From the Mission Field: LCBTC training in Orissa, India (May 2015)

Orissa (also called Odisha), is a state on the eastern coast of India divided into 30 administrative geographical units called districts. It has 138 towns and 51,349 villages and the total population of the state is approximately 44 million. Kandhamal is one of the districts where they had riots in 2008 and 2009. More than 10,000 Christian houses were burned down and more than 300 pastors were murdered because of their faith and work by the Hindu fanatics. But even when the situation seems to be under control, many Christians are still not able to go to their villages.  So the government of Orissa has provided some land for them and the NGOs have built small houses for them to live in the different places of the Kandhamal district. Now these refugee camps have turned into villages while a Christian NGO has been looking after the widows of the pastors who were murdered in those riots since 2011. We went to one of the camps on the way to our training station (Udaigiri) and prayed for them on the road.

Our journey started on April 25^th at 5:30am, we assembled at the NJP Siliguri Railway Station (myself, Pastor Syangden and Pastor Joseph) and reached Bhuwaneshwar, the capital of Orissa, early the next day. One of our contact persons from Kandhamal, Pastor Sadanand and Pastor Ranjan from Bhuwaneshwar welcomed us at the Bhuwaneshwar Railway Station. We then went straight to Pastor Ranjan’s house for rest and breakfast. After 5 hours, we again travelled this time headed to Kandhamal by Jeep which was approx. 250 km from Bhuwaneshwar. Halfway to our destination, we attended the church and had lunch. We finally reached Kandhamal (Udaigiri) at 7:30pm on the 26^th. 

The team and I conducted the Good News Series and School of Workers Module1 from the 27th until the 30^th. Around 40 pastors and leaders from 25 different churches attended the seminar. They were all excited to have this kind of training, and all were blessed. At the end of the training session, they decided and planned to have the next sessions during the last week of August for Trainer’s Training and SOW Module 2, last week of November for FAITH Gardening and Natural Farming (FGNF), second week of February 2016 for SOW 3 and convocation. They have assured us that they will apply this strategy as soon as they get back to their churches.

Pastor Ranjan from Bhuwaneshwar is also asking us to train them using the LCBTC so on August, we will have two sets of training and the four of us are going to Orissa from Siliguri for the Trainer’s Training (TT) and SOW 2 at Kandhamal (Udaigiri). We will also have GNS and SOW 1 at Bhuwaneshwar (Capital of Odisha).

Kindly uplift us in your prayers.

by Ptr. George Pega

North East India Coordinator & Trainer

Local Church-Based Training Center

Siliguri