Dear Brethren in Christ,
Salutations from the students and faculty of the Visakha Valley Bible College, Visakhapatnam. By the grace of God we are all doing good, except little sickness of some of our present students every on else is doing good. Lord Blessed us by protecting us under His loving and merciful arms. We request you to kindly pray for the corona victims.
Online Classes: Finally we were able to begin a new chapter in our Visakha Valley Bible College. It is not just a chapter but a new development to have the classes running even in the physical absence of the instructor in the class. Due to corona travel has become a difficult thing. Rail road or road travel has become a cause for rapid spread of the Virus. Couple of our instructors are far away from the Visakhapatnam, they have to travel some hours to get here, in this conditions its not advisable to travel on public transport, at the same time our faculty cannot drive or ride that far. So, after thorough discussion we have decided to establish a setup to execute our plan of setting up online classes. Brother Vamsee and Malleswar Rao and John Dean had a discussion on installing Zoom App in one of our Desktop computer. However it needs upgrade, so after the needful upgrade and installation of new OS, we have successfully installed Zoom app and made a trial run. We bought a router, switch, loud speakers, mouth piece and other required items for this setup. We were very happy to see everything came to a successful ending.
After everything set up, our director Bro. Samuel Raju offered a prayer of thanksgiving and introduced the online class room to the students. Bro Vamsee has taught the first class and spoke for an hour. Before that he actually explained the process of how the online class will be done/operated, how to interact with the instructor, how to raise questions etc., well, after couple of days buying things and techies working everything fall in place and students overwhelmingly joined in the class room enjoyed in this new establishment.
Heavy Rains & Corona Crisis: cases raising like anything: on a average everyday in our state 6000 is the number patients being diagnosed with Corona positive. Hospitals are being packed up with such increasing number of patients, doctors are almost giving up on their non stop services, looks like the future is going to terrible, health wise, economically and in the field of education as well. We have been hearing from the preachers how difficult it is to survive during this time. The situation in rural India is threatening to common man’s life. Monsoon season has brought additional to those who survive on house farming. Some of our preachers, especially those in the hill areas live on house farming. Due to heavy rains from last two weeks, their chance of getting produce from the farm is quite difficult, hope by the grace of God things would turn in a positive side and bless them with good out come of their farming.
Evangelism: Our Graduates have been effectively trained for two years, also time to time they used attend the Lectureship/seminars conducted to learn more and increase more in their teaching & skills. As the materialism and love for technology is increasing in our country gospel is needed to taught more intensely. The establishment of the preaching school has been very helpful in producing some effective communicators of the gospel. In this time of corona pandemic we still hear from our graduates that people hearing gospel and being baptized into Christ for the remission of sins. It is nothing but our preachers constant working besides all circumstances. We are so glad to hear that people who are getting to be materialistic are realizing that this world is not permanent. Impressive thing is that they are wanting to be with God in heaven permanently. We are able to provide Bibles to our graduates for free distribution to those who are studying the Bible.
Dear brethren, we always praise God for keeping us safe and sound, especially during this time of Corona Pandemic, we sure need your prayers , our country, preachers need your prayers of encouragement. We are able to help some families who are suffering lack of food due to no work, since the industry they are working has shut down during this lock down time. We appreciate your encouragement so far, we would love to see that we would do more as we see the need. We pray that Lord provides.
Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement, we look forward to keep you posted more in my next email. Please give our greetings to your family and also to the Church family you worship with.
In Christ,
John Dean M
Visakha Valley Bible College