Also, here at mReport we know that God is glorified when we share our stories, and we know that YOU have stories to share. Perhaps you or your church is planning a trip somewhere in the world to share the Gospel with those who have not heard. Whether it’s a South Asian mega-city like Mumbai, a small village in Africa, or an inner-city ministry in the streets of your city, submit your proposal to mReport@gmail.com. We want to hear from you!

mReport is all about telling your stories when they happen, where they happen, as they happen. Together, we can share what God is doing in our world through ordinary people like you and me.

- the mReport Team

“Before going, while we were there and now even more do I realize how the Lord does NOT need us, but invites us to partner with Him in bringing His kingdom here,” Becca said. “How simple and true the Gospel is, and how complicated we’ve made it here in America. What I experienced of Christ in Mumbai I will definitely aim to see in my daily life.”

“I never knew what I was really getting myself into when I signed up for the trip to India. I really didn’t give it that much thought. My expectations were high but I really didn’t know what exactly to expect. I went with some fear of sharing with other people from other religions, especially Muslims. All I had ever heard about them made me afraid of them.

“But God quickly exceeded my expectations and shattered my fears. My first day out, a man of the Islamic faith approached me while I was still in my taxi as if he had been looking for me and had finally found me. He asked who I was and what I was doing there. I proceeded to tell him all that He asked including that Jesus Christ was the main reason I was there and explained my personal encounter with Christ and the story of how I came to call Him Savior. That Muslim looked me dead in the eye and said, “I trust in Jesus…I believe in Him as you do.” Then he began to shake my hand in gratitude and called me “brother” and asked me to pray for him. That experience was NOT what I expected, but God set that up from the beginning. God seems to always exceed our expectations when we just go and are obedient… He’s just awesome like that,” Seth said.

When the hand of God moves through ordinary people to touch the life of another something extraordinary happens. The natural becomes supernatural and hearts are forever changed.

The day before had been her final day with the Southeastern team that had come to Mumbai; now it was her turn to share with others. She had gone with her mentors into homes, shared her testimony, and told the stories from creation to Jesus. At the completion of that time, Uma and her friends tearfully promised to use what they had learned and to continue to share the stories with the lost.

Now, with one of the Southeastern students sitting next to her, Uma was leading this rooftop session.

An elderly woman, who earlier was brought to tears listening to the story of the demon-possessed man, was slowly sharing her testimony.

“Did you understand that?” Uma asked me after every phrase. She knew I did not fully understand what the woman was expressing, but Uma was patient with me as I tried.

Uma’s goal wasn’t to test my knowledge of the Hindi language; she was simply taking to heart what she had learned the past two days. She wanted to give everyone in the circle an opportunity to learn and grow in their storytelling — just like the model the Southeastern team had showed her.

These women left their housework undone so that they could become stronger disciples of the Word and could learn how to tell the stories of the Bible to others. In only a few days, they witnessed people they had just met hear the stories and then make decisions to follow Christ.

As we sat on that rooftop, I noticed that Uma didn’t need a lot of prompting or guidance from her mentors. Uma knew the importance of these stories in her life. During the workshop, she had seen others’ lives transformed by the simple telling of the same story that had changed her life.

Now it was her turn to teach other Christian women and help them capture a vision of what sharing the stories of the Bible can do for someone’s heart.

*Name changed.

*Vama wanted to know why her pain had returned. God healed her once before. Now, the pain was back.

“She was still praising God,” Bekah said. “She still loves Him and trusts Him. She just couldn’t understand why the pain had returned.”

Bekah had come with the Southeastern team to teach piano lessons in a Mumbai village. While she was teaching, Vama came in and sat down. She didn’t say a word, Bekah remembered. She just sat and watched for a long time.

After a few minutes, Bekah asked if she had come to study piano. “No,” the woman said. Just to be safe, Bekah repeated her question several more times, phrasing it differently each time to make sure the woman understood. Each time, the woman said, “No.”

Finally, Vama said to Bekah, “I used to have a terrible pain in my arm. I prayed and prayed to God and He took that pain away, and I praised His name.”

“About a month ago the pain came back,” continued Vama, who had recently been hospitalized for the problem. “I still praise God. I still trust Him. I still love Him, and I still have faith in Him. But the pain is back, and I can’t move my arm … I want to know why He let it come back.”

