Together for God:
India 2006

God's investment in our future

Saturday 6th May

Here is information from Roger:

Today we went to see Pastor Rajakumar, his son Gladson and his cousin Victor picked up from the church at 11 am. We arrived at the house where the church is situated.

Pastor Rajakumar started to tell us about the work he was doing. He has 6 branch churches, 4 in Tiruvanamalia. Last week he baptised 8 people in the main church, which is a floor of his home, a four-story house. The baptism tank is the one in the picture and is kept full. They are baptising another person tomorrow. In the last fortnight they have baptised 20 people in the branch churches, making 28 in all.

Praise Lydia, Pastor Rajakumar's daughter, leads the children’s work for all the churches. She was running the Vacation Bible School in the church when we arrived. There are normally about 70 children but by the time we got there, there were about 30-40.

The 4 branch churches in Tiruvanamalia have 300 children all together.

They have just started an orphanage on the top floor of the house and have 4 small boys aged 6 – 9. The work began because there were children coming to the church who had nowhere to live and apparently no one to care for them. There were six children in all. The Pastor's heart melted and he converted the top of the house for the children and fed them. He tracked down the parents of two brothers whose parents had left them in the care of a relative and was able to re-unite the family.

The four children are:

Manikantan – aged 9
Vijay – aged 8
Akkini – aged 6
Ramesh – aged 9

The room in the background of the photographs is where they sleep and a lady is paid to come in everyday to cook and clean for them. She takes care of them. They plan to buy a building to house the orphans

Pastor Rajakumar has a vision for Tiruvanamalia. There are 6 national roads in to the town. The pastor has a church on 4 of these roads, three purpose built churches owned by the church and one church on top of a rented house. He is aiming to have a church on all six roads so that when ever people travel to the temple in the middle of the town they will have to go past one of his churches.

One of the churches is near the hospital, and people going to the hospital often call in to say a prayer in the church, they come in whether they are Hindu, Christian or any other faith, they pray and then move on to the hospital.

Gladson hopes to come to England in 2007 but will need sponsors to invite him to be able to get a visa

He said 'we are looking for sponsors to help us complete God’s vision'. It was now time for us to take our leave and Gladson drove us back to the church

There are some photographs are in the picture gallery.

Please pray:

1. For the ministering that Roger and Simon will be undertaking.
2. For the health of the Roger and Simon.
3. For the family members of Roger and Simon staying at home

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