“Two years later, there is still tension. There’s still unrest in this community, and unfortunately, kids are being affected as a result,” Mission India’s Raina Miller says.

Persistent unrest led to the resignation of Manipur’s Chief Minister Biren Singh in February, followed by the imposition of President’s Rule. More about that here.

Violent clashes between Manipur’s Meitei and Kuki communities have displaced thousands of people in the past two years, destroying homes, churches, and schools.

Gaman fell behind in school due to two years of unrest in Manipur.
(Photo courtesy of Mission India)

“A young boy named Gaman was in first grade when the violence first broke out in Manipur. He wasn’t able to go to school for months, and as a first grader, that’s a big deal; he quickly forgot everything that he learned,” Miller says.

“Once things settled down in his area enough to go back to school, he was really behind and discouraged.”

Thankfully, Mission India’s partners began a year-long Children’s Bible Club in Gaman’s hometown. “Our Bible clubs feature time each day spent on tutoring, so Taber, as the Bible club leader, was able to help [Gaman] with his schoolwork,” Miller says.

“[Tutoring took place] while doing tons of fun activities like sports and games, not to mention all the Bible-based activities like memorizing Scripture and singing songs about Jesus.”

After months of hard work and help from the Bible club leader, Gaman caught up to his classmates. Best of all, he learned more about Christ and grew in his faith.

Children’s Bible Clubs are a critical asset to parents living in poverty. “They work such long hours that they can’t be home to help with homework, and they can’t pay for a tutor,” Miller says.

Through Mission India’s new Pathfinder program, you can provide a clear path to Jesus for every child in India.

Typically, $36 supports 18 kids in a year-long Children’s Bible Club, but “Right now, your first 12 months of gifts will be matched, so $36 per month will reach 36 children in India for the first year of your giving,” Miller says.

Become a Pathfinder here.

Header and story images courtesy of Mission India.

It’s unclear whether the increased trafficking data is because there are truly more cases, or because greater awareness on the blight of human trafficking has led to more victims being reported. But one thing is certain — children in India, especially those in rural areas, continue to be at risk to human trafficking.

While there are many ways to combat trafficking directly and indirectly, one way to help kids in India is by supporting programs that get them off the streets and into community. The Children’s Bible Clubs with Mission India do just that — and all in the name of Christ.

(Photo courtesy of Mission India via Facebook)

Mission India’s Bartholomew* explains, “We give them workbooks and other various literature…. They’re also helped with their schooling, so they’ll go through that; and in some cases, these leaders become tutors for the individual students that will be attending the program. There’s just a lot of social aspects these kids will be able to understand and be helped through, and then also the spiritual side of learning about Jesus through songs and skits and activities. We’re just thrilled that these Bible Clubs are just moving all across India.”

Normally, just $1 allows one child to attend a Bible Club. But right now, Mission India is running their India’s Children 2017 Matching Challenge, which means each dollar of your gift goes even farther.

“We run matches about twice a year — one in the spring and one in December. So this year, the India’s Children 2017 Matching Challenge has started on March 1st and it’s going to run through April 30th. So every dollar that is donated to Children’s Bible Clubs will be doubled during that time period. For example, if you gave $500, instead of reaching 500 children, you’ll be reaching 1,000 children.”

There’s currently a list of kids waiting to get into the Children’s Bible Club. Bartholomew shares, “We just don’t have the resources. So running matching campaigns like this allows us to reach even more kids at a faster clip.”

(Photo courtesy of Mission India via Facebook)

It’s not just the kids attending these Bible Clubs who are reached with the Gospel. Often the children will go home to their parents and siblings and talk about what they learned at the Children’s Bible Club, including the stories they heard about Jesus.

“Sometimes, quite often, we see that churches actually get planted through Children’s Bible Clubs, and it’s just kind of a launching point from that.”

Click here to give to the Matching Challenge with Mission India. And then, commit to praying for the ministry this year.

“We just ask that your readers and listeners be praying for these leaders who will be going into communities that may or may not want the message of the Gospel to be there. Pray for the courage and the wisdom to handle all the situations that will arise,” asks Bartholomew.

“Then also [pray] for the students and the children that will be attending these Bible Clubs, that their hearts will be open and their minds would be open to Jesus and what He brings. When they go home and they talk to their parents about what their learning, [pray] that their parents and their brothers and sisters would be open to listening to what their brothers and sisters are learning.”

