entire nation is a is it just a one huge Red Dot because there are so many unreached people groups what did Jesus say in Matthew 24 14. this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world to Every Nation and that word there doesn't have anything to do with countries it has to do with people groups ethnic groups tribes and languages just as we were singing about earlier those are the people groups that God wants us to reach as you can see there there's a huge swath of India that has never been touched even after over 200 years of mission work there's still a huge huge area hundreds of millions of people in that one country that have never been reached with the gospel we don't have time to go into all of the statistics But please understand that there are thousands of people groups in India and only 10 percent of those have actually been reached with the gospel where there's a significant number of Christians and there there are churches that have been planted that's the bad news the good news is God is at work in India Hallelujah God is doing a wonderful Mighty work in the country of India 23 years ago in the year 2000 the number the rate of uh the the percentage of Christians was estimated to be about 2.3 percent today 23 years later that number has increased three times almost seven percent of the country of India is now counted to be Christian Hallelujah but out of a population of 1.4 billion people India is now the world's most populous nation in the entire world it has overtaken China out of 1.4 billion people that still leaves a lot of people for us to reach so now we can go to the next one so where do we fit in back in 2018 God gave a vision to Pastor alias and he calls that Vision love India because the vast majority of the people that are yet to be reached are in The Villages you can go to any city in India and you will find churches you can go to almost any town in India and you will find churches but when you go to The Villages that is where the greatest need is there are 750 000 villages in India and right now today there's still over 300 000 villages in India three lacked Villages that have no Christian witness not a single Church no pastors no leaders to present the gospel to the people so we have a huge huge work to do so what is the vision that that God has given to us it's to see India's Villages transformed by the love of Christ and what is our mission what is our role there it is to equip India's villagers to transform each Village spiritually and socially we cannot do the work all by ourselves we must team with people if we can go to the next slide so this is the the vision that God gave to Pastor Alias we want to start in The Villages by just doing Simple acts of kindness simple acts of love then we want to train servant leaders we want to train Pastors in what we call Village Development officers to transform India's villages we want to meet the social needs in areas of Agriculture business and health care and we want to meet their spiritual needs evangelism discipleship and Leadership and by doing this we believe that the spirit of God will use us to transform thousands and thousands of villages throughout all of India in every state of India that is the vision that is the mission that God has given to us next so how do we do this we do this by partnering with churches I'm going to I'm going to be focusing on two different areas where God where God has started to to knit us together with some pastors and with some Churches in North India but we can't do it by ourselves we have to partner with churches and Ministries throughout all of India and in that way we can reach the people there in that country next so I want to start by looking at the the an area in central odisha called condimal District now back in 2007 and 2008 there was a terrible persecution in that district and many many Christians were martyred churches were burned homes were burned people were driven from their homes but today God is transforming that District today God is turning that District around and many many people many many people are coming to Christ and so I want to look at the work that we're doing that Tammy is doing primarily through our pastor Rajan degal and the pastors that he's overseeing you can go to the next this is Pastor Rajan and his wife nirmala and the next Slide the next photo shows them with their little boy next this is Pastor Rogers family and we're standing in front of his home where he lives uh or where he grew up that's his father and mother that's some relatives of his next and this is uh the trail to get to his home it's rather isolated and it's not easy to get there that's Pastor Roger on his motorcycle crossing a bridge on the way to his home next this is odisha it's beautiful it's Lush it's green it's very fertile but it's also very rugged and very isolated it's hard to imagine if you go back it's hard to imagine but in this picture there are tribes you can't see them but they're there they're villages in that picture that you cannot see but they're there and those are the places that we have to reach we have to reach every single Village we can't ignore anyone okay next so how do we get there these are the kind of trails that we have to walk on and and take motorcycles you can't take a you can't take your car there you can't take an SUV there you have to go by motorcycle and sometimes you have to you have to walk next so I just you can just flip through these slides quickly you can just see the conditions that we have to travel on this picture right here was taken from a bridge I was standing up on a bridge but it's under construction and we couldn't even get the motorcycles up there so the men are having to having to take the motorcycles through that uh through that uh stream okay you can just keep flipping through these okay these are this is uh let me show you this one right here they had to take the motorcycle across the across the stream when this little little bridge if you can even call that a bridge so those are just some of the physical challenges that we face in reaching the villages but this is what has to be overcome this is the commitment that is required to get there okay so the village pastors there I am with Pastor Rajan on the on the far left there and the other pastors that you see there those are the pastors that Pastor Rajan oversees There are 16 other pastors that we're working with and they do exclusively Village Ministry they're ministering in 30 different Villages and I had the privilege of visiting most of those every month every month Pastor Rajan brings all of the pastors together for a pastor's meeting there we were meeting in a home that they're renting and the next slide will show you the the they were preparing that's his wife and some some helpers back there preparing the dinner for the for the pastors next this is Pastor cicerakanta and his wife and you need to understand the photographer was standing against the wall and this is their home this is the home where they were living when I first met them that's their home it's still not exactly still not exactly up to UAE standards I'd have to say but it's much much better it's a much nicer home than what they had before and they're very grateful to God for providing them with that home okay next okay I'm just going to flip through these very quickly this is the home of the pastor here on the left Pastor Moshe just go ahead okay this is Pastor Domina in front of his home go ahead okay I want to mention this man right here the man to my left Pastor gobinda he's a very small man but he is a stick of dynamite for God he is on fire for Jesus it is just wonderful to be with him he is just his joy and his love for the Lord is just infectious now I want to show you some of the village churches okay these are home fellowships all right these people these these uh the every every one of these that you're going to see they're meeting in homes there's only one exception there's only one place where the people actually have a church building and so all of these churches meet in homes so you can just go ahead and flip through these I just want to just want to give you an idea all of these are different Villages that we visited all of these are different home fellowships