Dear Brethren in Christ,
Greetings to you in the precious name of Lord Jesus Christ our saviour. By the grace of God and your prayers I have arrived in India safe and feel very glad to be back home. I was really excited to see my wife and daughters after a long time. However, it was a wonderful time to visit the brethren and share the progress of the Lord’s work in India.
I was delighted to meet brother Mark Reynolds other brethren during this visit, that makes my visit very special. It was pleasure meeting brother Mark Reynoldswho recently took over the responsibility of working as Coordinator for the Bear Valley schools in Asia. It was wonderful to talk about our future plans to work together in India in our first meet itself, this tells how much excited he is about the Lord’s work in India. We are looking forward to working with him soon.
I have been busy ever since I returned home. So many events have taken place during the time of my visit to USA. Even though these have happened in last four months time period, they absolutely convey the busiest schedule we had at our school.
Master Classes: We had two sessions of master classes conducted by brother Denton Landon and Jerry Bates. Brother Denton visited in the month of July and brother Jerry visited in the last September and first week of October. I really thought I would get to visit brother Jerry bates upon my arrival, unfortunately I missed my connecting flight to India from Newark so my journey was delayed for 24hrs, this made me to miss brother Jerry Bates, however I had the opportunity to talk to him about various issues of our school.
We are certainly privileged to resume the Classes for this Master Class batch, earlier batch was unable to fulfil required amount of work, due to which that class was cancelled. Brother Garry Fallis under his kindness has agreed to start another batch from this July. Brother Denton was the first person to teach this batch of students. We had an enrolment of 9 students for brother Denton’s classes and two others joined during the classes of Jerry Bates. According to what I heard from the students, they are very thankful to Bear Valley for conducting these Master Classes, they are very helpful not only for them personally but also very useful to teach their home congregations.
During the visit of brother Jerry his wife Paula visited with him. She almost wants to keep her calendar busy. We were able to hold classes for Women & Preacherswives at our school premises, sister Paula always does a great job of teaching these women.
Brother Denton Landon during the Weekend break has visited Skinner’s Garden and preached at couple of congregations and witnessed three young ladies being added to the Church.
Gospel Campaigns: During the last four months our students have done two Gospel Campaigns in two different districts. Our students certainly gets a hands on experience during these campaigns. Before they go out of the preacher Training school they would learn to speak to strangers about Christ our Lord. During these campaigns they conduct personal Bible studies, Bible Classes and Gospel meetings. As a results they witnessed 9 people being added to the Church. We do hear from our students time to time about the addition of souls to their congregations.
State wide Fellowship Meeting: Congregations in the state of Andhra Pradesh have decided to meet twice in a year at a certain place in the state to have a fellowship meeting. This is to help each other to grow in the faith and build up in unity. These meetings have been giving great results in the brotherhood, our students were privileged to attend this meeting travelling for 12 hrs on train. Director of the School M. Samuel Raju has lead our group for this special meeting. Our group has gotten the attention of the 600 preachers that represented various congregations in our state. In this way our school was well notice among the brotherhood.
Gratitude: We are very thankful to the brethren at Lake Houston for their kind support and much thankful to the brethren at Strickland for their continued Oversight. I really had a great time to visit with both of these congregations during this visit, this has helped increased our relationship and continued trust and confidence. We would look forward to keep up great relationship for betterment of the Lord’s work India, especially training the Men. If everything goes well a group of 14 students will receive their course completion diplomas in the month of April’17, kindly pray.
There are more to come in my next email with more updated information about our Preacher Training program in Visakha. All the staff, faculty and students of our school convey their heartfelt greetings to you all. Kindly pray for us that our efforts may be successful in rescuing the lost souls.
Please greet your family and the Church family for us,
In Christ,
John Dean M
Visakha Valley Bible College
Church of Christ, Visakhapatnam.
A.P - INDIA