How Gospel Tracts Affect Lives in India

Imagine that you were born in a remote place in India and that you have never heard the name of Jesus. You long for peace and forgiveness of sin, but years go by and the emptiness in your heart only increases. Finally, you can’t bear it any longer and you walk away from your family, your possessions and your village to devote the rest of your life to the worship of a multitude of gods. You own nothing except for the saffron robe you wear and the stick in your hand. You wander from temple to temple in an endless search for ultimate answers.

Years come and go but you hardly notice. People respect you as a holy man and seek your wisdom. But you alone know that in spite of all the rituals you observe, the offerings you bring and the prayers you recite, your soul is engulfed in a a blacker darkness than when you started your journey. One day you are sitting in a temple courtyard with two other holy men when a young man walks up and gives you and your friends little leaflets. You start to read and your heart begins to pound. Could it be true that a God named Jesus can forgive sin? Could the message on this piece of paper hold the answer to the longing of your heart?

You call the young man over and ask him a multitude of questions about this new God and what it means to follow Him. He patiently and politely answers each question. As he shares about the love of God and salvation through Jesus, your heart deeply yearns to know Him. Finally when the young man courageously asks if you want to receive Jesus, you and your friends decide to call upon His name for salvation. As you do, you experience how Jesus cleanses you from all sins and delivers you from darkness. Immediately your heart overflows with joy and peace and you know that from this moment on, you will live for Jesus alone.

This is not a make believe story. It happened in a western Indian state. The man who led these “holy men” to the Lord was a Bible student in the Bible school of one of our ministry partners. What a victory for the cross! And it all began with a few little Gospel tracts. Millions of men, women and children across India have never heard the Gospel story. In fact, they don’t even know the name of Jesus and have never seen a Bible. Just like these former holy men, their lives are filled with heavy burdens, darkness and unforgiven sin.

A simple Gospel tract in their native language can change their eternal destiny. And people in India receive these tracts eagerly, then pass them along to family members and friends to read. Many times, as they travel from one person to another, these tracts end up in remote villages where the Gospel has never been preached. Along the way people open their hearts to Jesus and receive the gift of eternal life.

Right now, our ministry partners need to print at least two million Gospel tracts in various languages to sufficiently supply their native missionaries and churches for outreach work. Amazingly, they can produce each tract for about a penny so the cost for that massive amount of tracts is only $20,000. Through the distribution of these tracts thousands of men, women and children will have the opportunity to make Jesus the Lord of their lives through these materials. To help provide this much needed Gospel literature, visit our Contribute online page and designate your gift for “Gospel Tracts.” For more information on this and other fine ministries that you read about on this site contact us at info@hope-builders.org.

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Training Leaders for Pioneer Work in India

HBI staff attended a four day workers conference in Chattisgarh with Josh Kallimel, founder of Advanced Leadership Training Center. 50 senior leaders were present and a number of their wives. Each of the leaders has a mentoring relationship with anywhere from 50 to 500 pastors and missionaries. Josh said they represent about 12,000 village churches. The idea is to train them so they can train the pastors who can then minister life to their churches. Through the work of these leaders and many others like them, the gospel is reaching thousands of Indian villages where no churches had existed.

We had the joy of buying bicycles for 21 of the workers, each of whom had connections to 50 churches or more. This simple gift makes it so much easier for them to travel from village to village spreading the good news of Jesus and encouraging and teaching the believers. More bicycles and motorcycles are needed for this ministry and others that we support. We were able to provide one couple with a sewing machine and another with some goats. Thank you for enabling us to bless them in these ways.

There is also a boys’ hostel on the property. About 50 boys from ages 5 to 16 live there. They are full of exuberance. They sing with gusto and aren’t bashful about doing it. Our hearts were touched by their beautiful smiles. They are poor in material possessions, many sleep only on a thin mat on the cement floor. Still they are surrounded by love and are learning to know that they have a God who loves them. We loved it when the boys would come running up to us, shake our hands and greet us with “Hi Auntie, Hi Uncle.” We were able to provide each boy with a new shirt and pair of pants as well as giving them some new sports equipment. Support from friends in the US makes such giving possible.  

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Hope for Widow Kamala

Kamala is a widow. Kamala’s husband died in an accident in 2006 while working on a construction site. Widows and the fatherless are treated harshly in a Hindu society. In Nepal, a widow is blamed for her husband’s death and is accused of bringing ‘bad luck’ into the family. Likewise, the fatherless, rather than being helped, are ridiculed, shunned and taken advantage of. When Kamala’s husband died, the burden of looking after her children fell on her shoulders.

Kamala lives in a village in the western part of Nepal. On an evangelistic trip to her village, missionaries from our partners in Nepal led her to the Lord. For the first time in her life she experienced a deep peace and sensed the love that God has for her.