*Name changed for security purposes.

My Passport to India is a 10-video virtual tour of India, connecting kids from other countries with everyday life in India. "This is a great opportunity for families to dive into something a little bit different and to explore another part of the world, while having a lot of fun. It's a great way to spend your spring break in a meaningful way and to participate in the great commission," says Lindsay Ackerman of Mission India.

The online tour is not just for children, says Ackerman. It's for "families, home schoolers, Bible studies, Sunday school groups: it's really perfect for all those types of people. Doing it on your own is a great thing.

"My Passport to India was designed to help engage families in understanding how they can be a part of God reaching our world with the Gospel."

The goal of My Passport to India is to show people what it is truly like to live in India. "It's hard for kids to wrap their minds around what life is like for India's kids. And we wanted them to truly see what life is like," Ackerman explains. "The videos are short, fun, engaging, and a great way for families to truly experience India in a really unique way."

During your virtual tour, you will be able to check out trains, learn great Indian recipes, see the local clothes, meet new people, and participate in many activities. There is, however, something you can be doing for the kids in India as you learn about their culture. Ackerman explains, "During the trip, we encourage you to fill a suitcase with loose change for India. And as you put quarters and dimes and dollars in there, you can reach another child with every dollar that you save."

The money that is received from these suitcases will allow children in India to participate in a Children's Bible club. It only costs $1 to send a child to one of these clubs. Sending just one person to a children's Bible Club could mean eternal life, but a lot of kids involved with My Passport to India have found ways to sponsor many more than just one kid.

"Perhaps you will reach 5 kids, 20 kids," says Ackerman. "We've had kids that have been very ambitious and have raised $100.00!"

It only takes 45 seconds to sign-up to receive your starter kit. "It includes a little passport, with activities to do along the way, and a small suitcase that you can save that loose change in. Then you can get started on your journey right away…. It's all at your own pace."

To find out more and learn how you can request your starter kit, visit Mission India's Facebook page by clicking here–look for the "My Passport to India" tab at the top of the page.

Right now in India, people are being trained to teach Children's Bible Clubs. Pray that they will learn quickly and be effective in sharing the Gospel with children in India. Also pray that parents will allow their children to join the clubs.

Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India has work in the region. The ministry's president Dave Stravers says, "Your prayers are still needed for our Literacy Classes and Bible Clubs affected by ongoing violence in northeastern India."

According to Stravers, "Our local partners were forced to suspend programs in the areas most impacted by the ethnic violence between Bodo tribals and the Muslim community in the state of Assam. Thankfully, no families from our Literacy Classes or Bible Clubs are among the thousands who have fled to refugee camps. Most are unable to leave their homes due to a strict government-imposed curfew."

The government has sent out additional military forces to prevent more clashes.

Newspapers in India explain that the conflict is rooted in disputes over land rights, and deep mistrust between tribal minority groups and other ethnic groups.

Sadly, as in many situations around the world, Assam's Christians are caught in the middle of this long-running conflict, along with many thousands of other Hindus, Muslims, and tribals.

Stravers wants you to pray that this upheaval will give believers more opportunities to show the love of Jesus Christ to their neighbors of all religions, whether that be through our free literacy classes that help strengthen families or a Children's Bible Club leader's loving encouragement.

If you'd like to help support these programs, click here.

However, Mission India's Dave
Stravers says that was not what happened. "More than a year later, the trial dates have been postponed time after
time. In the meantime, these eight
workers have to report monthly to the court," until the next trial date,
December 14.

It's frustrating and
disappointing because it means travel, lodging and food overnight each
time their team has to report to court until December. "It's not so unusual in India for trials to
be postponed," Stravers notes, "but in this case, where the charges are
obviously without any factual basis, we're pretty confident that the charges
will be dismissed. But it's like: ‘Let's
make as much trouble for these Christians as we can while we can.'"

Last August, the ministry informed MNN of an attack by Hindu extremists
on an 80-person training session for Children's Bible Clubs. Eight of Mission India's partners are charged
with "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings
of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs."

Even with the harassment following
the ministry partners, Stravers says, rather than frighten new partners away,
the ministry is faced with the opposite problem. "We have a long waiting
list of workers in this particular area who want to do this kind of ministry
and want to receive training. So it's like they all know the stories, they
know the problems, they know the suffering that's going to happen."

