EOE Missions

Mumbai Project Day 7 (Thursday March 30th)

Today was to be a travel day. We took some pictures with the tribal pastors. Ate a small breakfast of fried potatoes sandwiches and headed off. We were told that the return trip would be faster since we did not have to travel through the other tribal village we stopped at on our way to the meeting: 8 hours tops. The only catch was another pastor was hitching a ride back to Bombay with us…EEEK it was crowed with only 6 of us...with 7….

I took the jump seat with the luggage in the back for the first half of the trip. The scenery was very nice, lush green and very much like the agricultural area I grew up in in Yorba Linda (in the mid-seventies anyway). Lots of tall trees, banana orchards, pomegranate, coconut, mango and papayas. We were heading first for Surkrit. This was to town where religious riots between Hindu Nationalist (BJP) and Muslims claimed over 1000 Muslim lives a couple of years ago. This is a bitterly divided city with the Hindu majority having very fundamentalist leanings and inclined to incite violence whenever people convert to either Islam or Christianity. The BJP is the party who is trying to pass national anti-conversion laws and declare India a Hindu nation forever.

From what I have been able to gather, the BJP is not really religious, but uses religion to maintain power and they see Islam as an external influence that threatens their power from the Arab world (and Pakistan) while Christianity is an external influence that threatens their power from the West. They see England, Australia and America as all being Christian Nations. The tension in the city is palpable and thick.

We stopped to encourage a local pastor there and see the facility. We were not in the little church building (Marked English School) for more than 5 min. before a group of Hindu solicitors came by trying to get money from us for a Hindu School Orphanage. We could not understand the discussion, but where latter told that they had been complaining about the Christians keeping the easy money from them. Westerners are easy marks cause we have so much and look at their money with such contempt. You can have a nice meal for 200 rupees (that’s for 8 people mind you - $4.00). The pastor went upstairs and took the sing down, locked the doors and we where told to get into the car.

We followed the pastor over to his house. A sixth floor two room flat. VERY SMALL. Were we had some Chai Tea and a cookie while Diwakar discussed church business with him. The Church in Surkrit was small and not growing, having money trouble despite the support from the district…that was all I gathered…but I discerned that there was more to the situation that there was questionable leadership and that he had lost the trust of the district overseers. PRAY FOR THE CHURCH IN SURKRIT! THEY NEED GODs POWER TO SUSTAIN THEM AND MAKE THEM EFFECTIVE!

We got back out to the SUV and headed back to Bombay…only 5 more hours to go! The closer we got to Bombay the nastier the weather got. By the time we arrived it was in the low 90s with VERY HIGH HUMIDITY. The weather as nasty as I can ever remember being in. We made it to the hotel by 6:00pm and where told to be back at the Reverends home by 8:00pm for an early dinner. We crawled out of bed and freshened up just enough to make it over there to eat. then back to the hotel for a full nights sleep.

posted by Chainsaw Weasel @ 9:20 AM