Fellow writer Sue and I had the opportunity to interview Vishwas and Krupa, a married couple who run a ministry in South Asia’s remote mountainous villages.
Rebecca: Tell us about the village ministry.
Vishwas: A mountain range divides the northern and southern parts of my home country. It runs all the way from the western to the eastern side. The people living in this area face major issues. One is malnourishment and the other is trafficking.
Krupa: There is not much for them to survive, so [the parents] have to leave home for six months [to go find work]. That causes malnourishment. In every family, there is at least one child who is malnourished. A five-year-old would look like a two-year-old.
We started our first tribal girls home after visiting a village and seeing a small girl, maybe five years old, and her two-year-old brother and sister. I saw this girl was making rice on the front of a hot range and I asked her, where are your parents? She said that her parents weren’t there. They went to build roads and a bridge for the government, so they had to leave the kids and went to a nearby town. I asked who took care of them and she said that her grandmother was somewhere nearby.
So we brought her from there when she was six or seven years old to our home for tribal girls. She finished her ten standard [the first half of optional secondary education, or tenth grade in the U.S.], then she did her higher education on teaching. She became a teacher, and then she left the girl’s home.
Many girls are rescued from that particular community because malnourishment is prevalent and then also human trafficking. The girls look pretty and then thirteen or fourteen-year-old girls are sold to the market.
A missionary we trained was working in the area, and a young girl was bringing water. He learned that the next day, she was going to be sold for about $1,000. There was a man roaming around, a pimp, and the parents had secretly fixed an amount. The parents will act as if they don’t know, but they want the money and they don’t want the girls, so they sell them.
Our missionary called us and told us what was happening. I sent that girl to our house overnight. She was about 17 years old, and we kept her in our home. Later, she accepted Christ and got married. Now she’s got two children and is working in a Bible school.
We have missionaries working in this same community and they’re helping the young girls get some higher education in tailoring courses. They’re helping the boys do computer courses. So they’re helping the community develop a lot.
Sue: So nobody takes care of these kids when the parents leave?
Vishwas: Yes, that’s why we’ve opened the home for them. We have been given permission to have a home attached to a school, so we’re developing that.
Sue: When their parents come back, do they go stay with their parents or do they stay in the home?
Krupa: They go for vacation. Some of them don’t have parents, some have a single parent, some have a guardian, so they just go for vacation.
Vishwas: Otherwise they’ll be with us.
Sue: Is there anything more that you would like to share about village ministry?
Krupa: Yes. It’s very difficult for tribal believers to find each other. That’s why we have a gathering fellowship for particular tribal groups. Believers from various villages come together. They identify other believers, and it’s encouraging because most of the time it’s one person who comes to know the Lord, not the whole family.
Sometimes the families themselves persecute them. Once a single person from the family accepts Christ, they have to let go of various things because their tribal community has festivals and a temple that bind them. They all gather together and celebrate their festival at the temple, but when one or two are not at the temple, they’re abused. People talk bad about them and say they’re separating the family. “Your God has separated the family.”
Another thing is property. If it’s a boy who’s converted, then he doesn’t get property from his parents. They have to lose material benefits and they lose their family. Following Christ costs them a lot. The ones who take baptism, they’re cut off from the family. They disown them [the converts]. It’s a difficult path for them.
Rebecca: You’re trying to get more missionaries into new areas. Do you have a plan or a strategy for reaching those areas?
Vishwas: We’ve commissioned 14 more [missionaries]. To place one missionary requires a lot of preparation and a lot of investment. We need to survey and find them a place to stay, which isn’t easy. Then we need to provide them with some tools to get involved with the people, such as electricity or health. It should be a holistic approach. Then the missionary needs to be ready, needs to be mentored and trained and maybe some supervisor will go with them. So in order to keep one missionary in one area, we initially need $1,000.
That’s the initial setup. Ongoing for sustenance and other needs, we need $150–$200 a month.
Our focus has been on encouraging indigenous churches to give. You [ANM] coming and helping us gets us what we cannot afford, like a bicycle or motorcycle.
Krupa: A big challenge is finding missionaries. We promote the work in Bible schools, but nowadays young people aren’t committed to work in the mission field. The next generation, they want to work somewhere and do ministry, but they aren’t completely stepping out in faith. We’re not looking for people who ask, how much am I going to get or what is my benefits package.
Those who do Bible studies and theological colleges, they want to become pastors and want to be in the limelight. Very few have the call and commitment to work in the remote villages. It’s a great challenge that we face at this point.
We do announce to different churches and home churches, so people who want to serve the Lord can come and join. Sometimes they’re not equipped, so we send them to our Bible school. We pick up about two or three in a year, and we don’t call them missionaries in the beginning because they’re too young, so we call them assistant missionaries. It takes time for them to be independently functioning missionaries.
Rebecca: Thank you.
