Honk! Honk! Mooooo! Cough! Baaaa! Bark! Bark! We are at the most remote city in our exploration of northern India. The traffic along the one major road through the town jostles along continuously. The animals seem unperturbed, with cows standing or lying in the middle of the street or scavenging in the heaps of garbage, and sheep sleeping in the shade of stopped vehicles. Pedestrians dodge moving vehicles, garbage, animal droppings and each other as they go about their business. One must constantly be on guard to avoid breaks in the covers of the open drains. Vendors who set up carts and tables along the road must continuously flick away the dust and flies from their wares. There is no way to keep clean in this place.
We wander the side alleys of the village, passing homes where young women wash laundry on the doorsteps and children run and play from door to door. We continuously attract curious stares—two Caucasian strangers wandering in a part of town visitors seldom enter. People greet us, and we smile and respond, though hello is about all the English that many of these people know. We encounter various levels of understanding when we stop to visit and ask questions. Most of the people are friendly. Their responses are in broken English or one of the four or five local languages spoken in this area, so our communication is very limited.
We walk past a post-and-tarp shed where four men sit in plastic chairs visiting. They greet us and invite us to sit. We oblige and try to converse. One of the men knows some English, so a simple conversation limps along. We learn that the woman squatting as she works just inside the shelter is the wife of one of the men. The young girl smiling shyly from an adjacent doorway is a daughter. Their house sits at a bend in a large, dry streambed. We ask if it ever floods. The answer seems to be no. They offer us tea. We really should stay for tea, but our fear of dirty cups and future consequences deter us. Instead, we decline, explaining that we have business to attend to. We thank them and trudge on up the dusty alley, past the fish-and-meat market and back out to the main road.
When new AFM missionaries come to work in this city, they will partake in the tradition of drinking tea, no matter the dirty cups and gastrointestinal consequences. What are those discomforts compared to the value of establishing relationships and reaching God’s lost children?
On this visit, our objective is to gather information in preparation to developing a new AFM project in this area. The surrounding area is beautiful, and there are many friendly, helpful people, but the challenges here are enormous. We inquire about costs of food, clothing and household goods. Housing is always a concern, so we inquire about availability and the costs of rent and utilities. We are blessed with a number of divine encounters that provide contacts that can be helpful in the future.
Visas for this area in northern India are difficult to obtain, so we look into what our missionaries could do to legitimize their stay, such as teaching or providing business or services. There are so many things we want to know to smooth the transition of our dedicated career missionaries who have felt God calling them to this area. We seek to establish friendships they can cultivate in the future—honest-hearted people whom we hope will be attracted to the Gospel as they witness the lives of AFM missionaries.
Yet, as our missionary family builds their prayer and financial-support team and prepares themselves through training and language study, we know that only the power of God’s Spirit can reach the hearts of these people. Only through the protection of His power will our missionaries be able to live here in the heart of the devil’s territory. Please pray for the peoples of the 10/40 window and also for individuals willing to respond to God’s call to be His witnesses in the remotest areas.
