From Every Nation
The From Every Nation Podcast is designed to encourage and equip the next generation of missionaries to take the gospel into the world. Join us as we interview missionaries to hear first hand about their life and ministry. Learn firsthand what strategies, barriers, and opportunities they faced on the field. The FEN podcast also equips you today, for the missionary work the Lord has planned for your life. The FEN podcast is the official podcast of the Tom Elliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University
From Every Nation
The Stewart's: 350K New Believer Pt. 2
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What challenges await a newlywed couple who exchange the comfort of home for the unfamiliar landscapes of India? Glenn and Rhonda’s journey from newlyweds to missionaries is nothing short of extraordinary, and today we share their heartfelt story. Hear first-hand about their experiences moving to India through the 2 Plus 3 program, the culture shock they faced, and the deep connections they formed with locals, like a caring family of dobiwalas. Discover how adapting to a new healthcare system and other cultural challenges became part of their day-to-day life while raising a family in a land rich in diversity and complexity.
Join us as we step into the vibrant world of Rajasthan, a state bursting with culture but shadowed by high illiteracy rates and fears of persecution. Glenn and Rhonda recount their collaborations with local pastors and organizations, emphasizing the importance of cultural sensitivity and perseverance. As they navigated this landscape, they harnessed the power of prayer and leading by example, working alongside figures like Deep Raj to build a resilient and supportive Christian community. Through their efforts, they aimed to transform lives, using innovative tools like micro SD cards to overcome literacy barriers and spread the message of faith effectively.
The impact of their work is beautifully illustrated through the stories of individuals like Sukhdev and his daughter Lakshmi, who became beacons of faith in their communities. Witness how recorded teachings empowered them to inspire others and break free from traditional hierarchical structures, embracing a faith-driven life rooted in prayer and obedience. These narratives, filled with perseverance and a shared vision, showcase the ripple effect of accessible religious teachings. As Glenn and Rhonda reflect on their journey, they open the door to future missionary stories, inspiring a generation ready to make a difference in the world.
Life and Ministry in India
Speaker 1Welcome back everybody. We're excited for part two of this episode. If you didn't catch part one, make sure you pause, jump back and listen to that. We talked through Glenn and Rhonda's early life call to ministry and kind of how they met a little bit, and that's what we're going to pick up today. We're going to pick up right with their 2 Plus 3 program and seminary and jump right into their time in India during their first term. So I hope you all enjoy this episode. So what year did you all get married? And then, when did you end up on the field and we can kind of start transitioning into your time in India we got married in 2004 and went to the field in 2005 and I can't remember if you already said this again.
Speaker 1We've talked so many times. It all kind of blurs together, but, um, it was the two plus three program that kind of directed you all to india, correct?
Speaker 3that's correct, that's correct that year they have, um, they pick different parts of the world as a target deployment. Now you can spin out, as I mentioned earlier, if you're, if you're called specifically to another place, but for our deployment, then south asia was the target for our group. So that's how we, and we felt personally called to india. Uh, there's how many countries?
Speaker 2exactly nine seven, seven countries that are make up south asia gotcha, yeah.
Speaker 1So it's time to go. You pack up your stuff, you sell your stuff, you hop on the plane, you get off the plane, you're in india and it's time for your first term. What? What was your first term like? Tell us about how it went. Adjusting, culture, shock I know this is just a whole broad category and question here, but just tell us a little bit about it. What were some of the highlights?
Speaker 3I'll let Rhonda start that out, but I'll mention that one of our professors would often say that the the romance novel idea of being a missionary wears off about 20 seconds after you hit the ground.
Speaker 2So that quickly and you realize that you're not on a short-term trip and have a plane ticket taking you back in two weeks yeah, I'm sure it's different when you know you're going home, even journeymen.
Speaker 1Right, you knew you were going home. You knew, hey, this journey has an end, but it didn't when you landed the first time, right, right?
Speaker 2You get shown your apartment or find an apartment and buy furniture and sign a lease. It's kind of permanent.
Speaker 2Like this is where we're living now, but it was good. I mean, god is good. We hit the ground. I was about five and a half months along with our first child, so we had to figure all that out. We were probably, I think, the second people that had actually decided to give birth in India, so we had to figure all that out for ourselves. We were the one other family that had. They helped us a lot with how to deal with the government and all the paperwork that was entailed with that, how to get our daughter her passport and all those things.
