With the Missionaries in Vellore

On one of our days in Vellore, those of us who were not teaching spent time with various groups, the missionaries, the Bible women and the ordained women.  I was able to meet with the missionaries, a group of a dozen men – and they were all men as the female equivalents are the Bible women.  The Bible women do much the same as the missionaries, except that they additionally try to encourage basic hygiene and other domestic skills in order to enhance the lives of those they encounter,  The missionaries are lay leaders with the particular commission of going to villages where there is no church and trying to start one.  They meet monthly and showed pictures of how their work has recently been made easier as a group from Saudi Arabia provided each missionary with a bicycle and pump plus torch and umbrella.  They make contact by hanging around and offering bits of practical help.  It was encouraging to hear how these people are starting churches in such circumstances and each had prepared a map to illustrate how and where they worked.