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

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.

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.”

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.

A Brook Hills team member shares God's plan with a fortuneteller.

“Fortunes told! I can tell your future! Fortunes told!” called the small Indian man as he made his way through the streets of a slum outside of Mumbai, India.

“Who is this guy?” asked Spencer, a member of the Brook Hills team that is sharing the Good News in Mumbai this week.

The team was sitting on the porch of a small house in a slum area. It was late in the afternoon, and the team had been invited to the home for tea. Inside, the women were building a fire to boil the water. Outside, the men visited on the small porch. A curious crowd of onlookers quickly began to form, and it was then that the strange little man approached the crowd, offering to tell their fortunes.

“I already know my future,” Spencer joked to the team.

With a gleam in his eye, *Kaleb said, “Why don’t you tell him that?”

Pastor *Abhi shrugged off the suggestion. “He’s a drinker,” Abhi said, as if no other explanation was needed.

Still, the team discussed the need to share the Gospel with this man, and Abhi continued to dissuade them. Finally, Kaleb asked Pastor Abhi, “If nobody else has tried it, why don’t we? Why not go ahead?”

The pastor reluctantly assented, and the team called the man over. Through the pastor, Spencer said to the fortuneteller, “I already know my future. Would you like to know yours?”

The man was puzzled, but he agreed. And, from there, Spencer shared the Gospel, explaining that those who do not trust in Jesus are enemies of God.

“He didn’t like it,” Spencer said.

Instead, the fortuneteller insisted on telling Spencer’s fortune.

“He kept asking for Spencer to show him his hands,” Aaron, another member of the team, recalled, “but the pastor told him not to do that.”

Although Spencer refused to allow the man to read his palm, the fortuneteller persisted.

“Okay. Okay. I can see your future through your face,” the man began. “You will prosper in business, and when you are 34 [years old], you will have to take care of your parents.”

Spencer looked at the man and said simply, “I’m 38.”

“The fortuneteller didn’t know what to say to that,” Aaron laughed. “He just got up and walked off.”

“What I learned most from that encounter is that we all have prejudices,” Kaleb stated. “The Indians have prejudices, just like Americans do.”

Still, Kaleb stressed that we must be willing to share with anyone who comes across our path at any time.

“The fortuneteller kept saying, ‘I’m glad you were able to share your ideas. I’m happy I came to talk to you,’” Kaleb recalled. “Even though the pastor kept saying, ‘Let him go. Let him go. He’s a drinker.’

“We always have to be attuned to who God wants us to share with,” Kaleb concluded, “and we don’t know what God may do in this man’s life.”

*names changed

“I am taking you to the red-light district,” our translator says, “so we must pray because there is much spiritual battle there.”   We pray, then dodge auto rickshaws and taxis and goats, crossing the main road. We step around the corner, into a lane and I see them: women in front of narrow doorways on a dark street. Some just sitting and staring, others taking care of daily tasks—cooking rice, washing clothes.  Ordinary things. We stop to talk with them, asking if they know of Jesus and would they like to hear His story, asking how we can pray for them.

As *Martha and *Laura sit on a rope bed to share the Story with one lady, I find a bench nearby and sit beside two women who are engaged in animated conversation. They stop, greet me—and I try out Hindi phrases, much to their amusement. As they rise to go, a thin woman dressed in red and gold shalwar kameez is rushing towards me, speaking broken English nonstop.  “Hi mem. I am sick, mem. My body is paining me. I tell my madam I not want ‘work baby’. They take my baby.  I have TB…” When she stops to take a breath I quickly speak of Jesus’ love for her…and does she know of Jesus?  “Oh yes, mem. I love Jesus. I love Jesus.” Again the litany of troubles and she holds my arm.  I ask if I can pray for her in the name of Jesus. “Oh no, mem. I must go.” But what is your name? “Sudah.”  She runs off, down the lane. The dark lane. My brain that has been struggling to think of Hindhi words remembers another language from another time. “Sudah” in that language means “finished.”  Her life story feels like that—torn, bleeding, brief, finished. Lord, have mercy. Healer of the broken, touch Sudah and make her whole.

*names have been changed for security reasons

Our translator Rashid*  took my friend and I to a slum where he knew a woman was already telling folks about Jesus. When we arrived, we asked Rashid if there was a temple we could visit, and he took us straight there.

The small temple was locked. One child noticed us and yelled out in Hindi, “Key?” He retrieved the key for us and unlocked the door and we went inside after taking off our shoes. A dozen onlookers joined us. Rashid offered us some chairs, and I said I didn’t think we would stay that long.

“No, please sit. We’re going to tell the Gospel here,” he said.

My friend told three stories from the Bible and then told his testimony. The crowd of 20 was fixated and said they enjoyed the stories. They’d never heard them before. Never before had I thought that I’d be sharing the Gospel in the middle of a temple in India’s largest city.

These kinds of things don’t happen to me…ordinarily.

On we went to a visit a couple in their small hovel. The husband had lost his job because of health issues caused by a drinking problem. Though the believer in their neighborhood had been sharing with them for two years, they hadn’t believed yet. We told them a story or two from the Bible and asked them if they wanted to know Jesus. They nodded in the Indian way that means “yes,” and they repeated a prayer after me. So this afternoon in that house, I watched two baby followers of Jesus being born.

Again, these kinds of things don’t happen to me…ordinarily.

House after house, we told stories and prayed for people. We met a woman healed from cancer through her friend’s prayers in Jesus’ name. She had given up her gods. We met another woman raised in a Christian family who had married a man from another religion, and therefore joined that religion. Her husband had since died, but she gave her life back to Christ today. The streets, which on arrival looked so dark, now appeared full of light as we were leaving. God was in that place, and He was at work.

And these kinds of things don’t happen to me…ordinarily.

But when I’m willing to look a bit closer to see where God is working, the ordinary…becomes extraordinary.

*Names changed for security reasons.