From the Vineyard
This section of the website gives the readers an oppurttunity to read the first hand experience of various missionaries working with Jesus Mission in different parts of the country. Frequently this page is updated with small and enriching notes from missionaries working in variety of mission posts.
November 2010: Yeeshu Sangh Missionary Conference 2010 Report
Damoh November 2010
This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes
Dear mission partner,
Greetings from Jesus Mission family. Hope this update will find you good in life, ministry and job.
Praise God, the JESUS MISSION family conference was a blessed one. We know you were praying for this conference . Our last family conference was in 2006, at Bhubaneswar. We used to conduct our family conferences in rented buildings. But in this year, God has enabled us to do it in our own campus, Yeeshu Bhavan - Ashram, Marahar, Damoh.
While recollecting the memories of our present conference Ps.118:23 came to my mind; “this is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” 350+family members, representing 15 states of India, spending 4 days together in fellowship! We, the missionaries and families in Damoh are honored by the presence of our co-workers in the ashram. Their arrival and stay was indeed a blessing for the Ashram. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” yeah…how beautiful is the ashram when the feet of our missionaries touch her soil… IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
Of the 103 present missionary families of Jesus Mission, 51 have joined only after the last family conference. Jesus mission is no more a “mallu” missionary organisation. God has been enlarging our territory by adding more and more native members. For you information; 50 of our missionaries are natives!! It’s 50/50! IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
On the one side we had the joy of holding the conference inside our Ashram, and on the other we feared many things. The Superintendent of Police in Damoh said to us that he would be helpless if the Sangh Pariwar, one of the Hindu ‘reform’ movements, creates troubles in our meeting. This time, we had our meeting during the Pooja holidays. These are school holidays, hence convenient to families. But, Pooja days are set aside by Hindus in North India to worship goddess Durgha. There were temporary temples, mass worship, meetings and processions in every nooks and corners of Damoh. Poojas were done even at the entrance of Ashram! Thank God! No strangers peep inside and create head ach to us. I love to believe that God has send blindness in their eyes. IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
Even though we had our own buildings inside the Ashram, they were insufficient to accommodate all our friends. Hence we had tents for gents, ladies, kids and for food. Many of our co-workers had to sleep on the beddings just provided on ground. Being an inhabitant of this Ashram I used to see snakes, lot of poisonous insects, troublesome bees inside the ashram on a regular basis. While I write this letter one of our missionary killed a cobra in front of our house!! But, during the conference they were absent from the campus. Not just poisonous creatures, but even mosquitoes were absent from the campus, during the conference days… IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES
One week just before the conference, we were worried about the road to ashram. Heavy rains damaged the road completely. People in the Ashram and village used to go to the town through a near by water channel. Many days our children were unable to go to school due to rain. Thank God that He enabled us to repair the road on time. God stopped his rain for the conference. There was no rain throughout the conference days; Amazingly, on 19th after the conference, we had heavy rains in Damoh. IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
I shall tell you more about the sessions in my next mail.
New Land purchased in RajaPatna.
When we started our ministry in Damoh, in 1994, we didn’t know anything about the villages of the District. However we got the information about the villages from the District authorities that Damoh district consist of around 1400 villages and none the villages have a Christian worshipping community. Most of the villages are with no Christians and the villagers have never heard the gospel meaningfully. One of the first villages we started ministry was RajaPatna. We sent 10 missionaries at different times to this particular village and all of them were afflicted with Malaria/ jaundice or other serious illness and had to come back to the town. However we were hopeful and the Lord enabled us to see that some of the children whom we took from this village to our children homes accepted Jesus and now, they are involved with ministry.
14 years back, Pastor Samkutty K A, a man of God who visited this mission station prophesied that we would buy a land here and would build a worship centere in this palace. It was difficult for us to believe it in those days. Raja Patna is basically a village inhabited by high caste. However that prophesy became a reality and this year God enabled us to buy a land. IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
On Nov. 13th afternoon we had the ground breaking service for our building in Rajpatna village. Saju Mathew did the service. Along with him many of our well wishers were present at the occasion. Ajith and Preetham are our missionaries in this village.
