Emmanuel and is wife, Manju are visiting through Dec 9. We will be arranging opportunities to connect with them while they are here.
Equipping Center Launched!
Greetings! We have been busy since Emmanuel visited this summer. Our funding goals were achieved, allowing us to open the Equipping Center in early October. Our field team is very busy making the Center fully operational. Thank you for all how responded to the Equipping Center vision.
The next steps will be to focus on making the Equipping Center a success. We are also working to get more information on our web site, so stay tuned!
Meet Our Field Director
God continues to work in North India, and we are seeking to meet the demand of new communities of believers by establishing the Prathna Bhawan (Prayer House) Equipping Center, where we will provide the much needed training of leaders (Ephesians 4:11-16) in these new communities of believers in the villages.
Our Field Director, pastor Emmanuel Lal Sahai is visiting this July and August. If you would like to meet him and learn first hand what God is doing in North India, click the email link at the top of our web pages, and lets us know of your interest.
Seeking to Align with God
Jai Mashih Ki — Praise the Lord! We had our Field Director and his wife visit in November and December, and were able to introduce them to many new people and churches. There was also many good working meetings and discussions as we discussed how to move this new ministry forward. North India Indigenous Partners is really still a very new organization, and as such, we continue to ramp up our operations.
This March the NIIP President went to India to spend two weeks following the Field Director around, day and night, to get a feel for the field ministry. He came back impressed with the competence of the field teams and the amazing community of Great Commission Church, who share our vision for North India. God is moving throughout North India in amazing ways! Our Field Director gets calls daily, asking for his team to come to some village or town to minister. Right now, there is not enough financial resources to respond to most of these calls. The field teams are made up of local volunteers, many of which are themselves poor, and still they enthusiastically and sacrificially do the work.
Our President has returned from India with fresh resolve to help this field ministry. There is much need for additional training of new believers, training of new leaders, and encouraging existing leaders and local congregations. Everywhere the field teams go, there is opportunity to pray for healing, to counsel, and to encourage. And because we are working primarily in areas of poverty, there are always resource limitations. God is faithful to respond!
For those who have not been to North India, travel can be difficult and complicated. Some places can be reached in a few hours from New Delhi, and others can take more than a day by train and four-wheel drive vehicle. Logistics and cost of travel can pose a challenge. Travel on India’s highways can also be slow and chaotic by Western standards. Yet, our team will travel 8 hours to be able to spend a few hours training and encouraging a new community of believers. Living conditions can also be extreme by Western standards, but our teams come out of these remote villages and communities, so they have learned to live in these conditions.
One of the reasons we are partnering with Indigenous ministries is because they can do the work better than Westerners, and every dollar we contribute will go father than if we did the same work through Western NGO’s or missionaries. Also, the work is done in areas where English is not spoken. Western people going into these areas do not know the language or culture, they are not use to the conditions, they have trouble eating the food, and are more susceptible to sickness and disease. The local teams can live and work on a peer level, and as such, they are more easily received. The field work is made up of local people who are responding to the needs of their communities. NIIP is only coming along side them by providing a small financial assistance to fill some gaps, and thus enable more ministry work.
Since NIIP is still a new organization, we have a very small team to work with here in the States. It is made up largely of our Board, who, as volunteers, receive no compensation, and they have full time jobs as well. There is a desperate need to have more volunteers to help expand the work locally with the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro area of Minnesota. We are also open to volunteers in other communities.
The good news is that much of the field work is going on regardless of the limitations of NIIP. Also, we have been able to help the field ministry move forward into this next phase of work. We have been able to define a plan for the next 2-5 years. In the next couple months we hope to have our story defined so it can be told to those who might want to partner in our mission and vision for North India.
If you are interested in partnering with us, either financially or as a volunteer, please contact us.
Pastor Emmanuel
Pastor Emmanuel and his wife, Manju, are pastors of The Great Commission Church, a small independent church in New Delhi. Emmanuel is also the NIIP Executive Director.
Emmanuel starts his story with the observation, “today I am serving God because of the answered prayers of my mother. Every morning when it was still dark I could hear the trembling voice of my mother praying, crying, and pouring her heart to God with tears for our protection and blessing.” His mother was a devout Christian who raised him in the faith.
