The Teachers’ Conference in Bangalore

What a busy, interesting time we have had in India. Our first conference this year was in Bangalore at the Frontier Management Centre. We now have teachers who have attended all four of the conferences we have held, either in Bangalore or in Chennai. What a joy it is to see them again each year.

Siani and Suphola from Orissa were there again, of course. That young couple is so amazing. They are in their 20s and their orphanage with 50 children, including two who were born to them, is flourishing. The foundation is ready for the new school next to the orphanage. When that school is finished the orphans will attend it as well as many children from the surrounding area Hindu families. Orissa is largely Hindu but the parents see that the Christian school is very good and so they want to send their children to that school when it is ready. What a wonderful opportunity to tell Hindu children of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

This year another pastor from Orissa attended our conference and he also is the head of an orphanage. There are so many abandoned children in India. Sometimes it is because of HIV/AIDS and at other times it is because of the extreme poverty in which the parents live. I try to picture what it would be like to have no food for my children and to have to place them in an orphanage. Most of us in the western world would say, “Surely we would be able to find some food, somewhere. We would never give our children up.” But we only say that because we haven’t any idea of what it is to live in such abject poverty.

I wish I could remember the names of the people I met during that conference. This year we were there just at the beginning of the monsoon season. A wonderful woman who heads a Christian school in Bangalore told me that her constant prayer during the rains is that the walls of her school won’t come tumbling down. Two Roman Catholic sisters spoke so warmly of the Holy God we worship and we all said that our different Christian denominations must not separate us. The people I met at the conference were such a blessing to me and to all of us.

I want to keep my blog posts reasonably short and so I will stop here. But this isn’t all you will read about India.