Kemala has 3 children, a son and two daughters. She is finding it very difficult to work and provide for her children because her earning is not sufficient. Kamala used to work as an unskilled laborer at construction sites around her village. She had to be away from early in the morning to late evening and could not give time for her children. She is physically weak as well. To help her start a new life, our partners helped her to open a small tea and snacks shop.

In April 2012, our friends visited Kamala. Through gifts provided through Hope Builders International they were able to help her stock the tea shop. Please pray for Kamala’s economical and spiritual life. We are also able to offer school support for her daughter Silpa who is in the 6th grade. She is very happy about this. While Kamala’s life is not easy, she is excited and thankful to receive the help from friends both local and overseas.

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Bikes for Missionaries

Bicycles are important tools for indigenous missionaries. Ministries including Advanced Leadership Training Center and Orissa Follow-Up have scores of workers who would rejoice to have a bicycle for transportation. For ministries like Nepal Gospel Outreach Center, being able to provide sewing machines to the widows that they are giving vocational training to opens the door for these widows to earn income and provide for their families.

For $100 you can put a bicycle in the hands of a native missionary or a sewing machine in the hands of a widow.  

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Our Ministry Partners in India

the-story-of-vela-bhaiHaving lost six children, one after the other, Vela was desperate for help. He tried every kind of worship,went to the witch doctors, but nothing was happening. And then his uncle died. These continuous deaths in his home rattled him and he thought that it would be better to end his life. But the thought of his tired wife and the hardships that she would have to face, forced him to stay alive.

Then in a vision he saw a cross and felt that if somehow he reached it, he would be healed and set free from this curse of death in his family. He started to ask people where He could find this cross and was surprised to find a church building with a cross on it very close to his house. He went there, was prayed for and God delivered him completely from his fear. Today Vela has four grown up children and is also the proud grandfather of three grandchildren!”

Pastor Vela Bhai is one of the many people serving Jesus who has a dramatic story of conversion. Pictured here, today he is the pastor of three congregations and does not have a single minute to waste as he runs between services and villages, doing God’s will and restoring people to God like he himself was restored.

Recently provided with a new motorbike to make his travels easier, Vela shared these thoughts, “I was praying for a motorbike to help me move around faster and God gave this bike to me through the help of friends. I praise God for this gift and I am using it daily to commute and to win more and more people to the Lord. I have seen the darkness and I have seen the light. I want everyone to enjoy this light and I will do everything possible to share this light with one and all.”

Many more pastors and evangelists are waiting for bicycles and motorbikes that will enable them to reach many more villages for Jesus. Go to our contribution page to help in this effort.

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Social Work Among India’s “Untouchable” Communities

One of the first lesson D.B. Hrudaya learned after coming to Christ was that leading men and women to Christ was not, in itself, enough. The key, he saw, was discipleship. And out of this realization was born Orissa Follow-Up.

OFU was begun in 1986 with eight believers. Since that inauspicious beginning more than 18,000 villagers have confessed Christ as Savior and Lord. Many of these have been Dalits, the outcasts on India. In fact, they were formerly known as untouchables. These people are despised by the classes above them and are most often treated inhumanely. In 2002, D.B. Hrudaya began a program to reach 50,000 Dalits by opening 23 schools that meet in rented or borrowed rooms. He also opened six training centers for adults. The schools are an integral part of reaching the lost Dalits – numbering 160 million, they are 16 percent of India’s population – for Christ. The higher classes, such as the Brahmins, use the illiteracy of the poor Dalits as a tool in continuing their dominance over them.

Orissa is a very Hindu-oriented state where Hrudaya and other Christian workers often meet stiff resistance. It was here in 1999 that Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned alive in their car by a Hindu mob. Like Staines, Hrudaya has great compassion for the poor. This is evidenced by the schools and training centers operated by OFU.

Orissa Follow-Up has seen its share of miracles over the years. One new Christian wanted to attend an OFU prayer meeting in a distant village, and asked her mother if she would loan her 250 rupees to make the trip. Her mother, however, was unable to come up with the needed money. “The whole day I cried unto God,” the girl later reported, “and I found 300 rupees under my pillow that night. I was stunned. I ran to show this to my family and they thanked God with me. . . and at last I got the opportunity to attend the meeting.”

Today, OFU continues to impact lives in India. One hundred churches and twice as many home fellowships have been planted among numerous tribes. OFU also operates a school to train missionary workers. More than 300 workers have been sent out into the field. And OFU’s Bible correspondence courses have been sent to more than 150,000 people.

Please keep Hrudaya and Orissa Follow-Up in your prayers as he and the ministry workers share the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ with the poor outcasts of Orissa. To support the ministry work of OFU click here.

You can support their efforts today.

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