On 14th October we had the General Body Meeting of Jesus Mission from 2.30-5.30 PM.
Family conference of 2010 started by 14th night meeting and ended by 18th Sunday Worship.
Saju Mathew and Abraham Thomas shared the night sessions. Jiji Peter and Mani Philip took the morning devotions. Mathew Varghese and Johnson took the teaching sessions. Mathew and Babu P John share the Word of God in Sunday worship. P.C. Mathew conducted the Holy Communion.
Jose Valappatu, John Geroge, Benny Kochuvadakkel, Ebenezer and Jose Raffel shared their testimonies.
Many of our ministry partners attended the Conference this time. Tom Varghese, E J Mammen, Biju Joy and Mammen Geroge represent our partners and well wishers in India and abroad. Few members of our Edappally Church also attended the conference.
Senior missionaries and the National leaders of Jesus Mission led the sessions, did the translations and Coordinate the programme.
On 15th we had the wedding service of Gyani ( missionary in Damoh) and Malathi (believer, Jesus Mission Bagbera Church, CG) at the Conference hall. Suresh Deep solemnized the wedding.
On 16th we conducted the certificate distribution of our Emmaus Bible Institute, Bilaspur. On 16th we had child dedication of few new born children. Saju Mathew conducted both the services. Immediately after these events respective leaders came forward and introduced the new missionaries to the congregation.
We had special meetings for the Anointing of the Spirit and also for the intercessors. Aby Ayiroor led both the sessions.
We also had meetings for women and missionary wives. Jessy Saju and Mercy Babu led the sessions.
The presence of Varkeychayan has been a blessing to Damoh Ashram since last year. He led a Night vigil during the conference. Few of our missionaries and guests attended the session.
We could show a few missionary movies, after the dinner. We also had a talent night. We could identify God given talents in our children.
Sis Jessy and team from Delhi conducted programmes for Kids. Kids had an altogether different meeting at their Kids Pandal.
Worship during the sessions was done by three different teams, led by Khyamashil Bagh, Joy Daniel and Preetham Verma.
Delegates left the ashram by 19th October. Hoping to meet again soon!!
We request your earnest prayers for our missionaries. God has been so good to us thus far and He will be. Let’s uphold each other in prayer. Let’s build His Kingdom in His own fashion.
Maranatha…
Together in His Service
Saji
Ministry Updates from Avadh - 15 June 2010
I am glad to share with you that God blessed our ministry and us with his presence. By the grace of god we conducted a convention on the last week of March. Pr. P C Mathew from Sambalpur was the guest speaker. God blessed this meeting also. As the result of this meeting now a days some people have begun to attend Sunday worship service.
Pray for Mr. Padmaker Shama and his family. His wife has come in to the saving knowledge of Christ and has discontinued her old life.
Pray for Raghav ram, he also has accepted Jesus as his personal savior. He is suffering from some type of epilepsy.
Pray for Hemant Kumar, he is regularly attending the worship service. He has no child.
Pray for Prag Dutt Tiwari. He is backslidden believer. Now a days he is ill but doctors could not diagnose his illness.
Pray for Baggie village 12km from Gonda , we are praying and planning for some ministry there.
Chambal
Children Ministry: Jesus home children are shifted from fm-276 to gh-747 is my residence and God is helping Dency to take care of 8 children .all the children attended a VBS here in Ebenezzer school from 26-29 of April 2010. they are doing well. Their names are Raveendra, Biswajeet, harsh, Sachin, Rahul and Rohit. We will adopt three more needy children to our Jesus home in this academic year. Pray for the proper and sufficient financial help for these children in our home.
Literature Ministry: Margam Book Shop is running well and it is difficult to manage the shop with the profit from the books because the customers are very less in Gwalior. We need somebody to sponsor the expenses of the shop. we are getting many contacts through the book shop .This is the third year of the
shop one brother Umesh from Karnataka state has come through Shekienah and staying with me and his name is Umesh and he is not well in Hindi or English and I need to pay him for food , accommodation with salary. Now he is staying in fm-276 DD Nagar (old children home).
