Sunday April 29th Dave and I joined the Indian district chairman at Nagalapuram for the Inauguration serivce of the 2012 VBS season here in India. There were around 600 children packed into  the hall.

In the picture album below the first girl is singing, the second little girl recited all 66 books of the Bible and then the first psalm.

Dave preached using balloons, pencils, and candy which he afterward gave away to the kids. The basic messsage of the devotion: Don’t be like a balloon which does not go where you want it to,  and always whines. Be like the Pencil which is straight and true and useful like Onesimus. And everyone wants a piece of Candy so share it just like you share Jesus with your friends.

It is also Esther’s birthday party so there was cake and candles. Followed by dinner.

Sitting in the dinning hall they came first and set a small sup of ice cream before us. Dave and I just dug in right away whereas the 600 kids pushed their ice cream to the side knowing the were supposed to save it for after their chicken and rice.

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On the map below you will be able to find marked all the places I talk about in this entry.

On Monday the 21^st of November, Pastor Deepak and I flew to Port Blair in the Andaman Islands to visit our BELC pastors and congregations over there. The Andaman Islands reside almost all the way across the Bay of Bengal, nearer to Malaysia than to India, but are nevertheless part of India. Here Pastor Deepak has spent a lot of time training men and evangelizing since 1998. For a while he lived here, but currently flies over from Chennai four times a year for two weeks each time.

Andaman District Center – Nov 22 – 24

On Tuesday we started classes with about 40 pastors from all over the Andaman Islands. We discuss Law and Gospel, Writing Sermons, Understanding Parables and studied some sections from the Gospel of John. It was nice to have three days in a row of teaching instead of only one. It allowed me to review and build on previous lessons.

Rosaiah – Tuesday, November 22^nd

Tuesday after class we went in the evening to visit Pastor Rosaiah’s church. It was a small but nice looking church. We had probably about 40 people who came. The church was sitting up on top of a hill and when you looked out the front door you could see out across the town and the bay.

Rantam Raju – Wednesday, November 23^rd

Wednesday we took off on a little tour of the Island. Rantam’s church was across the bay. We drove around over a bridge and ended probably less then 10 miles from where we started. Here we meet and worshiped with a handful of people, meeting in the living room of a members house.

Paul Reddy – Thursday, November 24^th

Paul Reddy has a church with about 30 members. This church sits directly behind a very large Charismatic church. It would be easy enough for the members to go there instead and yet they don’t.

Daniel Babu – Friday, November 25^th

This is the first day we did not have class during the day. We cannot visit churches during the day since the members are at work. Thus I had most of the day free to catch up on email and start getting a few other tasks started. I took some time to explore the Island, take a look at the harbor and shore and find information about tourist spots that I might want to visit if I have time next week.

In the evening we took the ferry across the bay to visit Daniel Babu’s church. You may notice on the map that this church is not more than a few miles from Rantam Raju’s whose church we visited on Wednesday. That time we drove all the way around the Island, tonight we just took the ferry across. Daniel has a bit more space in his church and there were a number of people there that night. After church one of the members cooked us supper. We ended up making it back to the harbor just in the nick of time to catch the last ferry.

G David Raju – Saturday, November 26^th

Aelong – Sunday, November 27^th

Jesuraj – Monday, November 28^th

On Monday we took a boat ride for two and a half hours to Havelock Island with Jesuraj to visit his congregation there. Havelock is a major tourist attraction with white sandy beaches and diving and snorkeling sites. We saw many other tourists at the dock and beaches. The congregation is small one of maybe 15 members. They meet in a small room of one of the members. We spent the morning at worship and went out to the beach in the afternoon. Our boat left at 4:30pm.

Samkarmegam – Tuesday, November 29^th

B Joseph – Wednesday, November 30^th

A Kumar – Thursday, December 01^th

The final CLCI district we visited last week was the Ongole area which is down near the southern part on Andhra Pradesh. This coming week I will be in Nellore which is part of the BELC but is again near the same area just a little farther south.

Nov 1 – Mallavaram – Pastor Simon

Nov 2 – Vavilatipadu – Pastor Rosaiah

Nov 3 – Nagannapalem – Pastor Korneli

Nov 4 – Jarugumalli – Pastor Madhavarao

Nov 5 – Rachavaripalem – Pastor Johnson

I missed getting the gps coordinates on Nov 3 for Nagannapalem so this congregation isn’t shown on the map.

The last night in Rachavaripalem we had a birthday party along with the service. This congregation has been growing quickly the membership is currently 100+, although many of the weren’t able to come Saturday night because of a wedding. We had about 70 people at the service on Saturday.

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After the epic train ride to the northern part of Andhra Pradesh we stayed in Kakinda four nights visiting three congregations. these congregations are marked on the map below.

October 28  - Jayathinagar – Pastor Daneil

October 29 – Gygolepadu – Pastor Sudhakar

October 30 – Kakinada – Pastor Wycliff

Pastor Wycliff is the father of Jyothi  Benjamin and oversees the churches near Kakinada in the north eastern part of Andhra Pradesh. We visited his church on Sunday and the congregation welcomed me with a shower of flower petals.

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This is a map showing my train ride to Kakinada on Friday. I will be here for the next few days visiting churches. The map has some pictures posted on it towards the end of the train ride, showing the scenes out the train window. It might be difficult to see the pictures in the map below, so you can also click on the link beneath the map.

click here to see the map in google.

That is to say Sunday Oct 23^rd through Thursday Oct 27^th

The map below shows you my Sunday wanderings. Rather than mark the map with the lines of my travel as normal I have marked the various spots with pictures. More pictures of these areas can be seen down below.

The northern most mark on the map should be Guntur, Hotel Sindoori, where all my adventures began this week. At 9am we headed pretty much straight south to the town of China Kakuman. We were an hour and half late for service because there was an accident blocking our way and we had to find an alternative route. However the worshipers were still waiting and singing. We had been planning to eat lunch at our next stop but because we were so late, we ate here.

After lunch it was on to Baptla, south and a bit east, were we passed out gifts to the children and I gave a short devotion rather than having a full service.

We then drove north west and stopped by a tribal village, Yajali S. T. Colony. Here we prayed for the villagers who asked and also for the plot of land where they are hoping to build a prayer shed.

It was well after 3pm when we made it north to the CLCI Compound in Nidubrolu. Here the children had a program for us to watch. We handed out gifts to the children and blankets, clothing, and money to the fire victims from Manava. Although we were going to Manava that evening it was better to have the victims come and receive the gifts in Nidubrolu lest other victims not form our church show up demanding help as well. After the ceremonies I helped Jyothi fix his computer and we had a little time to relax and eat supper.

Manava, which is a little to the north east of Nidubrolu, was our last stop we had service here in the evening around 10pm. This is the church where Pastor Isaiah preaches. Pastor Isaiah helps Jyothi out at the bible college. There was recently a fire here that burnt down many of the houses of the members including Pastor Isaiah’s.

I finally returned to Guntur sometime after 11pm. For the next four days I made the route from ( shown in the map down below the pictures ) Gunutr to Nidubrolu every day for teaching. We spent a great deal of these four days studying the book of John, but we also discussed preaching on parables and a slide show on Noah’s Flood.

On Friday we are heading up to the northern part of Andrha Pradesh to Kakinada. Jyothi and his family are coming since this is where Babyrani’s ( Jyothi’s wife ) parents live.

Running around on Sunday

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