Moved by Vama’s story, Bekah left the keyboard and sat down beside her. With the help of her students, Bekah and Vama talked for some time. The woman asked for prayer. Bekah thought the woman might need to understand that God doesn’t always answer our prayers exactly the way we expect Him to.  She told Vama that God is powerful, that He healed her before and that He had the power and ability to heal her again.

“Maybe, though,” Bekah said, “there is a reason that your pain has returned.”

Bekah talked more about God’s faithfulness and shared Scripture from Deuteronomy 8.

“Maybe,” Bekah said, “this is a time that you can show your faithfulness to God.”

Vama agreed and said that she would continue to praise God.

Then Bekah, her students, and other members of the Southeastern team gathered around Vama to pray. They prayed for God’s will to be done, and they prayed for healing and for peace.

As the prayer ended and the students returned to their lessons, Vama raised her afflicted hand, shouting “Praise the Lord!”

Vama could move her arm again, when moments before she was unable to do so.

“I have the best picture of her giving us all a high-five,” Bekah marveled.

*Names changed

When our team of ten Southeastern students set out for Mumbai a few weeks ago, we had little idea what to expect. We had scheduled a training conference on Church Multiplication for national pastors. In preparation, we had studied the book of Acts and the model of the apostle Paul.  We believed that what the Holy Spirit did then, He can do in our time.

Our band of Southeastern students arrived on the first day prepared to focus on establishing relationships with the pastors and setting the tempo through a 
focus on prayer.  As usual in non-western contexts, the training got underway several hours late, but our students didn’t allow that to unnerve them.  Instead, I watched as they encouraged and prayed with our Indian brothers in small groups.  Over the next several days we conducted training on God’s vision for church multiplication, praying to prepare the soil, sowing the seed of the Gospel, nurturing growth through making disciples who obey Jesus’ commands, gathering in the harvest through establishing new churches, developing Biblical servant leaders, and expanding harvest fields through multiplication. The learning environment was dynamic because as our students taught they also listened and learned.  Most importantly they went out with the pastors into their neighborhoods and modeled these simple Biblical concepts.

The fruitfulness of this partnership in the Gospel was nothing short of miraculous.  Over the course of the week we saw the Spirit of God draw nearly 75 people to repentance and faith, and many were growing in their understanding of this new life through discipleship.  One story in particular highlights this.

At the end of the first day, several of us were gathered on a sidewalk, when we noticed a young couple standing on an adjacent hillside watching us intently. They had a small child, so I approached them and began talking with them in my broken Hindi. Quickly, this Muslim couple invited us to their shanty home nearby. When we arrived and were seated, we continued our attempts at communication without a translator.  After a short time, I finally asked if I could just pray for them, and they agreed.

As we left the home, I saw one of our Indian pastors. I beckoned him over and explained the openness of our new Muslim friends. Together, we climbed back up the hillside and re-initiated the conversation, this time with our national pastor leading the way.

After about a half-hour of conversation, we sensed an openness that was truly divine.  I soon found myself on my knees beside this Muslim man. We lifted our hands to God as our pastor friend led this man in a prayer of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone. Just behind him sat his wife. Her head was covered, and one of our female professors was embracing her.

As the Muslim call to prayer rang out from the local mosque, I watched this family surrender their lives to Christ. I considered the spiritual irony – as a lie was being projected from the loudspeaker of the local mosque for all to hear, the Truth was being proclaimed to this family in a still small voice.

The next day, several of our Southeastern students returned to this couple’s home and spent time teaching them the “Basic Commands of Jesus” and what it means to be an obedient Christ-follower. After a few days of investment, the young husband became convinced of their need to follow Christ in believer’s baptism. The local pastor took this couple and another young man who had surrendered to Christ to the ocean. For their safety, he baptized them under cover of night.

Stories similar to this one were emerging throughout the city as our Southeastern team partnered with national pastors and simply followed what Jesus modeled for us in the New Testament. We arrived back in the United States a few days ago, but we are greatly encouraged because the LORD saw fit to allow us to be a part of His plan for multiplying disciples and churches in the great city called Mumbai.

Blessed to be a blessing,
George

His mother is a housewife, his father an auto rickshaw driver. A poor family, they live in a small, single-room home in the middle of a slum. Piles of trash border the slum where women dig deep, hoping to find something of use.

The stench of rancid rubbish and raw sewage are just a way of life for this young boy.

Time that Agni should spend in a classroom learning to read and write he instead passes playing the drums. He would go to school, but his family cannot afford the expense — an economic reality for most slum residents.