Speaker 2But a lot of our first term we actually had three children during our first term and so a lot of our term was learning to deal with hospitals, learning to deal with government issues and all of that learning language, learning the culture. We had a family that lived. They were a what's called a dobiwala. They ironed for a living, and so we were in an apartment building but their house sort of attached to the side of our apartment building and we would go there.
Speaker 2We started going there hoping that they could help us with language, but we quickly just grew to love them. They grew to love us and just became some of our dearest friends and so we spent a lot of time with them down there or they'd come up to our apartment and hang out, and we both lost parents during our first term. So it was good to have those relationships. We've told you and I'm sure we'll tell you more as we go, but we talked to you about Deep Raj, and so those relationships were so important to us during those early years because they became our family there.
Speaker 1So I guess I didn't realize. You all met Deep Raj in your first term.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1Wow, so introduce us to Deep Raj, because that's going to be a name that's going to come up for the rest of this conversation.
Speaker 3Yeah. So, like Ron was saying, that first time on the field is such a learning curve, field is such a learning curve and, um, after we get settled into the apartment I it's a little bit daunting on where to start. And so I just told her I'm going out and burn daylight and I'm just going to see if I can find churches and pastors and see if I can get invited to something or anything and just understand what the culture was like in the Christian community. And I literally did that for many months and began to find the invitations to different meetings. And then there was different smaller colleges or evangelism schools in the area and then I finally found a school of evangelism. It was across town and at that point in time the world is so big and at that point in time the world is so big, the new city is so huge, that now I would make this kind of trip across town, you know, regularly. But that first time I thought, boy, I hope I can find my way back home. It was seemed like it was so far from where we lived.
Speaker 3But we went to found this school and met some of those pastors that ran it and the boys were going to help do a food line for a group that was coming to town. And they said I was a part of them now and I had to join them. And as we began to close down the event, waiting for the pastors to get done talking, there was attention given to me because of being a foreigner and some of the Indians never seeing a foreigner, and I said, well, we should take advantage of this opportunity. Why don't you want to? You guys, share with them? Well, they really didn't have any way to share. They hadn't really been taught how to share with them. Well, they really didn't have any way to share. They hadn't really been taught, like, how to share with anyone. We didn't have any tracts and we didn't have any Bibles. And so I ended up telling them you know, if you guys will figure out where he lives, I'll try to find us some tracts in New Testaments and we'll go to his home later.
Speaker 3And so there were two young men, but one of those men or boys' name was Deep Raj, and so when I went back to the school and I had found some tracts and some New Testaments, I asked the leaders of the school if I could take Deep Raj and go out and find this boy and share with him. And they tried to send someone else I think of it as they tried to send Saul with me the more articulate, the taller guy, the cleaner looking guy. And I was like no, that's the guy that was willing to try to share and that's who I want to go with me. And so I went down and got Deep Raj and we went down to this welcome colony and we were just going down the road and we're trying to find this boy and we're asking people we could pray for him and giving some tracks.
Speaker 3And after we'd done that for 15 or 20 minutes, deep Raj looked over at me and he just said, if I couldn't be doing this, there's no reason for me to be going to that school. And it just connected in my heart and mind that, you know, this may be the national partner that God has for me to work with. And so from there on we helped raise Deep Raj. He had been kicked out of his home for taking baptism and following the Lord Jesus Christ as a Hindu family and had been on his own since he was about 13 years old, moving and and kind of getting the short end of the stick from just about everybody that ought to helped him. And so at that point, uh, though we, we worked together and and the lord just kind of grew us together, for until today we're still, we're still connected let's see here what.
Ministry in Rajasthan
Speaker 1What are the things from those early, early years just kind of stick out to you all? Is, I mean, kind of formative for your time? Well, I guess we jumped right over this. I realized this while you were talking. Tell us about rajasthan. Uh, what's the demographic, the, the people group, the? Tell us about that so.
