Paroikos

It’s 95 degrees and 60% humidity here in Chennai so its actually a bit nicer out than it has been. For those of you who are familiar with the seasons of Southern India, May is the hottest month of the year. Mid June the rains are supposed to start and help cool it down some, but that has not yet happened. So I tend to spend as much time as possible hiding in my A/C office.

I’m on my way to Nagalapuram this morning for a week of teaching at the Martin Luther Bible School. Our topic for the day is the Means of Grace. Every time I teach this class my lesson plan seems to get a little longer. It is a challenge to balance thoroughness with time concerns and the educational level of the students. Ina confirmation class where you have all year to prepare the students with all the background information that leads to a good understanding of the means of grace it might be appropriate to cover it in one lesson. When dealing with students who may not even remember the difference between the law and the gospel you need a little more time. Personally it seems that if one were to be thorough in your teaching of the Means of Grace it would be necessary to touch on every major Christian doctrine. If Justification is the inner center of Martin Luther’s rose of theology, the Means of Grace must be the outer center. Although the true heart of the theological differences of the various branches of Christianity lies in their views of justification, the Means of Grace are where those differences become most vividly apparent. If you wish to know if a teacher truly understands the Gospel of Christ, examine their teachings on the Means of Grace. Their words about the gospel may sound good and “Lutheran” but what seems like tiny differences in their understanding of justification will become large gaps in their views of the Means of Grace.

The coming two weeks will find me out on the road driving from one place to another almost every day. This is pretty typical of my work. Weeks of constant appointments ( classes, preaching, etc ) driving from one place to another, followed by periods where I barely leave my study. When I am back home in the states the work is more even and similar to a typical pastor with speaking engagements generally every Sunday and office work during the week. However, here in India everything tends to get pushed together in blocks.

The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to anticipate possible civil unrest around Anantapur in southern Andhra Pradesh following the death on April 24th of the religious leader Sathya Sai Baba. We recommend U.S. citizens avoid traveling to Puttaparthi in Anantapur, as well as Whitefield (near Bangalore) and Kodai Kanal, Tamil Nadu, the sites of two other ashrams, due to the possibility of demonstrations or crowd control issues arising in the emotionally charged atmosphere.

I received the previous email from the US embassy in India, just a few minutes ago.  Dave, Kumar, D. Paul, and I had been talking about this same man Sathya Sai Baba earlier today. It seems Sathya was an indian man who has convinced a large number of Indians that he was a god by virute of the “miracles” he did. These “miracles” included making ash appear in his hands and pulling small statues out of his mouth.

He reminds me of the priests of Egypt who attempted to copy the miracles of the Lord through moses, and though they could do a few simple tricks these conjurers were quickly left in the dust by the Power of the Lord.  Sathya’s tricks are so pathetic they are left in the dust even by many illusionists who make no claim of special power. All men, whether real or fake, whether admited illusionist or charlatan, even the ture prophets of the Lord who did do some miracles, all are left in the dust by the outstanding and undeniable display of power that our Lord showed forth not only on that “first morning of the week” but through out His life.

A very blessed Easter to you all,

Matthew Ude

Question: How do you know men are in charge in India?

Answer: Because when you install a new phone line, you drop it off the roof, let it hang down the side of the building, and drill a hole in the window frame of your living room to get it inside. If you want to try to make it look nice and professional you strap it to water pipes with plastic ties. I’m quite sure that all the pipes, windows, cables, etc, in India would be held together with duct tape if they knew what it was. Kudos to you Indians doing it the way a man should!!

Actually I think it is simply a practical thing. When you build houses with cement you don’t have as many options for sending wires and pipes through the walls.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week was Diwali, one of the most popular of the Hindu festivals. This is the festival of lights. There are some stories associated with Diwali ( also sometimes called Deepavali ). These stories have to do with good princes conquering evil kings, and gods who bring light to a dark world.

Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama along with Sita and Lakshman from his fourteen-year-long exile and vanquishing the demon-king Ravana. In joyous celebration of the return of their king, the people of Ayodhya, the Capital of Rama, illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas (oil lamps) and burst crackers. – From Wikipedia

Since this holiday comes at the end of October or the beginning of November it sets itself up for a nice comparison with the reformation. I mean “light to a dark land” it doesn’t take much imagination to transfer that theme to the Reformation.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am always learning new things about India, which is of course to be expected and part of the fun. For example today a couple of younger people stopped by my apartment asking for money to help an organization called CRY.  An organization aimed at helping children in India www.cry.org .  And ended up finding out that many middle class Indians ( at least according to these youngsters ) sleep with the entire family in a single room not because they have to but because they like to, they would feel alone and perhaps a bit scared if they had to sleep in a room alone. One of the young ladies was describing how her sisters after many years in the US was glad to return to india where she could once again sleep in the same room with her family.

The wife of one of our pastors in koppedu district needs heart surgery within the next couple of months, or else the doctors say she will not make it.  The price for the surgery comes to about $850 in USD. Not much for Americans but far beyond her husband’s means.

Considering the time sensitive nature of this particular need I was hoping that clc pastors could make a quick announcement in the bulletin or after church tomorrow. More details can be found at http://saum.lutheranmissions.org . Anyone wishing to help out can make a check out to CLC-MDF ( write on the memo line “SAUM Saridha” ) and send it to Aaron Ude at the following address:

Pastor Aaron Ude 906 Roncelli Road Lexington, MO 64067

Or they can also contribute online through paypal for more information go to

http://saum.lutheranmissions.org/contribute/

-Pastor Matthew Ude

Teaching – October 11^th – 14^th

Fresh from my victory over the bull, close enough for me anyway, this week was teaching time at the Bible School in Nidubrolu. There was some miscommunication over the subject matter. Jyothi apparently had understood that I was going to be going through the whole book Ephesians, where as I thought I was only doing the second chapter of Ephesians as well as some other studies preferring to give the students a bit of variety. Due to the fact that what I thought was equal to what I prepared there wasn’t much choice but to do it my way, though hopefully I learned my lesson. Read the rest of this entry »

Weekend in Guntur – October 7^th – 10^th

Raju and Rajan Bhitrakoti came down from Nepal for the Joint Asian Pastoral Conference 2010. Due to the Commonwealth Games taking place in Delhi as well as the Indian holiday season, train travel especially towards Delhi was stuffed to overflowing. It was difficult to find any tickets heading in that direction from Nellore, eventually however we did manage to find two tickets that would return the brothers just in time for an important school related activity Raju needed to get back for. These tickets however were not until two days after the end of the JAPC. This meant that Raju and Rajan had extra time to come with Jyothi Benjamin and myself to the Guntur-Nidubrolu area where I was scheduled to teach at the Bible School the following week and to visit a number of congregations over the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

Joint Asia Pastoral Conference – October 6^th and 7^th

From all over Asia, okay maybe just India and Nepal, we came to Nellore, to do the things that apparently pastors do these days when they get together, show hundreds of hours of slide shows. We saw pictures of pastors preaching, pastors teaching, pastors praying, pastors handing out medicine, and pastors leading Joey Reim and Carly Meyer through temples and over lakes all over India. Although we may have wished for a few less slides, it was certainly a wonderful reminder of all the work going on all over India by our dedicated and hard working pastors, especially the leaders in the CLCI, BELC, and HCLCN. Unfortunately the men from Myanmar were not able to attend as they couldn’t get across the border. They did still however send a report of their activities in that area of the world. Read the rest of this entry »