Report from India

Dear friends,

The last 2 months have brought great encouragement & what seems like an ‘explosion’ of ministry possibilities, after a long time of ‘plugging away’, seeking to be faithful to God’s call to build relationships of trust within the Catholic world and bridges of friendship & trust between YWAM & the Catholic ‘world’ in India. My wife described it like when you’re squeezing a plastic ketchup bottle and all you’re getting is air & suddenly you have a big ‘plop’ of ketchup squirting out!

There have been new openings in 3 places, but this month, I want to focus especially on Indore - a city in the northern state of ‘Madhya Pradesh’.

Indore

Mid-September brought some new open doors of ministry , with opportunities for KT to partner with YWAM in Indore (a city in the central Indian state of M.P. or Madhya Pradesh) to minister to Catholics there. 2 of our YWAM Indore leaders met with 2 Catholic pastors (priests) of the Indore diocese together with me and we had a great time of sharing about how each of us are involved in building God’s Kingdom. As I shared stories of how Christian from different churches are coming together in a spirit of unity in different places, it sparked a conversation about doing something in similar. There was talk of having an ecumenical games event in Indore, at the end of December, involving the different Christian communities in Indore.

The week after I returned, even more things started moving. Fr. Anand, who provides leadership for the Catholic youth of the diocese, took a few of his youth & visited a YWAM orphanage of more than 100 kids, who are children of Christians who have undergone tremendous persecution in Orissa & lost their homes. Fr. Anand & his youth, led the children in charismatic praise & worship; the Holy Spirit moved & the children were weeping. This amazed the YWAM staff of the orphanage, who had never witnessed a Catholic priest being used by the Holy Spirit in this way before. Am sure God has used this experience to build a new bridge in the hearts of all those invovled..

Fr. Anand also called me to invite me to conduct some ‘leadership training’ sessions for the animators of all the ‘youth groups’ of his diocese in early November. However, I was already booked to teach on our ‘School of Worship’ in Lonavala. So I suggested to Fr. Anand that our YWAM Indore guys could conduct the training instead, for which he was very open. The YWAM Indore guys in turn, suggested that it would be good that someone from KT work together with them, since this was the first time, they would be training Catholics & they didn’t want to inadvertently do anything that would cause offence. It ended up that Freddy & Monique travelled to Indore and conducted the sessions, with Sushil, a YWAM leader from Indore, helping translate the sessions into Hindi. It was so encouraging to see God bring this together & the openness on all sides to this new venture.

Other doors of opportunity have also opened up to write articles in the diocesan youth magazine and conduct a ‘Bible camp’ in May next year, for the youth of the diocese.

Next month our ‘Kerygma Network DTS’ from Slovakia will also be in Indore, from Dec.5th till around Christmas. They will be working with Fr. Anand for part of their outreach there & I look forward to this partnership, which God has opened up, deepening further.

Please do pray for this partnership for God’s Kingdom - that it will continue to grow & bear fruit

Pune

In Pune, the ICYM here had 2 wonderful events in October. The first, unfortunately, I was not able to be a part of, as I was travelling to Bangalore that day. But it was quite remarkable to see youth all over the railway station, with brooms, mops, scrubbers & all kinds of cleaning implements. They mobilised 300 Catholic youth to clean the Pune Railway Station. Such ‘Service Days’ have great ecumenical potential as well. I tried to get the word out among other churches, but am not sure if any participated. Would love to see this become an ecumenical venture, in future.

The second - the Christian Youth Games (CYG) - which was an ecumenical event, drew almost 1000 participants from a number of churches & of course, even more who cheered & supported them.

It was a great initiative - a first of it’s kind - and was a huge success.

I was able to contribute it, by running a ‘prayer stations’ area, to offer the opportunity for the youth, to use various activities, to engage with God. Had only about a dozen people come through on each of the 2 days, but it was worth it.

Lonavala

At the beginning of November I was invited to teach at the ‘School of Worship’ in Lonavala, where I got to share on topics, which I have explored a lot in ‘Kerygma Teams’: ‘The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last century through the Pentecostal-charismatic movement’; ‘Worship & Religion’; ‘Worship & Liturgy’; ‘Worship & Suffering’ & ‘Praising God for all things’.

I enjoyed sharing on this topic & got very positive feedback. A highlight were the times of application in worship at the end of each class.

Worship is a great way to build ecumenical understanding and I was able tohelp participants understand how to meet with God through both - charismatic as well as liturgical worship.

Catholics to the outreach at the Olympics in London next year

We have started the process of recruiting Catholics from India, to travel to London for the outreach at the Olympics next August. Please do pray for this and pass the word on. I have taken on the responsibility as the ‘India Co-ordinator’ for this outreach; so if anyone from India is interested, please ask them to contact me at: india@kteams.org .

Blessings!

Cassius.