July 1: Door-to-Door Evangelism in two villages & Re-united!

This was our first day out in the villages and we only had half of the team (the rest had not arrived yet).  We visited two villages, Khiseri and Jhamak Lai, both assigned to Dipesh. When we finished door-to-door in the first village, we did a small children’s program for about 10 to 15 kids before eating lunch and moving on to the second village.  Anna, our music person, had not arrived yet but we quickly discovered that Lily, Emily’s translator, was more than capable of leading songs and motions with the kids!  As a matter of fact, we used her quite a bit most of the week and she taught us some great new songs in Hindi.

In the second village we had a bit of a run-in with a couple of drunk men who were following us around and telling everyone not to listen to us.  My translator, Manoj, and I were talking to a Hindu woman who was very interested in what we were telling her and was about to make a decision for Christ when they barged in on us. They were being obnoxious and jabbering on and on, and walked up to Manoj and took his cube right out of his hand.  I could tell that Manoj was concerned and we both just sat there and waited to see what would happen, trying our best to avoid a confrontation.  Manoj kept calmly talking to them, trying to settle them down but of course I had no idea what they were talking about.  Then the man who took the cube walked over to Manoj and gave it back to him and Manoj immediately looked at me and said, “Let’s go”.  We were both disappointed that we didn’t get to finish our conversation with the woman who had been so interested.

We had a great children’s program at this village with about 35 to 40 kids. We played with balloons and soccer balls, sang songs (again with the help of Lily, plus Roshan and Jageswar), told a miracle story, made Gospel bracelets and played with the parachute.  That was one of the best and biggest children’s program’s of the week and we did it with only half the team!

I didn’t witness it, but apparently some time during the program, the drunk guys returned and got into an argument with Arun and punched him in the stomach.  He then told Arun to hit him back – to which Arun said, “no”.  The man was so surprised by Arun’s reaction that he hugged him and kissed his cheek – amazing!

But the high point of the day was when, just as we were finishing up the program, the bus arrived with the other half of our team!  After all the cheers and excitement, and a few manly hugs, we returned to the hotel to begin our work together for the remainder of the week!