Dear Brethren Christ,
Greetings to you in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. By the grace and mercy of God, and your kind love, we are blessed to do the marvelous work of the Lord. We thank you brethren for your kind prayers and esteemed encouragements through which we successfully completed the year 2013 and we are ready to enter into the year 2014. We appreciate the brethren at Lake Houston for their support, also the brethren at Strickland Church of Christ for overseeing the work, and especially our special thanks to the elders of Bear Valley who blessed us with the school program.
Greatest Need:
During his visit in the month of October, brother Denton Landon asked what is the greatest need. We said, “Bibles.” Brother Denton, with the extra money he had, bought 40 Bibles at $3.00 each. We are thankful to him for helping us with the Bibles. These Bibles have been distributed among our students and preachers. We have a mission to bless all the new converts with a new Bible, also these are great tools of evangelism. In a religious country like India, there are several who revere the Bible as a Holy Book. They want to have a copy of it and, certainly, when we approach such families it opens the door for a preacher to bring them to the Lord.
Brother Srinu who was a graduate of first batch lives in Vaddadhi, Visakhapatnam District. He received some of the Bibles and distributed them to the new converts in their congregation.
New Students – New Era:
Jesus Christ in His final commission commanded us to go preach to all the nations. Our school objective is to train young faithful men who shall be able to teach others. Thankfully enough, the mission of our school is to reach out. The addition of 5 students from the tribal area in the border line of the state of Andhra Pradesh and state of Orissa has opened up of a new window for us to extend our mission efforts in that area. How blessed we are to reach that area with their men, truly our mission is being full filled by this. These students are diligent in learning the Word and very enthusiastic to establish congregations in their communities. Imagine them going back to their home villages and working as a team to preach Christ to the natives who are in the remote world (mountains). We pray that their desire would come true and many souls will be saved, may they bring glory and honor to our Lord.
Local congregation helping the school:
We are delighted to share with you all the very exciting news, which is a local congregation providing a little something for the students each week. We have some students who spend their Sundays with the local congregation. Now the local congregation at Samatha Nagar regularly has a little over 30 members. They began to help buying some fruit and snacks to the students from their weekly contribution.
We are very happy to share with you the recent mission work that these small groups of Christians do in the area where our preacher training school is, that is every Friday the women are doing door knocking, in last couple of weeks they were successful in getting 6 contacts. Hopefully, they will start coming to the Church services. Ladies also have a regular class every Friday evening. We are delighted to see the congregation growing.
Annual Report (2013):
Here is the result of our students’ (current & previous) efforts in the mission field in the Visakhapatnam area in the year 2013.
Number of people baptized: 96
Number of Bible studies conducted: 1068
New congregations established: 8
Christians restored: 32
Gospel meetings conducted: 176
Denominational preachers converted: 8
How many Gospel campaigns conducted: 6
Preachers’ fellowship meetings conducted: 8
Number of undergraduates finished their courses: 13
Number of graduates in the Master’s class finished their course: 9
Number of current undergraduate Students: 15
Number of current Master’s class Students: 9
So far through our Bible College we have sent 39 students, presented 9 Master Class students, 15 regular students. As a whole, 63 preachers are in the mission field laboring in the Lord’s vineyard.
If it is the Lord’s will, we shall start a parallel class from April with another 10-15 students. Kindly pray that our school work would be a great blessing to the people of India. Right now we are coming across several people who are interested to join in the school. We hope this new parallel batch would help us to produce 15 preachers every year.
Thank you all brethren, especially brother Bob Turner who is doing a great job in directing the BVBID Extension Schools. We do thank the faculty, brother Garry Fallis and Denton Landon. Our special thanks to brother Jerry Bates and his wife Paul for being representatives of our school. We must not forget our gratitude to brother Steve Wiseman who is instrumental in keeping up the very good relationship with the brethren at Lake Houston. May God continue to bless you and your families as you are striving to work for His cause.
Our new batch of students received Telugu literature about the Parables in the Bible, written by brother Louis Rushmore.
Our graduate, Srinu, distributed Bibles to the new converts.
One of our students was recently baptized before they were enrolled in the school. We are so thankful all the students of the present batch of students are members of the Church.
The Master’s class of students received WVBS DVDs.
John Dean was able to preach at a gospel meeting held by brother Vamsee Bhushanam, who lives in a place called Chirala. He is doing a great job in teaching in the school at Visakhapatnam as well as at his local congregation. He has a great zeal for the Lord. He travels a good bit to get to school and we commend his interest to teach in the school; certainly he is playing a vital role in producing the preachers from our schools. May our efforts equip the young evangelists to expand the Kingdom of God.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
In Christ
Samuel Raju & John Dean Muppidi
Visakha Valley Bible College