A missions group plans a festival of music and missions in Manipur, India.

India (MNN)–Dr. Rochunga Pudaite, the founder and president of the Colorado Springs-based Bibles for the World, spoke about an outreach taking place in Tripura, the second smallest state in India which is almost surrounded by Bangladesh and has 19 tribes, although the majority of the population of Tripura is Bengali.

“It is in one of the remotest corners of the country,” he explained. “We have a expression amongst my tribe, the Hmar, that when the water is troubled, you can catch more fish. We have just received a magnificent letter from one of our pastors who was assigned to work Tripura.”

During one of the Billy Graham Congresses on World Evangelization, Tripura was declared as one of the least evangelized areas of the world and as a result of that, we started sending out missionaries to them from our people and now we have over 65 churches in Tripura. ”

Pudiate went on to say, “There has been so much conflict there with the Dimasas have been going there to create problems, and so this pastor wrote to us and said he baptized 161 new converts on one Sunday. That is the record for us. Since then, more have been converted and now he has baptized some 200 new converts since he went there in April. So that is very exciting.”

The pastor hopes to share the love of God in such a way that within five years, some 10,000 people will be baptized. The only difficulty he has is finding places where they can come together for worship and for new believers to immediately start constructing churches is very difficult. Putting up bamboo and thatched roof churches will cost up to $2,000 to provide the materials to put up one of these churches. We have never seen anything like this since 1976 when we began our work there.

“The harvest is great and harvests do not wait”, says Pudaite, “so we must move in and so this pastor is calling for more missionaries to come forward to work in this area.”

He concluded by saying that Bibles for the World is planning to hold a Festival of Music and Mission in Manipur, India, on October 3-4-5. “We are expecting about 3,000 Christian Indian youth to come together,” he said. “At the gathering, I will be sharing with the challenge of the Gospel and we are praying for many of these young people to answer the call to share Christ with their peers.”

For more information on this unique ministry, log onto their website at www.biblesfortheworld.org.