Church Ministry: Two or three regular members are coming and altogether 5-10 people are attending the Sunday service and others are irregular and some left us and went to other churches.
Outreach Ministry: Follow-up works are going on - contacts from Mela works. I am waiting for the leading of the Holy Spirit. Many are inviting to visit their villages but the situation here is not allowing me to go out of Gwalior. following are the names of few newly converted people from different villages in Chambal and remember them in your prayers Devender Singh Prem Nagar Gohad Ram Mohan Lahar Bhind Nagender, Raghavender, Dr K S Kushwa Mihona Bhind Dt, Vinod Nimbuwapura Gwalior Dt.
Andhra
Our church at Ongole will start another discipleship centre on the other side of the town from Thursday. There we are also planning a systematic bible-learning programme for laymen. Our church has completed two years of togetherness in God’s grace on March 2. We as a church are thankful to the Lord for the way he helped us stay stable in faith. Our brothers have outreach works in two villages, Bodduvaripalem and Erajarala, where one of our brothers is overseeing the Mission School.
One of our sisters, who converted from Hinduism and took baptism in our church is getting married on 2nd June 2010. Please pray!
Our children are doing well. Our elder daughter Esther has some behavior complexities. Please pray for her. All others are doing well and by God’s grace and are keeping good health
Our youngest son Johanan is also kept safe and healthy by God’s grace.
Uttarakhand
God has been so faithful in standing with us all along whenever we were in need and indeed the Lord had been doing great wonders in response to all the prayers raised before Him.
Day by day God is increasing our church in Haldwani. Spiritually growing, youths are coming for the youth meeting also we had baptisms, spiritual meetings and Bible study. We are planning for the V.B.S. program we are expecting more than 150 children to the program.
Champawath: Bro. John is working in here. Pray for the new openings, contacts and ministry in villages . Pray for his parents’ health.
Praise God for: The new believers (5 people were baptized), new contacts, musical instrument for the church, youth meeting.
Let us pray: that the Lords anointing may be on our family and our believers of the church, that new believers may be closer to the Lord in their spiritual life, more and more people may be able to know Jesus, youth and children meeting, V.B.S. program going to be held from 23rd MAY, ministry in champawath, Bro.Samuel Patel and his ministry, accommodation for Samuel.
Orissa
Sambalpur district: Rev. P.C.Mathew and family are taking care of the Sambalpur town church. He is assisted by Pr. Mathew Thomas and family, Pr. Patras Bagh and family and Bro. Johncy . By God’s grace the children’s homework is properly taken care by Pr. Patras Bagh. Please pray for Bro. Aju, Sis.Kavita and Tikki along with their parents to take water baptism soon. Pray also for Bro. Seetansu, Abhishek, Julie and Bagh family to receive Jesus as their personal savior. Please pray for Brahmananda Panda and family.
By the Grace of God the work of Jesus Mission Sambalpur district is going on well. In the month of March we were able to visit 2 villages nearby Sambalpur town and distributed 80 N.T copies 220 tracts and engaged in personal evangelization work. All the missionaries were active participants in our outreach programmes. Please pray for God’s grace to lead us in all our ventures to spread the gospel of Christ.
Bhagammunda:- Evg. Sudheer Chhatria and family are taking care of this outstation. By the grace of God we were able to lay the foundation of the prayer home in Bhagamunda. Please pray for the completion of its construction work. By his grace Bro. Jagat Suna took water baptism on 28th March. Please pray for the new believers and the work in this area.
Gosala:- Evg. Gupteswar Bagh and family is ministering in this place. He is also taking care of the Chiplima church and Jharapali house church. Please pray for the salvation of Mr.Surya Narayan and family. So also pray for Sis. Surya Kanta and Surya Kuman, for their healing from their disease. Please pray for Jharmunda village.
