India Lesson 1: Indian has some serious Christian Soldiers

In seminary I learned about the process that missionaries go through. Basically on their first trip they go with the attitude that they will teach the natives, after a while they see them as equals, and then after awhile still they eventually humbly learn from them. From the outset I was blown away by these men of God who we had the privilege of ministering side by side with. My translator for 4 of my 5 ministry days was Abijeet Pegu. He is 28 years old and is a full time evangelist and associate pastor. He was truly my guide for the week as I had no idea how to speak the language, how the culture worked, etc. As we would share the gospel with people I would say my couple of sentences and then he would begin passionately pouring out his heart and sharing with the people sometimes for 5 or 10 minutes. At first I felt a little frustrated because I didn’t feel like I was doing a whole lot but God really humbled me and taught me a lot about teamwork through this process. Sometimes my main job was to simply give us an open door to conversation with people, sometimes God would give me a word to share, and sometimes I just needed to pray as Abjeet was ministering to people. It was a great reminder that whatever we accomplish in ministry, it’s not about us getting credit, but it’s about the end result of what God does and that the glory all goes to Him! The last day I had the privilege of working with Meren as Abjeet got sick (from eating too many hard boiled eggs!). We had a great time hanging out and even discovered we both have a love for singing and so we are looking into starting our own music group called "American Indian." All of our Indian Christian brothers were truly a blessing to get to know. From Lipok, the director, whom God has used to help provide leadership for the planting of 70+ churches in the last 3 months, to Babala who’s parents were both martyred, to Akon who just smiles and laughs when you talk about Jesus. These men are truly soldiers in God’s army!