Speaker 2So Rajasthan is the geographically is the largest state of India. It is on the western side, kind of central west part of India. On our western border is the country of Pakistan, so we share the great Tar Desert with Pakistan. It runs into Rajasthan, which was the state we worked in, and so it's very hot, it's very dry, the summers are hot, 120 or so degrees every day. The population of Rajasthan is over 80 million. There are, I don't know, various lists over the years, but I think remaining are 98 unreached people groups. Currently there are 27 distinct languages in our state, 50 districts, and so as you move from district to district, kind of a region of districts has its own culture. So even throughout the state there can be various cultures. The northern part of our state, with sort of the Punjabi-speaking people and many Sikh background people, is very different from the southern part of our state where the Billy tribal belt runs through there. So yeah, it's very large and very many people and very diverse.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think at one point we were told there were 45,000 or over 45,000 villages that's right All by itself and then there was a very large illiterate contingency. It's kind of a backward state, and so in our estimation there was somewhere around 28 million people that were illiterate, and so that was going to be something that we had to address along the way as we tried to share the gospel with the people of Rajasthan.
Speaker 2That's right, and the 28 million is a very—that's according to the government's count which many of the people are functionally illiterate, or we've heard that even when they come around to do census, if you can sign your name, they count you as literate.
Speaker 3How many people are in the state of Oklahoma?
Speaker 2Four million about four and a half million. Is that right? I looked it up. I think so.
Speaker 3I think it's eight million in South Carolina where we're living.
Speaker 2Five and a half in South Carolina, only five and a half million. I think it's eight in North Carolina.
Speaker 3So we're going to have to go through a lot of states before we get 28. And we had 80 million plus 80 million people in the state that we were living in.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's overwhelming. 81 million, it's just unfathomable.
Speaker 2And even with the illiteracy rate, you know 34% of that. But really when you get outside of the city, which the capital city was around 8 million when you get outside of the capital city and you get into the villages, the illiteracy rate goes up. The city kind of helps to balance out that percentage. The illiteracy rate really goes up and then especially among women, and especially among women that would be over the age of 30, 35, you're going to have upwards of 80% probably that are illiterate.
Speaker 3I think somebody told me on any given day you could see like 13 different forms of transportation, and so we would. Routinely you would see bicycles and motorcycles and rickshaws and donkeys and horses and camels and elephants and cars, buses and trains and ox carts. It was every time I saw a camel I would you know, because dad do dad jokes. I would tell the children look, kids, it's a camel. And of course they had become inoculated to seeing them.
Speaker 3And I was just like well, I never saw a camel growing up, yeah it's pretty wild, so I still think it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2It's pretty wild when you pull up to a stoplight and look over and there's a camel standing next to you on the road in the middle of traffic.
Speaker 3Yeah, or the elephants are really crazy.
Speaker 1That's the one that would really blow my mind.
Speaker 3They're enormous. The Indian elephant is only second to the African elephant in size, so it's a very large pachyderm.
Speaker 2And the city, the capital city of Rajasthan, jaipur, is a bit of a tourist area, and so some of the forts that people would visit had elephant rides, and especially in the mornings or the evenings the elephants would go home with their owners and they would come walking right through the middle of town.
Speaker 1It's crazy to me, through the middle of town. It's crazy to me. So there's a little context for Rajasthan and the ministry. How did your ministry develop over the years? Where did you start and how did it get to what it was?
Speaker 3So we're looking at the demographic was probably 80 percent hindu, nine or ten percent muslim, then one percent in a religion called jains, and then the sikh are there as well, and so it began by becoming friends with pastors and other agencies. A particular early great friend of mine worked with Campus Crusade, which is now known as CRU, and by befriending these guys it gave me a huge opportunity. I hung out with them for about six months before they finally asked me what I was planning to do or if I had any vision. But I was just hanging out and trying to become a friend until I expected them to ask me that. I didn't think it'd take six months, but it did. And then I had an opportunity to speak and they were listening, and I found out that this guy, being the director for the Jesus Film Project in Rajasthan, knew just about every pastor in the entire state, and so if I wanted to go somewhere and do something, all I had to do is ask Balwant something. All I had to do is ask Balwant and he could arrange it for me.
Speaker 3And so this began, our opportunity to try and train people in evangelism among the people that lived there. And it went over. It really did go over, kind of like a lead balloon. There was a real fear of persecution. There wasn't rampant persecution around us or any reports of any persecution, but there had been in their history, and so there was just a real fear and not too dissimilar from the situation we have in America.
Speaker 3It's not the most natural thing to share your faith with someone. It's intimidating, especially as you begin to do it, but it's something that you can become very comfortable, very quickly doing with just a little intentionality. Very quickly doing with just a little intentionality. And it always works best if you have someone that has an experience that would just take you with them and show you how they start the conversation. And so that's all we did. We got with those guys and began teaching them how to share through trainings and asking them to go out and do that and then meet back and take reports and work through what the experiences were. Yeah, that was the beginning.
