Monthly Archives: January 2011

Hello family and friends, greetings to you from India where we have been laboring for the Lord for the past several months. We can tell you without exaggeration that it has truly been a life changing experience for our Family to be in India. God gave our Family the vision to come to the Country of India and work as Missionaries and for the past four months we have been in the State of Tamilnadu seeking to preach the Everlasting Gospel.

This past Christmas Season was the first that our Family spent away from home in the US. I must admit that it was quite different for us to spend the Christmas Holidays in a Hindu Country where the majority of people are not Christians and hence the Holiday did not have much significance to them .

We on the other hand embarked upon a Christmas project to provide clothes to some of the most needy children here in the Villupurum region where we are stationed.  Truly we thought, what better way to spend the Christmas holiday than to spend it giving to others. In the US we often times look forward to receiving gifts, but what better way to truly spend the Holiday than to give to others who can give you nothing in return. This gift giving idea was originally  the brainchild of Sister Felicia Chelliah of the Seabrook SDA Church. Sister Felicia came to India last November and visited us in Villupurum for a short time where she received a first hand opportunity to see some of the need that exists in this Region and thus this project idea was born. In the US we have to search to find needy Children at Christmas time to give gifts to, but in this part of  India that is not the case at all . In fact things are quite the opposite, in every Village that we go to it seems that there are only needy children. We decided then to identify 100 of the most needy Children from the all the Villages that we have visited so far and provide them with Christmas gifts.

We prayed to God to send supporters for this project because even though we were sure that this was a good idea we knew that it would also be a costly one. We made an appeal on one of our blogs and several people responded to the call. Sister Felicia Chelliah also worked tirelessly to raise much of the needed funds by appealing to many of the Sabbath schools at the Seabrook SDA Church on our behalf.  Because of your support we were able to purchase clothes for 130 Children plus several widows.  From the bottom of our hearts we are truly grateful and thankful to all who supported the Christmas project and allowed themselves to be instruments in the hand of the Lord to minister to many who are in great need here in India.

The day for the Christmas project finally came, the distribution program was held at a nearby SDA School on Christmas Day. I am usually not emotional person in public but I remember distinctly as I approached the School room where the program was to be held and saw  over 100 Children, many of them with their parents singing Tamil songs and  awaiting our arrival.   I was almost overcome with emotion. I knew that for many,  their parents were daily wage workers making only $3 per day and that this was the only gift that many would receive for the Holiday Season and for some this was the only gift for the Year.  I was just thankful to God that we were obedient to His voice and that we came to this Country in faith and obeyed his voice and were able to make so many people happy.

As we mentioned the Christmas Season was a particularly busy time for us because while we were planning the Christmas program we were also conducting some meetings in a Village called Edethu Portan Colony.

Of all the Villages that we have worked  in this Region,  this was the poorest one.  The name in Tamil actually means to take and throw away, this Village is totally isolated from any other Villages,  business or shops, also there are no government or any other buses that run close to this Village. The members all have to walk many miles to town to even get essential supplies. There are no buses to even carry the Children to School and so even they too have to walk  rain or shine . Many of these people don’t even own a bicycle and so if there is any emergency it is next to impossible to get to Town for help. On the first night of our Meeting we were lost and so we sought to get directions to this village but many in the main Town had never even heard of this Village or could even tell us how to get there. Finally we received directions and made it to our destination after travelling many minutes down long winding bumpy roads with swamps and rice fields and thick vegetation on both sides of us. It honestly seemed to me that this  Village was thrown away. The members of this Village are considered a Dalit Colony and are considered India’s lowest caste. Their ancestors were once considered by the Indian society to be untouchable and so the Colony was established far away from any  Village or business so that no one would be contaminated by them.

The people were very happy to see us as no foreigners had been to this Colony  prior to our arrival. The Ancestors of these people were  relegated to doing the lowest most menial jobs in the Indian society. These people were assigned this small Colony to live in and many had been there for generations as the bottom of Indian Society and these were their descendants, still living in exile on this Colony.

