Pre-Christmas jungle ministry results in hundreds of new Christians!

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For the first week in December—while most of us prepare for, or at least think about preparing for, Christmas—Pastor Paul and a team of Bibles for Mideast missionaries visited with villagers living in mud huts by a forest in Karnataka, near the southern tip of India. Hinduism, sorcery and fear formed the shaky backbone of these tribal people’s belief system.

Living so close to the forest, the villagers often forage there for food and medicines, sometimes selling their excess to other locals to help support themselves.

A serious and growing problem in recent years has been an alarming rise in deaths—both of people and domestic livestock—due to wild animals encroaching on human settlements. Efforts to conserve wild animal species have been successful, but when those species lose their natural habitat to development, too many clashes with nearby settlers result. The resulting fear for villagers had brought further misery into their already difficult lives.

Elephants alone kill about 500 people each year in India, far more than any other wild animal. Leopards and tigers kill fewer, but the numbers of deaths continue to rise as the animals’ habitats diminish. Government officials and forest managers have been trying without much success to strike a balance in the competition for land between people and animals.

Wild elephants kill about 500 people each year in India

None of the fearful villagers had ever heard the Good News of Jesus until one of our pastors visited with them shortly before the larger team arrived. His witness and the receptivity of a few opened the way for the larger team of evangelists to make their recent trek. The team managed to visit every home in the village and by the end of their time there, a new ALG church had been established, with about 500 new believers.

Pastor Maruga has been put in charge of the new church, and since most in the area are illiterate, he has also launched literacy classes for them.

Please pray for these dear new believers, and for Pastor Maruga as he leads and teaches them. The new congregation will celebrate with joy their first real Christmas, but as Christians in a country opposed to the gospel and those sharing it, they also need divine protection.