Emmanuel’s family were poor, and lived in a hut made of mud and grass in the Delhi area. He attended a Christian run school as a child. He solidified his faith in 1977 at a Gospel Festival Meeting that was in town. They were teaching out of 1 Timothy 2:5, “For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and people. He is the man Jesus Christ.” As he describes it:
“During his message the Holy Spirit touched me and the power of God came upon me. The Word of God spoke to my heart and I was deeply moved. I asked the Lord to forgive my sins and give me victory over them. There was a mixture of crying and laughing as I felt God respond to my prayers, which ended with joy in my heart. Then I was rejoicing and thanking Him for forgiving me.”
Emmanuel describes his call into ministry couple years later, when God responded to his prayers by leading him to attend Bible School.
“Again, I questioned, cried, and said, ‘God my name is Emmanuel which means God is with us, but where are you in these situations? I cried the whole night and did not stop telling Him. I was lying down on my back, ears filled with tears, and the pillow got wet. I said, ‘God show me what you want from me.'”
“The next morning a young man named Samuel came and told me about a Bible school that I could attend. He said they would also provide a stipend for traveling.”
“I took those words as a call of God in my life to prepare to be used in His kingdom. I would say the Bible School years were my best years of my life. My questions were answered; doubts were cleared with the Word of God. John 8:32 became my favorite verse in the Bible. ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ I obeyed God and completed my studies at Central Bible School with a Graduate of Theology.”
As a student in Bible School, they were assigned to do evangelism in the Delhi area. This led to the next phase of his calling.
“One day we visited the place called Sunlight Colony. This colony was called a ‘Christian colony’ because 70% of the people were professing Christians. It was a colony of people who were poor and could not afford land or a house, who were resettled in this colony. As I observed them, I thought ‘are they really following Christ according to the Bible?’ God gave me a love and passion for these people.”
“One day I saw an elder man who was drinking, yelling and abusing the little children who came to attend the prayer meeting. I felt sad and was grieved, and wondered in my heart what would happen to these children. What kind of next generation Christian leadership would they be in the future? It was like fire burning inside me.”
“I heard and answered the voice of the Holy Spirit, and felt a burden for these children, so I started a Sunday School. Then their parents asked me if I could give Bible studies at their homes. After a few months they asked me if we could start Sunday meetings in their houses. God is always being so faithful to us since the beginning!”
During this time Emmanuel was introduced to a missionary who was working in the area. They started working together, and the little house churches started to grow so there was not enough room for people to sit. Then they rented space in the community center. This group was the beginning of what is now known as Great Commission Church.
Today Great Commission Church has more than 140 people serving the Lord through Sunday school, village ministry teams, pastor and leader seminars, women’s and children’s ministry. Teams from the church go out to other states in North India, including Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Rajasthan. Also, many of those children originally discipled by Emmanuel have since gone out to start churches and ministries of their own throughout North India.
To Emmanuel, this work is not a job, but rather, it is who he is as a follower of Jesus. Emmanuel started his ministry with nothing — nobody committing to him financially — and that is largely how he has worked since. That is also the example that he sets for those he trains for ministry. God is the one who provides, and he has been faithful! The NIIP Board are friends of Emmanuel, and know him to be a trustworthy and respected man of God who is wise in the Lord. He has long felt the call to minister to the people of North India. It has long been his prayer that God open up the way to expand their ministry work in the region. The opportunities abound, but limited resources have constrained the work.
In a very real sense, NIIP was formed to help Emmanuel and The Great Commission Church, and their brothers and sisters in the Lord, as they faithfully serve the Lord in ministry in North India. What is described above is only a brief summary of Emmanuel’s 32 years of ministry. We seek to come along side and help them respond to the many opportunities for ministry by providing some needed resources. We look forward to seeing what God is going to do — how He will answer the many years of prayer.
North India Indigenous Partners Is Becoming Active
We are excited that North India Indigenous Partners (NIIP) is becoming a reality. We have received our 501 (c) (3) status, our operations have been setup, and as you can tell, our web site is becoming populated with information about our organization and ministries. We have our Donate page up and running for those wanting to donate electronically on the web.
Our Field Director, Emmanuel Lal Sahai, and his wife, Manju, will be visiting in November and December. We will be kicking off some donor contacts and fundraising activities. We also will be doing a lot of planning for 2013. Keep a watch on the web site for updates on some exciting new projects. We also will be bringing up the Partners profile pages, for those not familiar with their ministry.
As we contact people, we will also be keeping our eyes open for some people that might be interested in getting more involved with NIIP as volunteers. If you are interested in meeting the Sahai’s, please sent us a note through our Contact page.