Burla:- Bro. Kishor Sikka and family is placed in this area. Every Sunday more than 7 people gather in his house for fellowship. Please pray for the growth of this church and also pray for the salvation of Narayan Darjee and family and Parsa Nanda. Please pray for Mr.Sakra Patnaik to get his eyesight, please pray for Kantapali, Kirba, Vishnumandir para, l/R colony and Gopabandhu chowk areas.
Boudh district: Bro. Alok Nayak is at Manamunda and his co-worker Bro. Yudhisthir is a local, together - started regular visits to Majhipada – 14 Kms away from Manamunda, a brother named Giridhari Jagdola whose two of the kidneys failed whom Burla medical college had sent back home and on the verge of death, Brother Aloka shared gospel and prayed and made regular visits keeping fasting prayer in Giridhari’s house since three months. Dear Lord healed Giridhari completely and is ready for water baptism along with other five. Regular prayer fellowship is conducted in the village on Friday. Parsuguda is another village, which is fourteen kilometer away from Manamunda where regular prayer fellowship is conducted on Saturday where two persons are ready to getting baptism. Sunday worship is conducted at brother Alok residence. Praise God for what the Lord is doing in this ministry.
Gajapati district: Bro. Kuber at Gerabandh is conducting Sunday prayer in which three believers are regularly attending. Village Garuni is nine kilometer away from Gerabandh were a small fellowship is being conducted on every Friday.
Ganjam district: Bro. Binod in Balipada and Bro. Ranjan in Buguda both together started visiting Parkalabadi and Saloni Villages.
Navarangapur district: Bro. Santosh is visiting Khaliguda where there are five believers. Mayur Bihar is 10 kms away from district head quarter where two family are attend Sunday service. Bro. Anam at Papadahandi conducting Sunday worship at his residence where eight persons attend the fellowship and at Chhatrabara where nine believers attend Sunday worship service.
At Nayagarh, Pipli at Puri, Baleswar, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, Bhadrak, Cuttack, and Khurda and at Kandhamal normal activities are going on. At present in Kandhamal district nine families are working. Apart from Kandhamal and Sambalpur there are 25 families working in the rest of Orissa.
Prayer Needs: Wife of Bro. Bibascha at Pipili, Puri is pregnant and wife of Bro. Alok at Boriguma is pregnant, please pray for all of our missionaries’ seekers meeting at Boudh at family conference etc.
Wonderful ‘n’ Fruitful Ministry in this Scorched Summer - 15 June 2010
-Rev. Suresh Deep
Our God is so good to us that He always takes care of us all the time and He always leads towards His wonderful and fruitful ministry. We praise and thank God that He is so faithful to us in these days that all our Missionaries with their families doing well in the Lord, keeping good and sound health, as you know that this summer’s temperature was very high (some time 46-47 degree Celsius), and we were very much puzzled how to do our summer VBS program in our respective mission stations, but God helped us to manage very well to conduct successfully our VBS ministry. This year VBS was conducted from 5th April to 2 May 2010 in CG, for which two VBS Teams were formed, led by Pr. Amar Sai and Sister Balmati Kujur respectively. Members in first team were Br. Sunny Shah, Br. Mukesh Singh, and Br. Akash Kiran David (KTS graduate) the second team was membered by our fresh Bible School graduates Ms. Pratima Das, Ms. Mamta Sagar and Ms. Malti Bhardwaj. VBS was conducted in and surrounding villages of our mission stations and many children attended and got the Gospel that Jesus is only Savior of the world. Through them we could reach in their homes with Gospel literature ‘KHOJ’ which talks very clearly about God, who He is? What He does? His salvation plan etc. Our theme for this year was ‘PARAMESHWAR KI KHOJ KAISE KAREN’ (HOW TO SEARCH GOD).
Brief Report from some of the Mission stations:
Bagbahra: Our missionary Bro. Chooudhary Besra is serving the Lord in this field since May 14, 2001. He had struggled a lot in early of his ministry. He and his wife Sarah and his son Jay and daughter Ossin are in Bagbahara with long time commitment and with desire to bring so many souls for Christ. This year they planned to conduct VBS in three places i.e. in Bagbahra (morning time50and evening 45 students),B K Bahra(22students) and Khopli Padav(20 students) in all places of this field mostly non-Christian children were taught Bible lessons, action songs and other Christian games and effective activities. Here children wanted that VBS should be for more days as they were not happy to have short days VBS program.