Speaker 1And so how did things develop from there?
Speaker 3And so we did that, deep Raj and I. I considered the work as near and far work that meant if we were in the city we had decided that we were going to share 200 times every day. Part of that was just a logistical convenience for me, because at the end of the year I needed to report how many times I had shared, and it was easier just to know the number of days and I could multiply that by 200. And so that was our number and we'd come. If it took 10 minutes or 10 hours, we were out until we got the backpacks.
Speaker 3That's 200 people, yeah the backpack was empty, and so we did that. And then we had regular trainings, which would take up the a day, so whatever travel time was be it usually a pastor's home or um, which almost always was a pastor home that doubled as a church, uh where they would allow us to come and and do some kind of evangelical um and evangelism training, then we would do that. So we had near and far work and we just did that over and over, hoping that the trainings would really produce thousands of leaders that were continually sharing their faith. But there was a compromise that I made early on. That was a real mistake on my part and in order to get my foot in the door, they said you can come and train, but we're not going to go out during the training or right after the training and share because that's too risky. And I said it's fine. I said we can work around it. I just I need, I want to be doing stuff. And so I made that compromise and in five years later I completely stopped training because no one was ever going to do it until I had given them the practical experience when we first started doing this. It was funny People. I would say, okay, I would surprise them. I said okay, now everybody just count off one to four. So you go one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now all the ones get together with twos over three, four. Now we're going to go out and go sharing.
Speaker 3I had people almost raptured out of that group, people who suddenly had ankles that no longer worked. We got out and one boy just took off running. He never looked back, but we had to get them out. After they went out and came back they were just rejoicing like the 70. They were like we can't believe it.
Speaker 3We had a conversation with this family and they said they wanted to see the Jesus film. We talked to another family over here. They're interested to see the Jesus film. We talked to another family over here they're interested to see the Jesus film. We talked to another family and want Deep Watch to come back and start the Bible study at their home. And so that was the hurdle that really took us four or five years to get over. We had to get shoulder to shoulder with people to do that thing. That wasn't innate for them or intuitive for them, but we learned very quickly that they were willing to do it if they could just go with somebody that had had some practice doing it, and so that's how we kind of got started from, kind of moved away from trainings to full-on. Deep Raj and I were doing Bible studies. We still did trainings to engage different parts of the country, and that is where we ran into a couple of other groups that became the streams that turned into the disciple-making movement, church-planting movement that God had in store for us.
Speaker 2Talking about that, glenn. What is it you always say about being the example when you go into a place that has none?
The Power of Example and Prayer
Speaker 3After looking back after years, I realized that Paul was always talking about you know, follow my example as I follow Christ's example, and all the people that were kind of mentored by him. I'm sure you know they were saying follow me because I follow Paul, because he follows Christ, I follow Paul because he follows Christ. And what's happened in the Christian community, really there and around the world, is we've lost a generation of we can call them exemplars of people who set the example for us, and so when you're in that context, you become the example, and so I didn't see that coming. But I was raised with a really strong work ethic.
Speaker 3I started my own construction business and so you know, if you don't work, you don't make money, and so going out and doing something every day 200 shares, or we're doing a training or we're doing a training was just part of the example that ended up becoming a part of the DNA for the entire population that God had intended to reach, so that many of these people work all day long, but they'll do that like a 10-hour or a 12-hour day, and then they'll clean up and go out and do their Bible study so that they end up really only sleeping three or four hours a night, and it's amazing to see that happen.
Speaker 3But we didn't know that we were going to be the example. But it also turned out to be such a example, but it also turned out to be such a commonality between myself, deep Raj and them that we could talk about the practical experiences, and surely we had had something similar happen to each of us in different places, and so that just resonated with everybody that these people aren't just telling us what to do, they actually do it.
Speaker 2Right, with someone actually setting that example. People were not doing this, people were not sharing their faith. And so by setting that example, then, when Glenn and Deep Raj would meet people and start training them, they weren't just speaking from theoretical experience, but they had actually been sharing in their same town or in their same village, and so it really gave them an audience. Their audience was willing to listen to them and go out with them even.
