First off I had better explain about the name of the place where our
eye clinic was conducted on Monday. The same tsunami that devastated
Banda Aceh, Indonesia, also sent some of its destruction, though less
destructive, on to India and several other nations. Soon after the
tsunami, Pastor Joshua informed me of a great need of the fishing
villages along the east coast of India located on the Bay of Bengal.
Many of them had their nets and boats destroyed thus wiping out their
means of living. I flew to India with some funds for replenishing the
fishing net needs of some of the fishing villages. One village was so
struck by this gesture of love, and realizing it was because of the
love of Christ that motivated this help, that village immediately said
they wanted a Christian Baptist church in their village. In fact, while
there that week, land was donated and we broke ground to construct what
would be named the Tsunami Baptist Church. Since that time, the one
room church building has been completed with windows, lights, and
overhead fans. A small attached building is the home of the pastor and
his wife.
Today we tried to get started earlier than on Saturday to get the job
completed early and so that the team would not be so tired. We did, in
fact, get started earlier (a little after 11am) and got to the church
about 12:30. We had to stop at one point in the journey and get out and
test the small stream that was running across the dirt road to see if
our vehicle might make it. IT DID, and so we got on to the church.
Things went wonderfully smooth with the help of the local pastor as he
did crowd control which can sometimes be a problem. Since it looked
like from a roster the pastor had developed that we would finish early,
we decided to work right on through without a formal break. We ended
up seeing 40 patients at this clinic and were surprised at the final
results. We had 14 who accepted Christ and 12 who had previously become
Christians agreeing to follow through with their baptism. The
explanation as to why we had so many decisions in this clinic ( a
relatively new church) as compared with the church where the clinic was
held before has to do with people who are born to a Christian family
assuming that they are automatically Christians (sort of like in the
U.S.!) The previous church had been a long established church and had
several generations of Christians in it. This 2nd clinic with 40
patients had twice as many salivations as the first church where we saw
77 patients. I expect you will see an even greater disparity in the
clinic we see on Tuesday as that church has been established for over
100 years. However, we rejoice when there is 1 salvation or 100!
After seeing the last patient at our Monday clinic, 2 of our team
members had never seen the Bay of Bengal so we decided to take a short
tour (that became a detour) and get over to a fishing village.
The problem we ran into, though, was that many of the small dirt roads
has washed out due to the cyclones. We had to turn around or get onto
other roads a few times before we finally made it. The sun went down
before we arrived but there was enough light to see small boats off
shore fishing. And the two ladies who had never been there before were
able to dip their feet into the Bay of Bengal.
Then it was back “home” and the ladies were off to a little late night
shopping. When they got back home, we had a meal of Tandoori chicken
and bryani and then to bed and to sleep knowing that we would be
getting up to a long ride again. To the next clinic.
From Mel on Mission for the Lord in India