We found the people to be very warm, friendly and very receptive to our nightly messages most of them were overwhelmed with gratitude that foreigners, of all people had come to see them. After seeing the conditions here in EP Colony we decided that since these people were considered to be the lowest of the low, that we would do our best for them and be as Christ who came to minister to the needs of even the very lowest among us. At the close of our Meeting we ordered food from a local Restaurant as a treat for all the people of this Colony and Noah donated many of his Hot wheels matchbox cars to all the young boys , as well as we provided hair accessories and books to many of the girls in EP Colony.  The people were visibly pleased with the time that we spent with them and the Children asked us to promise them that we would not forget about them as everyone else had.  We assured them that we would always remember them and most importantly God will never forget them.

We again want to thank everyone for their support of our work here in India, especially we are grateful to all who gave their support to the land purchasing project for our Brothers and Sisters in the Village of Meyur. We have not yet met our goal  for this project but we are confident in God’s ability to provide so please pray for us as we seek to do our part to hasten His coming.

To God be the glory great things he hath done. We are moving into the 4^th Month of our Missionary journey here in the Country of India, and we can honestly say that God has been tremendously good to us. He has more than fulfilled even our highest expectations of Him. Truly the mercy of God has been before, and behind and beside us every step of way on this Missionary journey. We are forever indebted to you, our  friends and family who have continually kept us in prayer these few months. We know for absolute certainty that these prayers on our behalf have sustained and kept us amidst many dangers seen and unseen, and amidst many trials, and hazards that come with Missionary service.

This week’s blog is about a Village on the outskirts on the Villupuram Region named Meyyur. We were very enthusiastic about doing Ministry in this particular Village for a number of reasons but primarily because this Village is pastored by the only Woman Pastor in the entire Region. This Sister in my opinion is one of the most committed and diligent workers here in the Region. She is the lay pastor for 3 Churches and she nurtures many families in different Villages, and she is also a literacy teacher who conducts 5 different literacy Meetings per week where she teaches many Village Women to read.

Our 1^st nights meeting was an interesting one. We arrived at the Village after 1 1/2 hours of travelling down bumpy and severely damaged roads that had taken  tremendous beatings during the annual Monsoon rains. We also discovered that the only path to our Meeting site was through several inches of very slippery mud. Marion and Noah feared the worst as they both were wearing opened toe shoes. We also noticed an especially pungent smell surrounding us, this smell we were no stranger to as we have encountered it many, many times during our Missionary journey here in India, the smell was human excrement. What was particularly disturbing though was that at the entrance to the Village, every few steps that we took there were piles and piles of human waste on both sides of the road and when the sun was at it’s pinnacle the smell was immense.

Nevertheless we proceeded to our meeting site where we encountered a large and vibrant group of Seventh Day Adventists who were singing songs as they awaited our arrival. These believers also have no Church building and so they decided to set up Church outside. We began our 1^st night’s meeting outside, the woman pastor (Sister Daniel) told me that they were eagerly looking forward to our meeting and that they had especially prayed to God that it would not rain during our meetings as the Monsoon rains were still pouring nightly. Believe it or not, God worked miraculously for us because it did not rain one drop during our nightly Meetings. This was the 1^st week that we had conducted meetings in all the Villupurum region that it did not rain during our nightly meeting, praise God.

On the first night I began to preach, about 15 minutes into my presentation I realized that someone in the adjacent street had mounted some speakers and was gradually increasing the music Volume. The music volume was increased to the point that hardly anyone could hear either myself or my translator as we were preaching the nightly message. The disturbance had come from some Hindus who were  not pleased that we were having our meeting and wanted to make sure that no one heard the presentation. I had a strange feeling from that nights exhibition that this was only a harbinger of bad things to come, and unfortunately I was right.

The following night we received several prayer requests from people who were complaining to us that even at their homes, they were being harassed by local Hindu radicals. In this outer region of Tamil Nadu many of our Adventist Brothers and Sisters are experiencing real religious persecution. In some Villages if people convert to Christianity, they are completely ostracized. They are treated as the lepers were treated in biblical times. They have to vacate their homes and move to the outskirts of the Village, where they can no longer use the one water pump that comes into the Village. There are no Police Stations or Fire Stations remotely close to any of the Villages that we have been to so far. And so fellow Villagers are most people’s only source of security and protection, but not if you have converted to Christianity.  Here in India many people still pay a tremendous price for their faith.