Speaker 3Yeah, if Deep Raj and I weren't getting into trouble. You know why should they? And so we would invite early on people to come and stay with us, or we would just meet them and go to a brand new city and show them how, you know, we can start anywhere in the world, start a conversation, get ourselves invited into the home and start a Bible study. We've done it thousands and thousands of times, so there was no room left for the pushback. But it becomes a DNA, so that it's just what everybody does, and so that's been really cool to see how God worked that out.
Speaker 1Yeah, and Ronna, I've heard you talk a couple times now about the importance of prayer in those early years and you talked a few times about this idea of a seedbed. Can you tell us about that story a little bit?
The Impact of Micro SD Cards
Speaker 2Yeah, so early on, back to when we were talking about our first term and we had just met Deep Rudge and Glenn was doing that, taking him out and doing the 200 shares. They would usually start in our apartment, or some days they would be in our apartment at least, and every Saturday they were there for sure all day long, usually translating the story they were going to share the next week and they would pray together and I had little babies and I was busy in the house with the babies you know, I might be preparing a meal or something and I would hear them in the other room praying and weeping for the people of Rajasthan and for the hope and the expectation that they had for God to work and to move in Rajasthan. And they would pray that Rajasthan would one day be the seedbed of Christianity for all of South Asia and even to the ends of the earth. And I heard that prayer many, many times from both Glenn and Deep Raj. And we were back in the States. Maybe it was, I don't remember if it was after our first term or second term, but we were back in the States and I was thinking about that and wanting to share that with our churches back here in the States. And so I looked up the definition of a seed bed and it is a plot of land where seedlings are germinated, or the second definition was a plot of land where seedlings are grown and then transplanted into another soil.
Speaker 2And to me, you know, we love the parable, we talk about the parable of the soils a lot. But then there's a second parable of the weeds in that same chapter, and both times the disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable to him. The first time he says you know, the one who sows is the son of man, the seed is the word of God and the soil are the hearts of men. And then he explains the four different types of hearts that the seed is being sown into. But the second parable, when he explains it to them, he says the one who sows is the son of man. But then this time it changes and he says the field is the world and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. So I love that transition of how it's the word of God being sown into the hearts of men.
Speaker 2But then the second time it is the. Now it's the hearts of men, it's the people of the kingdom that have the seed of the word of God in their hearts that are being sown into the world. And so it even. It brought that prayer, I guess, to me even more alive that God could raise up men and women and young people and old people in Rajasthan, you know, to a level of maturity, and that they could then be transplanted across Rajasthan, across India, across South Asia and to the ends of the earth. And so, you know, we have seen that prayer being answered now over the last decade, as God has brought men and women to faith. God has raised them up through the reading of his word to a place where many of them, most of them, are at least going into the next village, but many of them have crossed boundaries into other districts, into other states.
Speaker 1And so our prayer is that God just continues that multiplication. Yeah, it sounds like that's what's been happening when I listen to these stories. And so you all were in India and you were doing ministry for about a decade. When you're introduced to a micro SD card for the first time and it sounds like that kind of changed a lot for you all. Talk to us about what is a micro SD card and how did that change your ministry for you all.
Speaker 2First, can I just say a little bit of a gap there between doing the training and sort of figuring that part out of there having to be that practical step, and Glenn mentioned that was. Then they were still doing some trainings and that was how they met these two streams.
Speaker 1Right, right.
Speaker 2So let's talk about that we got those two sort of networks that we began teaching them and we were teaching them. But then this was where that barrier of illiteracy really we hit up against, because we were realizing that these were people who had it in their heart to be obedient, but the literacy was really hindering them.
Speaker 3but the literacy was really hindering them. Yeah, it was a realization that they were attempting to share and, as Rhonda said, they were illiterate and Deep Raj was telling me that they can do pretty well up until we start getting into the double digits. Well, we had 35 stories and they would just lose track of which story was next. So their minds are genius. It's unbelievable what they can remember. But they couldn't get the sequence of the stories. If you asked them a particular story, they could tell you all about it. And so we tried to create a picture book so they could look at the picture, and then we wanted to remember at least three or four different points about the story as they were moving forward, and it was very problematic. We were really struggling to get through the content.
