Dear Brethren in Christ,
Greetings to you in the precious name of Lord Jesus Christ our saviour. Hope this email finds you all good. We are so uplifted by the grace of God that has been bestowed upon us during this pandemic. We are so grateful to our mighty God for being so kind and watching over and protecting us during the life threatening situation in India. We are so thankful to you all for lifting up your prayers on our behalf. Our God is so kind and respond to our prayers being offered for each other and for the brethren across the world.
Brethren, God has blessed us with wonderful Christ minded leader, our Director Samuel Raju; we have been encouraged by his commitment towards the lost and dedication in training Men and great desire to reach the unreached with Gospel of Christ. During the this Corona Pandemic traveling has become an issue for the purpose of safety. It has totally restricted us to go anywhere and even to find out the whereabout of our brethren. Sadly it has restricted us to visit some of the brethren who were sick and some who have lost their loved ones.
However, Brother Samuel wanted to visit those brethren who are living the hill areas, who lives 3 hrs away from Visakhapatnam. It is totally in the hill area surrounded by green hills and flowing streams. He was so concerned about those brethren, because for them naturally living water, supplies and medical care is very much scarce. Also communication is only being done in certain places and by certain people only, it is very difficult to find cell phone service, there are only two Cell companies has the network, which is totally under the control of the government, because some extremists made that hill area to run their anti government activities. In some areas they even run parallel government where our preachers have to be very careful how they act and react in certain circumstances. Because going against them could cause problem to the preachers’ lives. We can describe it all, would take lot of space in this email.
Well, continuing the story, Samuel was so concerned about the 21 graduates who are working in that area; out of the 21 two has been attracted by the denominational group as they pay a monthly salary to them. With the great desire when Samuel proposed the visit, I wanted to join with him as well. And contacted one our graduate who stays in touch with all the graduates seeking help to visit all of them, in reply we heard that all those brethren wanted to meet at Bro. Singa Raju’s place. We really don’t know the surprise behind this meeting, after all we wanted to visit them to tell that we are thinking of them. So our drive for 3 hrs went really well, to our surprise we got there before 1hrs of our scheduled time, may be miscalculated. Any ways, as our journey went half way, we found out it was raining there, later we learned that it has been raining from over a week in that area. So our guide preacher met at the spot, he drove on a motor cycle while its raining to get to the spot. We were glad that he got into our vehicle to protect him from the rain.
Then we begun our journey to brother’ Singa Raju’s place, our Guide preacher brother Satyanarayana guided us to the destination. Journey went in the narrow, very narrow, steep, very steep roads. It is normal to face the ditches on the Indian roads, there is no doubt to face certain bumpy roads in a very rural and hilly areas. It was sort of dangerous to drive in such roads when it was raining constantly. Our mission of meeting the brethren is becoming true which excited us so much. that motivated us to keep going, ups and downs, valleys and streams, we took some moments of our time to praise God for HIS marvellous creation. While we were nearing the destination, we have seen some very narrow roads yielding in to the road we are travelling, then we noticed some of our graduates riding on motor cycles in two and three numbers. We were truly excited about seeing them coming to the place with the same excitement as we were.
We have finally arrived at the destination, it was a small hamlet, may be 15 houses. The villagers all farmers, they have cattle and chicken as well. We noticed children whom we figured they do not go to school regularly, for them its not a big thing to go to school at the early age. By the time we got there to the preacher’s newly built house, built with mud walls and metal roof, we noticed three young ladies cooking meal for a gathering of 30 people, we were surprised and asked brother Singa Raju what’s happening, he replied that all the graduates are assembling here today, we were excited about it. The were coming to attend and would like to spend time listening to the word and have fellowship. We were thrilled with their great desire to use the opportunity and also about making use of time, even though weather is not cooperative and threat of Corona remains.
In about an hour, all the expected graduates arrived there, we were so glad to see each other, great time to exchange our warmth on each other. After everyone settle down, we assembled at Singa Raju’s house and Raju Babu has lead the prayer and three of them stood up and lead the singing. We praised God by seeing the wonderful nature around us, we sang ‘How great Thou Art’. I was asked to speak for few minutes, my lesson was from Acts 14:21-28 “strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God," they said.” Acts 14:22 a To help these brethren know that we have to remain in the same faith and be strong besides all kinds of temptations, struggles and circumstances. Encouraging them to be strong during the present Corona pandemic which is hurting the church life and Preachers so badly. After my message Bro. Samuel was asked to speak, before he preaches, sung couple of songs to encourage the gathering. We had 36 men gathered for this meeting out of them 21 are graduates of our school. Samuel encouraged them to be strong to face the Devil which is destroying the church. This is another time of fellowship we had after long long time during this corona pandemic season. We were excited about the news of people being added to the Church through their Team effort.
We had a meal cooked in their pattern which is little different than what we used to, however it was delicious and lovely meal, should not degrade the effort those ladies put into to cook for us all. After the meeting is over, Samuel distributed monetary help to those 21 preachers who are struggling during this pandemic. Brother Singa Raju shown us a metal roof hut which was built with the help of the local preachers, we have provided a help fo Rs 10,000/- to take care of other needs towards the church meeting place. Also, we have met three young men who are interested to join in our School for getting the Biblical education, after discussion with them, that our school always welcome those who wants to learn the word of God and become evangelists and Bible Teachers. We had three young men introduced themselves showing how much interested they are to become preachers. We invited them to come and visit us at Visakhapatnam.
All in all it was a great time of fellowship with those brethren working so hard in the hill areas of the state of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa as well. Some of the preachers live next to border line, in our travel we have travelled across some fo the roads that takes us to the Border of the state of Orissa. Finally we had prayer and dispersed to our destinations.
Dear Brethren, Jesus said in Acts 1:8 “and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Truly these men, which are Graduates of Bear Valley International school are witnessing the Death, Burial and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ our saviour in the uttermost parts of this world. They are planting the seed and reaping the harvest, churches are growing, Lord’s church is becoming stronger everyday. We praise God for blessing us all to be a part of this, we sure appreciate you all for your kindness in help running the Preaching school at Visakhapatnam. May God continue to bless our combined efforts in rescuing the souls and establishing congregations and producing effective communicators of the Gospel.
We are so grateful to God such a Director who has been striving for His cause for over 40years, with a great commitment to serve the Lord in expanding the boarders of His Kingdom. We are working along as Team with the same commitment and enthusiasm. Kindly remembers us in your prayers daily, we shall be praying for you too.
Thanks so much for reading this story of the mission work being done by Visakha Valley Bible College, let me hear from you what you think of this, love you ...God bless you all...!!!
In Christ,
John Dean M