On the 4^th night of our meeting we were preaching on the state of the dead.  As I was preaching from Ecclesiastes 9:5 I noticed a  disturbance ahead, and as I looked carefully an Army of about 100 Hindu men began to briskly walk towards our group meeting. As soon as I saw them I knew that we had a big problem on our hands. There is a really sick feeling that comes over a person’s body when you are faced with confrontation and you are greatly out numbered. The young Pastor who was our translator was a young man 32 years of age named Circunam Silverage, this young man told me “ boss don’t worry I will take care of them” he then proceeded to skillfully handle these men. These Hindu radicals most of whom were in their 20’s  staunchly demanded that we stop our meeting. They wanted to know why we were converting the people.  Every Hindu that night had a different contention with our small group. Marion and Noah were hastily escorted into a nearby house for protection from this group of very angry men that descended upon us.  Marion immediately  began to pray with the Lay Pastor Sis Daniel and she broke down in tears.  She was so heartbroken and told Marion that this happens all the time.  The Hindus taunt them and say “ where is your God ?” “where is your temple? ” because they do not have a church building to worship in and are forced to congregate outside.   I was told by these men that I had no business in what was taking place and that I was a foreigner and I should pack up and leave immediately. Our Adventist group was composed of only 8 or 9 men including myself, most of these few men were very afraid and intimidated except our translating pastor Silverage. If I were to leave this young pastor with these 100 Hindu men what would become of him? I whispered a prayer and decided that I would stand by this young Pastor’s side come what may, even though these men demanded that I leave the scene, I felt that I could not leave him by himself in this terrible hour. God gave Pastor Silverage great tact and wisdom in that crisis hour, he was firm enough with the men to let them know that he was unafraid yet respectful enough to not  use any harsh or provacatory words. He began to reason with them as they all leveled their different charges against the Adventists. Some were angry with our people because they refuse to pay the local taxes to maintain the Temples, some were angry because of a local graveyard issue, etc. Yet this 32-year-old Pastor stood as firm as a rock in the midst of a tempestuous sea of angry voices. After 30-45 minutes of talking to the leaders of these men he was able to disarm them, and we all escaped without blood shed or loss of life. I truly thank God that those who were with us were more than those who were with them, and that the Angels of The Lord encamp round about those who fear Him and they are ready to deliver.

These types of occurrences are daily experiences for our Adventist brethren here in India, and now we can say that we too have seen firsthand some of the religious persecution that takes palace daily in this vast nation.

From my study of History I know that tragedies and even atrocities continue to happen in our World because good people and even well-meaning people stand aside and do nothing to stop it.

The people in this Village of Meyyur are facing hardships and persecution as many people only read in a Magazine or see on Television. They are suffering in silence and we feel an obligation to be a voice for them. We have devised a plan that could put a stop to much of the hardships that they are enduring here in India. If these people have their own Church building they will protected by law from disturbances to their religious assemblies by these Hindu groups and others. We are not in a position at present to build them a Church building due to our present financial condition as that would be an immediate solution, but we have been in negotiation with some friends who work for Maranatha and if we can just purchase a plot of land for them, then they could be placed on the list to receive  a Church by Maranatha. The cost of this plot of land as we have investigated will cost  $2000 US. So we are making this appeal on behalf of our brothers and Sisters here in the Country of India, to any who can help this most worthy of causes. If you are able to support you can feel free to make a secure donation to our blog at: http://3goingforward.wordpress.com/ just click on the donate button and all proceeds will go towards this building  project.

As you are a recipient of our  blog we would love to hear from you. We send our blogs to friends all over the World but rarely do we get responses to our different posts, so if you are receiving this blog and if they have been a blessing or encouragement to you please drop us a line as we would really be blessed to hear from you. May God continue to richly bless you as we work towards finishing the work that he has given us to do. Gavin, Marion and Noah Simpson.