Speaker 3And then it was just at some random meeting and a friend of mine we're just talking at a coffee break and he's just like man, have you heard of micro SD cards? I was like no, how in the hell are you talking about? And Witt was telling me he's like no, I don't know what you're talking about. And Witt was telling me he's like yeah, it's this card. And he said you can put it in the Android phone, so most of the phones in our area were Android. And he said and you can put anything on there. You can put sermons or a Bible or songs or whatever you want to, and then you know your people in your networks you want to, and then you know the, your people in your networks can listen to the, to whatever you put on there.
Speaker 3And it was really interesting for me because I had struggled in the beginning when I understood the, the area, how our, our state is equal probably in size to combining North Carolina, south Carolina and Virginia in area with four times those three states population, and I didn't know how we were going to get to everybody. And then here we have something that we could record the content on in an audio format and then give it to the people out on the ground. So I got that, got the idea, and asked one of the guys on my team they were a little younger, a little more, had more tech agility than I did and he was just like, yeah, I think we can do that. And so we took all the things that we had been teaching the Bible studies and we added all the verses written out so that we had a script and we had some friends that let us borrow their recording studio in a little church and we sat down behind the microphone and we recorded all the content and it was a real game changer.
Speaker 3Now these people who had already been obedient to share their faith had a way to do it without making any mistakes. The content is completely controlled now. It never changes from one person to the next person. Everybody gets the same thing, and in our work we focused on everybody getting everything. So even if we met you and you've been in church, there are some people scattered here and there that had been Christians, had been in church for 10 years or maybe even 18 years. One lady in particular comes to mind. We would have them start at the beginning and over and over and over, especially when we started among the church people, they would tell us we've never heard this before, we had never heard this before and it was just straight narrative out of the Bible, and so that was a real game changer.
Speaker 2That one lady in particular that had been in church for 18 years. It was vital I mean thankfully we did go back through all of that information with her, because she said no one had ever told me that I couldn't worship idols. So she was coming home. She still had her Ganesh idol in her home, but was in church every Sunday.
Speaker 1Wow, that's powerful. So it's a little before this where I think the story of Lakshmi and her dad is so powerful. Can you introduce us to them and talk through their story?
Speaker 3Yeah, so we would continue to train. That's how we met people and met people in new places, and so we call it filtering. We're trying to filter for people that we can spend more time with. And so you just go and you have your content and you're trying to train pastors and whoever they invite. And so we're in this area and things kind of fell apart for us with the intention we had to entrain and but we were already, you know, a day away from our, my home and deep roger's home. And so is it. We asked. The question is, is there anybody else that might be interested to hear? And so they there was a fellow Sadar, he knew this village that was another three or four hours away from where we were at, and he said he had contacted them and they'd be glad if we came out there to teach them anything. They'd be happy to just hear anything we had to teach. And so Deep Raj said, he said, but we're going to have to do it at night. He said, all these people are day laborers and they work all day long and they won't be free until the evening. I was like, well, what is night? And he's like, well, it's going to be 8.30, 9 o'clock, you know, before they can get there. I said, ok, that's no issue.
Speaker 3So we, we packed up, got in the car, drove four hours, got there in the evening somewhere around 6.30, hanging out, we were with Siddhar and Deep Raj and I and we're by ourselves and you could see they were kind of making preparations for something to happen, but it hadn't been fully prepared yet and they kept working. And come around 8.30, 9 o'clock they brought us a plate of food. So the food had gotten finished being prepared and as we sat there then 9.30, 10, 10.30, 11 o'clock, the people began to really filter in and take their evening meal and somewhere around 11.30, I tried to count the people were there and it looked to me like there were probably around 180 people out in this village and it was kind of near the Pakistan border. And I was astounded and I just prayed to God and I was just. If there's something that I should say rather than what I thought I was going to say, we should definitely do that. I can't believe these people to do this on a work day, must be hungry, to hear from you, you know. And we kind of didn't really know how to handle the situation. My decision was I'll try to teach, like, give me 40 people that you think are solid, we'll try to teach them the stuff that we got and then we'll just come back and do another 40 and another 40 until we can get through everyone.
Reproducing Impact Through Ministry Training
Speaker 3And it was, sukhdev was the leader of the group and he was a completely illiterate man, probably late 30s at this point, when he would go around with his young daughter, lakshmi, and she would read the Bible. And Lakshmi's got to be 10 to 12 years old and she would read the Bible, and Luxie's got to be 10 to 12 years old and she would read the Bible for her papa. And then he would try, just the way it was always said would try to say something after that. So try to say something. But no education, no knowledge, no mentoring, anything you know. But God had led their hearts and opened their hearts to Jesus Christ and the Word. They knew those things were important, but they'd been maybe jilted by the traditional church, so they didn't really want anything to do with them, but they did want somebody to teach them, and so we began working with them and the SD card was just around the corner, right.