Some children like Vinod Rohidas of Khoplipadav says, “I want to memorize more Bible verses and to know more about Jesus and to live with Him.” An another student Gopi Yadav of Bagbahra says, “Previously I had only heard about Jesus but now I can say that I know Jesus. I used to think that Jesus only belongs to Christians but after hearing Gospel story I know that He is my personal savior too.”
Sarsiwan: Our toughest field is Sarsiwan where from the very beginning our missionary brothers were beaten up and warned by RSS leaders as well as by Police to leave Sarsiwan area. But they stayed in other village and served the Lord faithfully. As the result now we have a good number of believers in these localities. Brother Kartiko Deepak Deep his wife Rukmani and two sons Yunas and Manoj are ministering with deep and hearty commitment. This year we could conduct VBS in three places i.e. in Shitalpur(23students),Sarsiwan(31 students)and Kodwa(22 students).
Almost all the children testifies that “we were never taught in our school and elsewhere that we have to be a good children and we have learnt not to abuse any one and we have to be obedient children of our parent because God want such things from us.”
Supa: Supa is a new field where we started last year only where our missionary Yudistir Singh and his wife Janki and two sons Siva and Asish are serving the Lord. When our missionary Yudisthir went to start the ministry there was only one Christian family but now we have five more families in this field, who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior through water Baptism. And many more are being ready by our missionary for Baptism. We also praise God that He helped us to buy some 3052-sq.feet land to construct a Prayer hall and residential quarter for our missionary family. This year we have conducted VBS in two places i.e. in Supa (23 students) and Barpali(26 students). Through our VBS children were challenged to be a good citizen of our great land India as well as Kingdom of God.
Some children like Sanju Tandan ,Sanjay Bhardwaj,Radhika and Ratna of Supa say, “That in VBS only we have learnt very valuable things especially the action songs and pictorial stories are very interesting and now we promise that we will live for Jesus who love all children.”
Mainpur: Mainpur is a tribal area 139 Km away from State Capital Raipur and famous for Dimand Mines,where Kamar people group are living. Our missionary Bro. Vimal Das and his wife Tripti and daughter Shipha are serving the Lord. They went there on 15th August 2006. they had very hard time as there were some Christian families who were not living good Christian life. More over they were not comfortable with Preachers and pastors. That is why no pastors could stay for more than six months. But praise God our missionary family could stay there for such long time. We praise God that He helped us to conduct VBS in Mainpur where 21 students participated the interesting thing is out of 21 students 16 students were from non Christian background. They enjoyed learning Bible stories, Action songs and games etc.
Some children like Pranjal and Priti Kashyap say about VBS, “We have learnt the love of Jesus and they want to know more about Jesus and they promised to be good child of God.”
Devri Khurd: Our missionary Bro. Ganesh Tandi and his wife Suniti and their son Suleman are serving the Lord in this area. They come from a Hindu background and witnessed on 11 December 2005 by water Baptism, and they completed their training in our bible school and serving the Lord faithfully. They are having mainly their ministry among non-Christians. This year with full enthusiastically we could conduct VBS in three places i.e. in Barkhadan (21 students) ,Deoridih(36 students)and Deorikhurd(65 students).We got very good responses from these children because they never wanted to miss any sessions of the classes.
Some children like Sanno Kant , Kumar Sharma(Deoridih), Anil Kumar(Deorikhurd) and Ram Manohar(Barkhadan) says “Every year we wish to have our summer VBS, because we learn so many new action songs and new Bible’s stories and we also learn how God loves us and He gave His son Jesus for us so we also ought to love one another.”
Finally, we strongly feel that biggest part of our ministry is Children ministry , though we could not conduct VBS in all mission station due to some unavoidable situation ,but we believe that God has blessed us and all the children in all mission stations in this summer time through VBS. And we praise God for all His goodness, moreover we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Therefore please pray for us regularly so that we may grow spiritually more and more,
Yours in His Service,
Amar Sai Minz & Balmati Kujur
Chase Joesph, Ongole - June, 2008
Hi everyone,
Regards.
