On the map below you will be able to find marked all the places I talk about in this entry.
On Monday the 21st 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 22nd
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 23rd
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 24th
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 25th
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 26th
Aelong – Sunday, November 27th
Jesuraj – Monday, November 28th
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 29th
B Joseph – Wednesday, November 30th
A Kumar – Thursday, December 01th