The people are very open to the Gospel,
but the Hindu leaders are very hostile because of the rapid growth amongst
Christians. It often means a shift in power for the Hindus. 

For those coming to Christ, it's about
something much bigger. Stravers relates
the story of a young man named Jamal who was orphaned at 13. Relatives took him in, but soon his
grandmother fell ill, and there was little relief for her. 

Jamal heard there was a Christian
pastor who was working in his village, and that this man prayed for the sick, so he
called this man in. The pastor came,
prayed for Jamal's grandmother, and she was miraculously healed.

Stravers says, "This young
teenager was so struck by the power of Jesus and also the love of this Christian
man, he gave his life to the Lord. 
Today, a few years later, he is a church planter." 

There are hundreds more like
Jamal–passionate for Christ and in need of the training and resources that Mission India can provide. Stravers explains, "It costs about a-dollar-a-child to train workers to reach the children that we're bringing to
the Lord in India."

Staff is currently meeting with
potential partners, and interviews for Church Planter trainees will soon follow.
New classes for this one-year program are slated to begin in January. Pray. There
are many challenges facing Mission India and their partners. "There's great religious fervor,
there's great response to the Gospel, and there's also great persecution–all
happening all at the same time."

Click here if you can help.

On this date last year,
Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission
India first told us of an attack by Hindu extremists on an 80-person
training session for Children's Bible Clubs.  

The extremists held the
ministry workers for at least 14 hours. When police came, eight of Mission
India's partners were taken into custody under the charge of "deliberate
and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by
insulting its religion or religious beliefs."

Court dates have come and gone, and justices
have delayed the case each time. Most
recently, the case was moved to September 8. 

Mission India President
Dave Stravers says this is not at all the first time that the Indian court
system has postponed a trial or delayed a verdict. In fact, he points out one
case from 1984 which was only recently concluded. 

The ministry training is
critical to the Gospel reaching children in the region. This fall, year-long Children's Bible Clubs will be launched in many communities across
India.

Next month, Mission India will place the order
for printing materials for the
Children's Bible Clubs that will meet in 2011. Materials will be printed in
India's major languages.

Please continue to pray
for the situation as Mission India continues to fight for these charges to be
dismissed. Pray, too, for the Club leaders as they train and prepare their hearts to lead,
and for courage to press forward even when challenges arise.

Lindsay Ackerman is with Grand
Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India. She explains, "Christians will take a
small scoop of rice during every meal, and they'll set that aside as their
giving, and then they'll take that to the church." When the rice bag is full, it is taken to
the church as the family's tithe.

Ackerman says their team thought
the concept was an easily-adaptable one to teach not only tithing, but also
missional thinking. "We've taken that
concept of a rice bag and made a smaller version of that. A family can put their small offerings, their
coins or dollar bills into that, and then that can be used for supporting
missions in India," specifically the Children's Bible Clubs.

Children's Bible Clubs are introduced
in a community through a 10-day program. In the clubs, children enjoy songs,
skits, and games, listen to Bible stories, memorize Scripture, learn how to
pray, and most importantly, discover a loving Savior.

Many children in Children's Bible Clubs
make a decision to follow Jesus. Often,
these children introduce their parents to Christ. Every year, new churches grow out of
Children's Bible Clubs. 

For four weeks, children are
encouraged to find creative ways to earn money and to put the extra coins
laying around aside into the Rice Bags for the Clubs in India. It's enough time for the children to be able
to fill the Rice Bag one or two times. "When they're supporting Children's Bible
Clubs, it only costs $1 to reach a boy or a girl. So four quarters that go into
that bag reaches a kid in India. It's something that's easy for a kid to
grasp." 

Mission India provides a small,
informative insert with each Rice Bag to help explain the challenge to parents. The excitement is contagious. Ackerman says, "It's an amazing way not only for the kids in
India to be transformed, but our kids here in the U.S. get transformed, as well.
They discover an area of the world that they may not know much about at all, and
they get really excited about it. They know that they can serve the Lord right
now; they're almost missionaries themselves."

Click here for more details.

On August 11, 80 ministry partners in the state
of Karnataka gathered at a 4-day training for the Year-Long Children's
Bible Clubs. Around midnight, after everyone had gone to
sleep, a mob of 20 Hindu extremists broke in, beat the trainees, and held them
against their will for at least 14 hours. Police arrived on the scene and
promptly arrested 8 of the Christians.

