Annual report from Mano Daniel, Faith Prayer Tract League and United Christian Fellowship, India.
Special Blessings & Highlights of the year
We were encouraged by the excitement that we found with the LIOs. More than any other years, we found a greater involvement of these LIO in literature Evangelism and Church Planting. Our LIOs lead 52,300 people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. They were able to baptize 8,082 converts. This number in actuality can be even more. We are writing this number as of our record today.
92 Churches have been planted in the last year. (What we mean by churches, a gathering of a minimum of 25 baptized members meeting on every Sundays regularly for worship and fellowship.)
The south India B.th program sponsored by the Woodside Baptist church finished up to three semesters. We are awaiting a team from the U.S. to come for the rest of the program. The Gujarat B.th program is scheduled on the 24th to the 26th of March 2011 our staff will teach it. A hundred students will participate and 22 students will graduate this year.
We have started the Faith Bible Institute and college to consolidate all the training into one department. We are excited about the same. I have attached a separate sheet explaining Faith Bible Institute and the various programs.
Medical Camps: We have been able to conduct medical camps in 14 villages. We do this in partnership with the local pastors/LIO. The local pastor will invite 100 people from surrounding areas from all caste, creed and language backgrounds to a free medical camp. We have doctors and nurses in the team who would administer them immediate medical care and multi vitamins. They will also receive tracts entitled “The great physician” or “good health” and pray for them. We call this value added distribution. We have found this to be a very successful outreach program. The results are
1. The local pastor gains favor from the people and
2. The people who would never come to the church because of fear would come to the church and feel blessed.
3. Most of the health problems are worms, cough, headaches, and minor skin diseases. All of which gets cured through our medical camps because
a. We give them good branded medicines. (The people suspect that the government and private practitioners sometimes might give them adulterated drugs or even placebos).
b. More than 68% of the populations in spite of socio, economic status go to witch doctors or temple priest. Even when they go to an allopath they will still go to a witch doctor and ask him to pronounce some magic on the Medicine. When we minister to such people we pray for the sick and the medication in Jesus name. We have been successful bringing down their dependence of the people on witch doctors.
c. Invariably after every camp at least five or six people start to attend church service. The pastor takes the addresses and will do the follow up.
United Christian Fellowship of India: The UCFI is a fellowship of LIO churches. This was formed to address the needs of these independent LIO churches. They face immense difficulties when it comes to Burial, Marriage and recognition from the government. Because of those reasons and the trouble from Hindu fundamentalist groups, at their request we have formed UCFI. This is registered under the societies act. Any LIO who has done our BTH and has planted a church can become an ordained pastor of the UCFI. By God’s grace we have ordained 168 pastors so far. All the pastors of UCFI meet for prayer and fellowship once a month. We support these pastors with monthly seed money.
Orphanages: Many of our pastors have destitute babies left at their door steps. Not knowing what to do they start taking care of them? In most cases other children follow and the pastor ends with 10-15 children. About twenty of our pastors are in this predicament. We have been able to give seed money to these pastors to help them with the children. We also support two orphanages completely, one in Kolli Hills. In this orphanage we have girl babies rescued from female infanticide. So far we have 176 children rescued and have placed them in homes. The second home in Pondicherry where we are taking care of HIV & AIDS affected (not infected) girl babies. We have many applicants but we want to restrict the number to 20.
Tsunami Follow up report: We started 9 rehabilitation centers. Out of that seven are still functioning. We conduct computer training, sewing classes, and spoken English classes for them. Out of the Tsunami work 11 churches were planted.
Difficulties encountered:
Orissa: Some of our LIO were beaten up and their homes burned. One of our BTH students was murdered. We are helping the children of this martyr.
Karnataka: Recently in the month of January eight of our LIO were beaten up for distributing tracts. While the response to the gospel is increasing the opposition from the Hindu fanatic groups have also intensified. Our gospel LIO were constantly oppressed, threatened and terrorized by extremist groups such as the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Munnani, and the RSS.
Tsunami: The sad part was the failure of our fishing boats project. When we started we were the only group to give fishing boats and were organizing them into groups. But unfortunately many jumped into the fray and began giving boats indiscriminately. In a fishing village of 300 families there were only five mechanized fishing boats and about 20 catamarans. For each boat there has to be 7 people, two in the shore and five in the boat. When big multi national organizations came and gave boats the village ended up with getting 25 mechanized boats and 80 catamarans. As a result our project and plans got sabotaged.