Agni bangs away on his makeshift snare drum set that he made from tin cans and buckets. He learned how to play from his older brother who earns a living beating drums at various Indian festivals.

At a young age, Agni made a profession of faith in Jesus. His family, also believers, attends a small one-room church in the middle of the slum. This church is a safe haven for children who would otherwise follow in the heartbreaking habits of those around them — mischief and alcoholism. Young boys like Agni practice and play the drums and other instruments for church services. Church is a place where they can put their musical talents to good use.

Pastor Murali* points to a list stuck on a bulletin board with some 60 names on it. “These are my youths,” he explains. The pastor wants to make an eternal difference in their lives, and he believes keyboarding lessons will help make that happen.

Murali was thrilled when he heard that students from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., would offer free keyboarding lessons in his church. For a few days, children like Agni would be able to receive music lessons that their families could never afford.

Agni has never played keyboard, however, his pastor is confident he can pick up the skills as easily as he learned the drums.

“I’m looking forward to giving him some training and three other boys as well,” Murali says. Pointing to a keyboard he says, “After this week, they can practice on this damaged keyboard. We’ll fix it. I don’t know how, but we will.”

Keyboards in place, students slowly trickle into the room.

Today, Agni arrives with his hair combed back and his shirt neatly tucked into his pants. Jennifer, his teacher from Southeastern, suspects he is wearing his “Sunday best.” She describes how yesterday he kept wiping the keyboard’s white keys off because his hands were leaving black smudges on them.

Before the lessons begin, Murali translates for Audra, another Southeastern student. She shares the Gospel using the EvangeCube, a seven-panel cube that tells the Gospel of Christ in pictures, and encourages them to share this story with their friends.

Then the children, sitting next to their keyboard teachers, once again hear the message of the Gospel one-to-one before a single note is played.

Lessons begin. Some students are struggling to remember yesterday’s lessons, while others are already learning to play the simplified versions of hymns.

When the keyboarding lessons pause for a break, Murali, Agni and another boy grab the drums from the front of the church. Murali starts to sing and the boys quickly begin to play, creating a rhythm and picking up the beat to the worship song. Agni’s hands fly across the drums, his eyes fixed straight ahead, listening to make sure what he is playing matches the song.

When they finish, the Southeastern teachers clap and tell them how well they played. Agni smiles and carefully puts the drums back. He cannot speak English, but his non-verbal communication shows he is happy to hear the applause.

“To say he had rhythm is selling him short. It was part of him. He struggled with keyboard we found, but he definitely wanted to keep learning music and become a better musician, even at such a young age,” Southern Baptist representative Ethan Leyton* observes.

Lessons resume. Agni tries hard to learn. Jennifer is patient with him. She knows his not being able to speak or read English is making the lessons more difficult for him.

“He is trying so hard to remember the letters of the alphabet to learn the notes,” she says.

“This is very good.” Murali says. “We train them, the next generation, not only keyboard training but training young people to present the Gospel.”

Jennifer recalls the time she saw Agni using the EvangeCube card to share Christ with his friend. Agni may not have mastered the keyboard during the week, but what he has grasped is how he can share about Jesus with his friends.

Murali’s vision is to see these boys and other children who received keyboard lessons train other youth in the slum how to play keyboard sometime in the spring. He sees it as an opportunity for them to put their training into action and to present the Gospel to their friends.

“That is the plan of my heart,” Murali says. “Pray for it.”

Angry.

Meena is angry, angry with God, wondering why He’s allowed such hardship in her life. Her husband left her three years ago, and life has been anything but easy.

“I cannot believe because of that,” Meena tells the women in the room. “Pray for me,” she asks.

We are hours away from the hustle and bustle of central Mumbai. The home we sit in is where Neha,* our translator, wants to put into practice the training she has received. For the past three days, Southeastern students have taught her how to share her testimony and stories from the Bible.

Heartbreaking.

Tears stream down Neha’s face as she continues to tell the stories the women are sharing.

Neha shares the story of the young woman sitting in the back of the small, poorly lit room, breast-feeding her child. Her husband beats her and drinks and gambles away their money, she says. As the young woman gently rocks her child, Neha tell us, “This woman was forced to marry a family member.”

A hush falls across the room. Then another woman begins to share her story.

“I pray, and my husband beats me. He beats me, but I still came today,” the woman explains.