where I was able to to visit with the people and meet with them all the churches that Pastor Rajan and his pastors oversee this is the only church building that that we have and ironically this church was on the way to uh you know remember that path where there was really no path that you could see this is the this is the village where that where that uh church is that that's the church that meets in that church building there amen go ahead okay okay I want to mention hold on back up just a minute I want to mention this group right here very very powerful uh testimony of what God Did In This Place remember the picture that I showed you where I was up on the bridge and the guys were leading their motorcycles through the stream okay this is the village where we were going there we got to the village and of course you know especially when they see a white person it's like wow what's this white person doing here what's going on but they didn't say anything to us didn't say a word to us so we passed through the village and we came to this home and we met with this group of Believers and we just had another normal meeting with them we prayed with them I've shared the word we sang some songs we were there for about two hours and then we left after we left the Hindus from the village came to this church came to these Believers and they said we can't believe that the that these people these this Foreigner came to this Village this is the first Foreigner who's ever been to our village even the government workers do not come to our village and because that these people were willing to come all this way we now know that your Jesus is real see you see when we go and just just the simplest act of kindness just the simplest Act of love we have no way of knowing what God is going to do in and through that we don't know the impact that just even our mere presence can have in one of these villages now this is Pastor Sagar Pastor Sagar Kumar nag and his wife and their little boy they were in the village of Knoxville body up in West Bengal up all the way almost to the border of seacom very far in the north part of India so so I've went and met with Pastor Sagar and his team and we also had some other pastors that joined us this was back at the beginning of May and we had a wonderful meeting with them sharing with them the vision of Love India so this is we can just flip through these very quickly these are some of the village churches where Pastor Sagar and his team are also ministering so I had the privilege of visiting with some of these Villages here and this was the home of some of the Believers that they had just built just recently this is their home right there okay go ahead so you can flip through these uh I had the privilege of just visiting some of the villages uh some of the homes there and praying with the people stop pulling back up back up one right there I want to mention this little lady right here this woman on the right hand side she's only about that tall okay but God has saved her God has brought her into the family of God and she had many many physical ailments and God has healed her of many of these ailments but not all of them she still suffers from some things and the villagers told her why do you believe in Jesus because he hasn't healed you completely and the and she told them God may not have healed me of everything but there is one thing that he has done that no other God has done he has saved me I have salvation in the name of Jesus she is just on fire for Jesus and I had the chance to I had the privilege the wonderful privilege of praying for her and just encouraging her and when I left I don't think I've ever seen a bigger smile on anyone's face in my entire life so we had a wonderful time of just visiting with many of the villages you can go on to the next one there I want to stop hold stop here for just a minute that man standing beside me he may not look very intimidating but that man used to be a high government official he was the right-hand man of one of the leading government officials in that area and this man before he came to the Lord this man has killed people because of his position he's had people executed because of his authority but now he is leading people to the lord they're in his village God is completely transformed his life this is his lamb that he has donated to the church there in one of the villages in West Bengal and they're going to be building a church building right there on that land okay this is his this is his extended family and they are the the core team of the Bill of the the church that meets there in their Village okay and I just love this little picture this little girl is deaf and mute but she loves Jesus and that's her standing there in that in that area okay so where do we what's our role what do we do we're going to be starting what I call love the India Academy and it's a training program to take some of the young people who are hungry for the word of God hungry to be involved in Ministry and we're going to be training them I'm going to be spending about a month in West Bengal and then about a month in odisha later this year and I'm going to be training some of the young people about 20 young people in each one of these locations and then after that they're going to have four months of practical internship working under their local Pastor so that they can take what they've learned and begin to put it into practice we must have multiplication we can't I can't do it myself okay there's very very little that I can do but I can help train some people so that the the our efforts are multiplied and I can we can take the gospel into many many villages throughout India okay so I'm not going to go through all of this uh God has given us some core values that we're going to instill into the people knowing god in power Love and Truth developing and maintaining Godly character and then finally next just as we just heard sending laborers into the Harvest one thing that I say is that I can I can teach people all day long but if they do not then go and put those things into practice if they do not take the word of God take the gospel into the villages I've failed completely so just as the verse says pray that the lord of the Harvest will thrust forth workers into the Harvest field okay you can go on to the next I've got to move along real quickly here training we're going to be training the people remember I showed you Pastor damina well next slide he donated all of this land to Tammy all of this land now belongs to Tammy and is part of the work that Pastor Rajan is doing and we are in the process right now go ahead we're in the process right now of building a training center they're in all of these stones that you see there the villagers themselves went into the jungle and gathered those stones and brought them for this work that they're doing they're they're uh they've purchased all of these bricks here and they're building a training center where we're going to be having these courses later on this year amen keep going okay the same thing in West Bengal they are in the process right now of building preparing facilities so that we can have the training program later this year I'm going to be going to West Bengal in September I'll be there for a full month and then after West Bengal I'll be going on to down to odisha to condom all district so as you can see the work has to be done by hand a lot of this work is being done by the church members themselves the type of building that they're constructing and this one is is almost completed so the students when they can the students come for the month of training the students will be living in these buildings here they're preparing they're building one for the the girls and another building just like it for the boys and so this is the this is the hope that I cling to okay India India has been a land of Darkness for centuries but God has promised us that the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light and those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them a light has shined that is the promise that God has given to us that is the promise that I hold on to and I believe that we are going to see the Fulfillment of This Promise in the land of India amen [Music]