News from Moses and Sushma Parmar
OM India – July-December 2004
Dear praying friends,
It is a privilege for us to be able to write to you again. The last few months have been extremely busy and as a family we had a good break for two weeks during Christmas and New Years in Gujarat (our home state). We hope that you had a very Merry Christmas and a blessed start to the New Year.
Sushma continues to look for a job that will allow her to work half a day and be home when children come back from school. Please pray that the Lord will provide suitable job for her.
Shama continues to grow taller. At the age of 12 she is already 5’2”. She loves to study but not as much as reading storybooks. If she is not reading, she likes to sit on daddy’s computer and look through information on various electronic encyclopaedias to satisfy her curiosity.
Setu, though very smart in studies, would rather play games outdoors or on the computer. He is hyper-active and remains slim no matter how well he eats. He loves to eat meat and has a hard time eating vegetables!
Our family was able to buy a small car this year and we are very thankful to the Lord for His goodness. It was getting tough to fit four people on our motorbike.
The last six months have been full of activities. Here is a summary of the main events.
Development meetings: April 13-May 10, 2004 Moses had a series of meetings in the USA. In the 22 days he was there, he had over 40 meetings.
Future Leaders’ Meetings: OM international is committed to identify and equip younger leaders who will be the future leaders of the movement. In August 2004, Moses went to the UK to meet with 10 young leaders from various parts of the OM World in the Future Leaders’ Steering Group. The first Future Leaders’ conference will take place in India from Feb 18-21, 2005 with about 200 in attendance.
Fund Raisers’ Training: Moses represents the All India Christian Council (AICC) in North India, a network of over 2,200 evangelical organizations and churches. In the past, North India has seen the growth of numerous indigenous missions to reach people. Not many of them, however, are trained to raise funds for their ministries. The AICC organized a three-day training program in October 2004 for the heads of such organizations to help them understand the theology, importance and techniques of raising funds. Three international trainers helped us in this training.
Dalit Symposium: In November 2004, OM India and our partner agency in the USA organized a three-day conference for those who were interested in learning about and getting involved in the Dalit challenge of India. Moses was one of the speakers and about 60 pastors and mission heads attended the meetings. Many of them will become our new partners in the work in India.
Teen Street Consultation: Ten years ago, OM Europe started a program called Teen Street to challenge teenagers for missions. It has become a successful program and thousands of Christian teens in Europe have been influenced by it. In June 2005, we will have the privilege of hosting the first Teen Street conference for Indian teens. Moses was in Germany to attend a Teen Street consultation from November 12-15, 2004.
Business and Training Meetings: In November 2004 we had a series of meetings in Lucknow starting with our team leaders’ meeting. We have over 250 young people working on 48 teams. We had a GSCC pastors’ training conference, followed by the OM North India senior leaders’ meeting and the state leaders’ meetings.
We also face many challenges in the work and would like you to pray for us
Training of Leaders: This is probably the biggest challenge for us. You can bring people to Christ in masses, but can't train the pastors that fast! On the other hand, I am afraid if we don't have shepherds for the new flocks quickly enough, they will either go back, or end up becoming nominal Christians. Last month we crossed 1,000 GSCC churches and we do not have that many leaders to lead those churches.
Women’s Leadership: More than 60% of the new believers are women. Somehow the gospel of freedom attracts them more than men. Several of our women workers have started churches, many of which have 90% female membership.
Huge Task: The number of people following looks big, but this is nothing compared to the mammoth Dalit population (over 250 million) in our country. After two years working with Dalits, the Backward Caste leaders visited and asked us to work with them also. They are bigger than Dalits comprising over 52% of our country. Despite the good response, sometimes I get discouraged to see the crowds without a shepherd and wonder when we will reach them.
Diverse Task: Some assume that all 250 million Dalits and 500 million Backward Castes belong to one people group. This is far from the truth. They are divided into hundreds of people groups, languages, and cultures, making our task enormously complex. What works with one group may or may not work with another group.
Creative Church Workers: Because of these complexities, we need more than a traditional church planter. We need someone who will be able to identify with people, read the Bible and find out how to apply God's truth in their situation. This is a unique gift not everyone can do. We need many people with diverse gifts to open new doors and bring people in.
Opposition: Such a massive work does not go on without discouragement, failures, believers falling into sin, “sheep-stealing”, etc. Many fanatic organizations do not like masses following Jesus. Therefore, they speak against Christ. When that does not work, they often attack our teams physically. In December 2004, five of our team members were stripped and beaten severely in Uttar Pradesh. Later that week, two of our pastors were kidnapped in another state.
Thank you for your continued prayer and partnership with us.
In His service,
Moses and Sushma Parmar
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