In spite of the injustice of the arrests and jailings, their
team never wavered from their purpose. Dave
Stravers with Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India says they did what Paul and Silas did while in prison: "They
had more than 100 prisoners in their area. They started prayer meetings and worship services, and they had converts." 

Stravers  says eventually the team was released after
seven days behind bars. He says the
good news is: "The charges were dropped, except for the charge that they
were engaged in 'deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious
feelings.'" 

The bad news? On July
1, the eight go back to court. Stravers remains confident in what God is
doing.  "There's no case against
them. They weren't doing anything to 'outrage religious feelings'. This is pure
intimidation. (It's) violent intimidation on the part of people who are very
upset. What they're really responding to is the growth of the church in this
area." 

Keep praying for courage and for open doors. "Many people
that we've been training, who are teaching children, leading adult literacy
training, and doing adult evangelism in this area, are very well received."

There's a lot that can be done to support this work. Click here for details. 

Eight Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India partners in India face
a trial on December 14. Mission India
President Dave Stravers says, "Because of the opposition of people and the
influence some of these extremists have with the courts, their court date has
been postponed again and again. More
than a year later, they're still waiting to be relieved of these charges."

There was faint hope that a judge would throw out the
Karnataka case in which the team was accused of "inciting communal violence and
bribing people to become Christians" in August 2009 during a 3-day training
session for the Children's Bible Club program. Stravers adds that "both of those accusations are ridiculous
since they were sleeping at the time they were attacked, so they weren't
inciting anything."

The months of delay, while not a direct threat, intimidates through inconvenience and expense.
"Once a month, they have to go report to the court. It's quite expensive and quite intrusive for
them," says Stravers. What it reveals is that "the
strategy is to encourage Christian workers to stop witnessing, to stop their
work. We're asking people to pray that
God will give courage and perseverance to all of the thousands of workers in
India who are working in the face of this opposition." 

That seems to be an item of note in the International
Religious Freedom Report 2010, just released by the U.S. State Department. It says that while legal protections against
violations of religious freedom exist, corruption impacts how the laws are
enforced.  

Stravers takes it a step further. He says Hindu leaders feel like they're
losing their economic and political control of India. "They're warning the followers of their
political parties, saying, ‘If the church continues to grow like it is now,
Hinduism will become a minority religion within our lifetime; so we have to put
a stop to this now.'"

That means there's an openness to the Gospel, a fast-growing
church, and more roadblocks. "In many of the states, local laws have been
passed trying to discourage conversion, or require registering with police
before baptism–all kinds of very intrusive laws that are designed to intimidate
people or open them up to informal pressure."

Now is their time. Stravers says they have waiting lists of
people who want to participate in their literacy, Bible Club, and other outreach
programs. They're limited by
resources, however. Here are links to help them move forward.

Students from their Bible, Missionary and Training Work
Centers, or BMWs, ran Good News Bible Clubs. On August 17–Indonesia's Independence Day, they threw 90 Freedom
Parties. Bland says, "They had
8,787 children who attended. Out of that group of people, 5,676 children
accepted Christ as their Savior." 

In that mix, 5,238 children came from Muslim homes; 2,299 from Christian homes; 842 from
Buddhist homes, and six from Hindu homes.

The kids sang patriotic songs and held Indonesian flags in their hands. They learned
some Christian choruses, memorized a
Bible verse, heard a Bible story and played some games. These events took place in the heart of a
staunchly-Muslim area. With over 5,000 coming to Christ, was there opposition? 

Their team leader says "No." "We don't seem to have any
problems with the authorities or Muslims because who wants to disturb a Freedom
Party with children holding an
Indonesian flag?"

The follow-up to this will be in the weekly Good News Clubs
that will be run by BMW students. They
are trained in evangelism, leadership and discipleship.  

There are roughly 280 weekly Good News clubs attended by
over 7000 children. Each month, an average of 400 children receive Christ as Savior.

In fact, it's a great starting ground for what will
hopefully be a lifetime of ministry. Bland
says the BMW schools are sending out missionaries. "They've sent two girls
to Madagascar. They're sending two to
Malawi and one to South Africa. We have two in Canada, and there are others who are preparing to go."

Land has recently been purchased in Papua where a sixth BMW
is opening. Despite the testing and
possibilities of persecution, the Indonesian staff and students are dedicated
and passionate about the Lord. Keep praying.