Ministry Goals for the coming year
BTh. Training. This year our goal is to conduct three semesters in Gujarat, three for North India and three in the south India. In Gujarat we were able to do only one program. We are hoping that we would able to restart this program which is much needed.
1. Curriculum ( we already have)
2. Translation ( already done)
3. Printing of Workbooks and teachers Manuel. (We can print them as need arises)
4. Taking it to the nation. (We need your help)
1. Curriculum: We praise God for all the material that we have with us. and we are sure they will benefit the 35,000 LIO in our lists and the outflow of it to many more.
2. Printing of workbooks: We can print all the materials that we require for this training.
3. Translating into different language: The major language in India would be Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannadika and off course Hindi. While the north is a very vast area consisting of many regions and states with different languages, Hindi however seems to be the language that is predominantly used.
4. Taking it to the nations:
Selection of Students.
There are 35,000 LIOs who need training. The reality is that we cannot train them all. We have to prioritize and select the ones who would be able to teach others also (2Tim 2: 2 principle). This phase consist of identifying the trainers and selecting them.
1. Faithful LIO who have been with us for a minimum of two years.
2. Preference would be given to those who have had success in Church Planting.
3 Those that have a following and are gifted in teaching ministry.
.
Implementation:
To take this training to the following eight different regions. (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andrapradesh, Western India, Central India, Eastern India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands).
Each region will have 10 training areas.
1. Tamil Nadu 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
2. Karnataka 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
3. Kerala 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
4. Andra pradesh 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
5. Western India 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
6. Central India 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
7. Eastern India 10 (each training area 100 students) Total LIO
Trainees (1000)*
8. Andaman and Nicobar 10 (each training area 100 students)
Trainees (1000)*
8 (regions) x 100 (students) x10 (training areas.) = 8000 (eighty thousand trained LIO). At the end we will have 8,000 LIOs trained in Bachelor in Theology
Flow chart:
| Regions | Phase -1 We train professors. | Phase – 2 We train in 10 cities in each region |
| Tamil | 100 | 1000 |
| Andra-pradesh | 100 | 1000 |
| Karnataka | 100 | 1000 |
| Kerala | 100 | 1000 |
| Gujarath | 100 | 1000 |
| Delhi | 100 | 1000 |
| Calcutta/Shillong | 100 | 1000 |
| Andamans | 100 | 1000 |
| Total no of LIO s trained in number. | 800 | 8000 |
Note:
The training cycle will be repeated every year in all the eight regions.
Operations:
The partnership of FPTL:
1. Mobilizing and gathering the LIO for training.
2. Providing infrastructure
3. Providing staff for logistical support
4. Providing regional staff to be available for training at all the times.
Looking for partnership:
1. Writing the training material. (We already have the material)
2. Printing of materials in different languages. (We have translated the material)
3. Training of students (we need resource people)
4. Continued guidance to the leaders to make the training effective.
Our prayers and earnest desire is that God would provide for the same. We also request you to help us in this regard.
A detailed budget proposal will be sent soon.
We need 45 million tracts every year. But right now we are able to print only 20 million tracts. Therefore there is a deficit of what we require.
We were able to train the target of 400 children in the Little League Leadership Training.
Ministry Goals:
1. Three semester BTH program in Gujarat every year.
2. Three semesters of BTH in North India every year.
3. Proposal to make our BTH cost effective and multiply the program.
4. To print 45 million tracts.
5. We want to do 30 mdical camps and 4 LLLT programs.
Personal and Family: Sheila and I are doing fine. Rathni is growing up so fast. As she is entering in her teen years we would solicit your prayers for her especially. Sheila is a great help to me in the ministry and I thank God for her. I recently had to go through a cataract operation in the right eye.
Special needs for Prayer:
Pray for the suffering LIO around the country particularly the ones that are facing persecution in the states of Orissa, Gujarat, Kashmir, and Karnataka.
Pray for the shifting of our press to our new facility.
Pray for sponsors for our BTH program.
We would like to start our program one in Amritsar- Punjab and the other in Silliguri.