Let me give you some details as to what we are doing in Ongole.
Ours is fundamentally a Discipleship Programme. Rather than winning people to the visible church, it is our dream to gather people to the person of Jesus.
We have two specific gatherings for adults and one for children at Ongole town.
1) English Worship Service: Morning 7am to 9 am every Sunday. Now 25 people are attending regularly. Main focus of the congregation is to be a Community of Saints in the strict sense of the term. For Telugu worship, we are partnering with a local pastor and try to equip the saints in the church.
2) Bible Study Groups: This is a group Bible Study where Disciples are nurtured systematic learning of the Bible. We have started the exegetical study of the gospel accoding to Luke. this is not a scholarly study or a presentation by a person, but rather interpretation of the word of God in daily life contexts, by lay men, moderated by eldres
3) We have a Sunday School, both English and Malayalam medium for the children. 77 children attend the sunday School at our residence in the Sunday evenings.
Our targets:1) We are praying for a bigger hall (on rent or otherwise) for the English Wroship Service, which is an urgent need
2) We would like to start Bible Study Groups in more parts of Ongole.
3) Sunday School also need to branch out
For all those branching outs and expansions we require persons with total commitment to Jesus. We pray that God would grant such disciples from this locality.
Now something about my family
My family include: Myself, my wife (sudha), our children [Jonathan, Jemima, Esther, Timothy, Divya and Priya (in the order they were given to us by God)]
We dont have an orphanage or hostel, though this has to remain a hostel in official records.
Of the five childern God gave us from Ongole, we have applied for full adoption rights for Jemima our first daughter. The final papers will arrive soon
All the children are school going. They are studying in Infant Jesus English Medisum School, Ongole.
These are some hard facts about the mission.
I have no words to thank my God who loved us so much and protected us from every danger and met each need that we had
Last financial year God met all our needs miraculously and we could remain without any debt despiute the exorbiatant expenses that are involved in the Children's education and this and that.
Thank you very much for your prayer and support
Chase
Regi K. George, Chandigarh - June 2008
Dear Partners In Gospel,
Greetings from the crown states in Jesus name, it has been a while
since we could communicate each other……………….. well we all are doing
fine in the north west India by the grace of God we hope for the same
for you as well.
Good news from the field of North west India…………..
Himachal predesh………
As you all know we were all praying for a great breakthrough in
Himachal Predesh since last 7 years But this year 2009 from January
onward our God has been gracious to these mountains with his new
mercies . His promises to this state has fulfilling these days since
last 6months we could give 112 water baptisms in himachal itself , 10
worshipping communities in different district with 375 belivers. We
have 27 lay leaders for these house churches.
Good news- Pastor Lukas Barjo has started a coffee shop in kullu to
reach out all tourist and locals.
What is happening in Chandigarh ?
Since last 3 months we could start a small house church in the border
of chandigarh and Punjab 30 people are attending this fellowship . the
purpose of this fellowship is to reach out all the business class in
chandigarh.We do have a prayer house in chandigarh.
We had an opportunity to distribute bibles to many officials last month.
Kindly pray that we may start a Bible Bhawan in Chandigarh so that we
can supply the Christian literatures to all the north west India.
In the month of April 2009 we could conduct a women ‘s meeting in
chandigarh 468 ladies from across the crown states have attended this
meeting and many could dedicate their lives for eternity . Julie was
coordinating this meeting .
Great things are happening in Haryana.
The churches in haryana are growing through your prayer - 32 people
testfied the Lord in the past few months.
Pastor P K James is leading the work in Haryana.
Special prayer request
We have recently started a fellowship in Kurukshethra,
We are praying for more faithful laborers in Haryana.
Kindly pray for pastor Joy P Lukose and his team in Mahilpur.
We really thank so much for your prayers and support .
May God bless you
Shalom
Reji k George