Speaker 2That's right. So we got the content recorded, like Glenn said, and on an SD card.
Speaker 2Glenn said and on an SD card and in those early years he had two what do you call them A card reader copier, and he would put one in my laptop and one in his and he could do two and it would take about half an hour to do two back then. And so he would make copies of the SD card and he would take them to this village and one other village down in the south. And when Sukhdev got that SD card and realized that it was all that content that for the last year or two Glenn had been teaching him to share and that he was going and sharing with his daughter Lakshmi, he just wept. He was like now, finally, I can go and do this on my own instead of having to wait and take Lakshmi. He just wept. He was like now, finally, I can go and do this on my own instead of having to wait and take Lakshmi along with me everywhere. And that's what he did. I mean, he started going everywhere around his village and local villages.
Speaker 2But it wasn't long after that, glenn and Deepraj had put up some maps in our little training center. I don't know if he had been, if he was there. I think it was there at the training center that he said this. They had put some maps up around of India and of Rajasthan and he said well, I know I have some contacts, some of his family or friends, that used to have been in his area. He said I know some contacts that have moved down into another area of Rogerstown where you'd have to get on a bus, you know, and go it'd be an overnight bus there. He said, would it be okay if, now that I have this, that I go there and share this with them? And of course we, we encouraged that and we're so excited for him to do that.
Speaker 2But I think it was at that point when we really started to realize that this was taken off, that it that they were. We really started to realize that this was taken off, that it that they were, it was a tool that they were, that they were using, that it was actually. You know, things can be things. There are tools that we can say, well, this is a reproducible tool because we can see how that it could be reproducible.
Speaker 2But it's very different when something is actually reproducing and, um, so I think it was at that point when we realized this is really reproducing, they are really using this tool and want to have the desire to use this tool and want to share this with others, and so he started going out into the desert area. There were people getting saved out there, people who are listening to the stories and following Jesus in baptism. Out there they don't even have water to baptize, but there's a government canal that runs through there and in certain times of the year they release water and let water come down through the canal, and so they'll sort of store up their baptisms and everybody gets baptized when the when the canals open and and so, yeah, people out there in the desert were getting baptized and and it was beginning to spread.
Speaker 2But at the same time, lakshmi who was now, you know, maybe 14, 15 at this point she had been trained, she had had that process modeled for her over and over and over by her papa and once her papa started going without her, she then started going on her own, going with her mother. I mean, her mother had not really been trained at this point, other than maybe just going to some local places with Sukhdev. But Lakshmi was then able to start taking her mom with her and traveling to some other areas, traveling even into the state of Punjab, the state north of our state, and sharing because she knew she had had that modeled for her and she knew how to do it and she began training others to do it.
The Power of Prayer and Obedience
Speaker 3And I wanted to say one of the most moving things that ever happened to me. Some years later and their mom, gurjeet, was down at the training center. She just looked at me and she said I just want you to know we pray for you and your family every Thursday night. You to know we pray for you and your family every thursday night. And that was the most touching thing I think ever happened to me to hear her say that to. And you don't already talked about prayer, but we always say prayer isn't preparation for the greater work. Prayer is the greater work, and that's said with all sincerity and it is what makes everything work.
Speaker 2Yeah, and even these believers in Rajasthan believe that and they pray. They pray for the church in America, they pray for unreached people groups. They have very strategic minds, even though they're uneducated, but they'll take the maps, they'll take the lists of people groups. They keep these things before themselves to keep pressing forward and to keep that need and that urgency of the gospel in front of them and in front of the multiplying generations.
Speaker 3Well, they're farmers, right, and they're used to looking at fields and having to calculate. You know how do we plant this huge field and you know how do we plant this huge field, and you know how do we work the field and how do we harvest the field. And so there's there's a lot of strategy involved just in farming. You know, and it translates in to work. You know where these people are. You know we have to go there. So you know it's very simple, but we can't be everywhere at once. But we need to start here and we'll go there. And you, you know it's very simple, but we can't be everywhere at once, but we need to start here and we'll go there and you go this place, and so they can look at a map and divide it up.