Another woman, perhaps in her 30’s, chimes in, “I want to be baptized, but my family will not accept me.”

Stories of beatings, sickness and healing pour from the lips of the women.

“I felt all alone. I had no hope,” Pushpa* says. Raising her hands to gesture praises, she shares, “I thought I was going to die, but Christ healed me.”

“I believe Jesus Christ is the only God,” Pushpa says.

Hope.

As she cries, Rachel, a Southeastern team member smiles, nods and says, “Hope in eternity.” Rachel shares her personal testimony of hardships and encourages the women in the room to trust Jesus, even in hard times.

Then we take turns praying for the women.

Walking back to the main road to catch an auto rickshaw home, Neha turns to me and asks, “Are you happy?” Before I can answer, Neha says, “I am very happy. Today I talked about Jesus.”

*Names changed.

Many were saved. Some were baptized. A few were healed. Two or three were even delivered from demonic oppression.

Wow! What a ride.

Today, the last of the teams has boarded a plane and returned to their families, their jobs, their ministries and their lives in the familiar comfort of the United States. But the question remains: Where do we go from here?

What will we take with us from these past three weeks? What fruit will remain – not just in the lives of those we touched – but in our lives as well? How will we incorporate all that we saw, touched, felt, tasted and smelled into the new people we’ve become?

From a practical standpoint, mReport will continue to post the remaining stories from these last days in true mReport style – stories of heartbreak, despair, hope, and redemption.

But there’s more.

mReport envisions facilitating your stories of God at work in the future as He draws the nations to Himself in worship and glory. We want to continue the conversation with you.

So, we encourage you to keep mReport in your favorites and on Facebook. Follow us again the next time on Twitter. In the coming weeks we will begin the countdown to the next location where mReport will shine a spotlight on God’s work through ordinary plain vanilla people like you and me.

For His Glory!

the mReport team

Even though she had trusted Christ for only less than one week, Ranee had already been sharing the life-changing Gospel with her family. Her sister-in-law, *Divia joined us and wanted to know more about this Jesus who had changed Ranee’s life.

Ranee had called up her brother and Divia the day she trusted Christ. It was God’s perfect timing. Facing financial and emotional hardships, Divia and her husband were planning on committing suicide together.

David shared the beautiful story of salvation with Divia and immediately, she decided to become a follower of Jesus. It was an incredible sound, hearing Ranee lead her own sister-in-law in a prayer of repentance, trust and much needed hope in Jesus.

After Divia had trusted Christ as her Savior, David told the group of women about the need for obedience in baptism. From the look on Ranee’s face, I could tell she knew it was important, but lacked the exuberance to follow, which she had shown previously.

The pastor turned to me and told me to pray. With faces turned to the floor, I prayed in earnest that God would reveal Himself to these women, would solidify their relationships with Him in their hearts, and would make real their decisions to follow Him whole-heartedly. The pastor decided not to translate my prayer.

As I was praying, I was envisioning a series of everyday circumstances these women would face in the next few days, trusting that God would reaffirm their decisions in small, quiet moments. That’s when God blew the roof off my thinking.

Ranee stood after the prayer and faced me, speaking quickly in Marathi. Her large eyes looked past me and stared out the window behind me, as tablespoon-sized tears poured down her face. The Indian pastor was listening to what she was saying and simply saying, “Alleluia! Praise Christ!” We waited for what seemed like a few minutes to hear what she had been so passionate to share.

The pastor turned to me saying, “This woman saw a vision of Jesus as you were praying. Before you began, she thought she was too sinful to receive the baptism David spoke of earlier.” With Ranee still standing reverently, tears dripping from her chin, he continued, “But while you were praying, she had a vision of Jesus, dressed in white robes. Jesus told her, ‘No, Ranee. This baptism is also for you. I have forgiven all your sins.’”

Needless to say, everyone in the room was blown away. Through translation, Ranee confessed that she was the Samaritan woman at the well. Though she had been married before, her husband left her, and the man she was living with now was not her husband.

This woman stood there, pouring out her heart full of pain and accepting the cleansing love of Jesus Christ. She has no doubt in her mind; she is ready to be baptized. She couldn’t understand my prayers in English, but God answered them in a way she could.

Never again will I pray for the sake of praying. Never again will I try to fit God’s movement in an understandable box. When I was praying in that upstairs room yesterday, I did believe that God could do the things I asked of Him. I just wasn’t ready for the answer to be immediate.

*Names changed.