Let me expand a bit on my previous post, the one titled “Alive and Well.”

The other night after the first meeting a young man named Rajaratnam (a common enough name, because there are at least two of them at this retreat, so I won’t endanger him by using it here) introduced himself to me.  He graduated from the ILA here last year, and remembered that I was at that commencement exercise.

This guy has not only gone back to his area to plant churches, he has established his own ILA and has 15 students currently studying under him.  Those men will eventually duplicate their experience.  What a fantastic demonstration of what Jesus meant when he commissioned his disciples to make disciples!

Raj wanted to send us photos of those 15 trainees so that they could be included with the photos we have of the other 300 who’ve been trained already.

As I said in the earlier post, the Berean Fellowship is alive and well in this country!

A visit with another man also supports this.  D (he is the only one with his actual name, and I can’t give it away for his own security) came to the retreat from 500 kilometers away.  That’s about 310 miles.  The trip took all night by train.  But, like most all of the other married pastors, D also brought his wife.

We Stateside Berean visitors wanted the pastors and their families to come so that all might be encouraged in their ministries.  Their trips are funded by the gifts you folks back home send to the India 300in3 Project each month.  And, this sort of a retreat is the closest thing that any of them will ever have to a vacation.

Well D’s wife had endured a very difficult pregnancy, delivering their baby boy just 4 months ago.  The delivery must have been a tough one, perhaps even requiring a C-section.  At any rate, the doc wanted the new mom (it is their first child) to recuperate 5 months before doing anything very strenuous.

Janet Walker and Luana and I are trying to take photos of every family,  This has proved to be quite a chore, because we had to first acquire their names (a hard enough task with the language barrier), spell these names correctly, and take the photos in order of the names listed.

D’s wife attended some of the meetings, but this morning when I arrived at the site of the retreat D met me and asked if I could come to his room and there photograph his family.  His wife, he said, was not feeling well and would not be attending the service.

I readily complied.

When we were returning to the meeting, D explained to me the circumstances of his child’s birth and his wife’s condition.  He also told how the word came to all the pastors in this state, some 85 of them, to gather for the retreat.  Bring your families, the forceful overseer of the group told them.

So here he was, with his wife and 4 month-old son, ministering to me, the American big-shot, by his example of commitment and loyalty.

See what I mean?  God is going to continue to bless these guys as they continue in faithful commitment to him, his call on their lives, and each other.