Speaker 2And it's interesting when Jesus said when Jesus looked at the multitudes and had compassion, what he said to his disciples to do was to pray. He said pray and ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into that harvest field. So I think prayer is a vital. It is the first step in any movement.
Speaker 1Lakshmi's story is so compelling because you tell us she went and shared with her dad for those first couple years and then, once her dad had the SD cards, he was able to go on his own. She continued to go and you played a video for us of her giving her testimony and she talks about how she read the Great Commission. She heard it and she thought about it and she just said it troubled her brain and she just knew this was a command and I have to go and share. And it sounds like she wasn't the only one who heard that and felt the same way. Because for these heard that and felt the same way, because for these hundreds of thousands of people to come to know the Lord and to go and share, they all had to have the same mindset. Right, that's right.
Speaker 2In that respect Lakshmi is not unique. I would say Lakshmi and Sukhdevs and Deep Rajas, they have multiplied themselves into generation after generation that have that burden for the lost. That simple faith, that simple obedience they don't have. It's all they know. It's the pattern that was set for them. You take baptism, you go to work, and that was the pattern that was set for them. And they don't know any other way. All they know is this is God's Word and we obey God's Word. And so when there's just that simple obedience of that, god's Word says to go and make disciples. So that's what I do.
Speaker 3Yeah, and you know, in that culture they've been kind of controlled and subjected for thousands of years and, honestly, the local church wasn't treating them any better. The pastors come and say you know, I'll pray for you and you got to give me some money. Well, that's the way the Hindu priests do. And so they really kind of ostracized themselves from that. They didn't, they didn't, that's what it was going to be. They didn't want to be that. But then when we came in there and said, no, look, you know, nobody's the boss of anybody. Deep Raj and I were just the first ones to hear. You know, once you hear and know we're equal and there's no boss around here, everybody's equal. That's what the Bible talks about, that there's just an equity in the kingdom of God, that all things are shared and there's not a ruler. We have one head and man. They really really enjoyed that and were encouraged by that. And so it really is.
Speaker 3You hear the conversation sometimes, especially in the South, on the phone. It literally sounds like Servant 1 calling Servant 2, you know? Well, I just have a question for you, okay, and so if I have Bible studies going and I need to go to a field somewhere, then hey, I'm on Lesson 11. Can you come in there and then take them through the next lessons and if you get the baptism, you baptize them? So there's no ownership of any work.
Speaker 3And one thing we haven't mentioned yet I wanted to mention about Lakshmi that it hasn't come to light yet, but in India you marry by birth order. You marry by birth order and she actually asked her father to marry the sisters that were younger than her first so that she could be single longer before she took a husband, because there's always a little tension on what the mother-in-law will allow the daughter-in-law to do. What the mother-in-law will allow the daughter-in-law to do. It's definitely changed and changing more all the time in the Christian community, but that was the ask that she made and she's turned out just to be an unbelievable asset to the entire movement.
Speaker 2She's at a time in her life she's 24, 25 now I guess she just had a birthday, so she's 25 now. She's at a time in her life where she's an adult and she can go and she can do, but she's single. Her parents give her the freedom and she will literally get on a bus and go miles, probably 20, 30 miles away from her village, and then she and she has started Bible. You know, she started Bible studies kind of along the way and she'll get on a bus and she'll go to the farthest one and she just kind of works her way back and she'll sleep wherever she gets to. She'll just stay the night with that family and then maybe somebody will give her a motorcycle ride to the next place or onto her home the next morning. So she really does. She's had the opportunity to go to college and she's got that education, but she really does spend her life, give her life to making disciples.
Speaker 1Thank you all so much. Again, we're going to take a pause here. These stories are so good. I think our listeners are going to be so blessed by listening to the stories of Deep Raj and Luxmi. I know I have been, but I'm also really excited to jump right back in with the stories of Pascal and Sita. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll jump back in for the last part of our three-part episode with Glenn and Rhonda. Thanks for listening to this episode. The Tom Ellef Center for Missions exists to equip the next generation of missionaries at Oklahoma Baptist University. Regardless of your major, you can come to OBU, get a world-class Christian education and get equipped to take the gospel to the nations. Our prayer is to send students from the local church through OBU to the world with the gospel. For more information about us or the Ellef Center Scholarship, follow the link in our description and come visit us at OBU. You.