An Interview with Yesupadam and Monika from India

You will be stirred by my interview today with my Indian friends, Yesuparam and Monica. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. One of the great joys of my life is going to India every year with some of my dearest closest friends on the planet to pour out together, to minister together, to serve the people of India, the great nation where God is doing some amazing things. And the last two years, because of COVID, haven't been able to go.

And finally this year, back on schedule to go in December, God willing, trip number 28 to India. But it just so happens that my dear friends Yesuparam and Monica and another colleague as well whom we'll meet in the course of today's show, they're here with us in the States for a few days. We got to spend time ministering together yesterday and now they get to share their hearts with you. This is Michael Brown.

This is The Line of Fire. We won't be taking calls today. We're devoting our entire time to this interview. So sit back, be blessed, and encourage you. If you're watching on YouTube, click thumbs up, let others know about the broadcast. If you're watching on Facebook, click share, and then share this later with your friends.

If you're listening on radio, call a friend, tell them to tune in. Without further ado, Yesuparam, welcome back to The Line of Fire. Great to have you with us. Yeah, thank you for having me back on this radio show.

Amazing. Now you just turned 70, which is a real miracle that you made it this far, isn't it? Yes, I should have been died at the age of 10. All right, so you were raised in untouchable and such a situation we can't relate to in America in terms of the poverty, in terms of just being despised, outcast. You watched your own mother die just because you couldn't get simple medication that would have kept anyone else alive. 10 years old, you're malnourished, and you collapse on the side of the road. You should have died there, but a Canadian missionary found you.

Yes. Two, three days in a week, it's normal not to have the food. So, there are a number of times I used to faint in the middle of the road, but that day, I was almost unconscious, it seems. So, when that Baptist missionary, who is still alive, he lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. When he was passing by in his Jupiter's family, he saw me like a dead boy in the middle of the road. He came down to find out I was alive, I was breathing, I was unconscious but breathing. That white man touched this untouchable boy and then carried me and took me to a hospital, which they established, kept me there for two weeks, and it's because of that good Samaritan.

I'm alive, Dr. Mike, today. But you did not, excuse me, you did not turn to Jesus at that point, but at the age of 11, you were influenced to become an axolite, a Maoist communist. What was the appeal there at that time? It was the way they approached you, they said that you don't have to suffer like you're suffering. If you join your hands with us, we all shall be called as comrades and we can fight for the rights you can do like a human being, you'll be respected and honored. That's the appealing thing for me because I was treated like worse than an animal, you know?

Our people, great country, great people, they worship even animals, but they don't even touch a normal human being like me. So that was very appealing to me that I don't have to go through that, that suffering, pain, hurt, rejection anymore in my life. That was very appealing to me. So you wanted to be a revolutionary, but without God. Exactly.

Without the gospel. So by the time you're 20 years old, you're an atheist? Yep. Alcoholic? Alcoholic. Violent man? Yep, gang leader. Gang leader. So you're even shedding blood? Yes. And for the cause of communism.

Exactly. And how does God save you? What happened? It was 1976, January 26, around 1, 1.30 in the noontime. I had no clue. I was sitting in the chair, looked towards the sky, very far in the sky. I saw the shape of a man hanging on the cross. I heard the story of Jesus.

I read even the stories as I was growing up. My dad was a fine Christian, a prayerful man. He always told me, son, Jesus loves you. He died for you. You must serve him. Actually, he gave me the name, which means the foot of Jesus.

His desire was I must be walking in the streets of India proclaiming the glorious gospel. But I became a communist and went away. So I know the story. I saw that. Then I thought to myself, it could be Jesus. But my communist brain told me, no, that's your imagination. And as if somebody zoomed a lens, Mike, I saw the hand of a man.

He has clear. Yes, you see my hand, like five fingers. And then a nail in his hand bled drop after drop coming down from the nail thorn hand of the Savior. Then I heard an audible voice, friends, as clearly as you see here my voice today. I heard it so clearly in my language. He did not call me an alcoholic gang leader, but he called me, son, I did all this for you.

What would you do for me? That word, son, broke my heart, brought tears. And that was the turning point. I realized the love of God, that that's not just a story, but that's real. Jesus is alive. Jesus speaks. Jesus shows himself alive and changes and transforms the lives of the people. That day, my life was transformed forever.

I was never, never looked back. What a transformation. That's the power of the Gospel. That's the power of the blood of Jesus.

Absolutely. So since then, God takes this former untouchable with not much education, very lost man, now radically saved. How many churches has God used your ministry to plant in India? By God's grace, so far over 10,000 churches were planted, trained thousands of church planters and missionaries, and then raised up actually over 5,000 children in our campus, providing food to children like me.

They're engineers, doctors, they're everywhere around the world today. So these were children that you took in either without both parents or one parent or extreme poverty and need. You took them in, they stayed with you three meals a day, school and all this. So that's 5,000? Over 5,000 that have gone through the children's home. Wow. I mean, I've seen them every trip.

Okay, this is amazing. And you've cared for the elderly? Yes. Provided training for a handicap, vocational training. What about other countries? What countries has God used your ministry to establish works in? Well, when the Lord actually spoke to me, he showed me the globe and English word across the globe, Jesus cares.

Love and care came from Jesus cares because God is love, Jesus is love. And five nations I saw underneath the hands, USA, Canada, Sweden, South Africa, and West Germany. I thought God wanted me to pray for those five nations.

Then I realized the Lord wanted me to go there. And then started opening up and I started getting invitation from other nations. Then I started thinking I only saw five countries. Then God by his grace said, Son, did you see the globe or five countries? I said, I saw five globe first. And then now in Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Romania, you were helping the refugees from Ukraine, then America, Canada, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone and many nations around the world, South Korea, Philippines. After I counted 60 nations, I stopped counting. And friends, in some of these countries, we're talking about a real major presence and doing work that's just staggering.

I mean, it literally impacting the nation of Madagascar through a Korean brother and his wife that were trained in the ministry there with Yesupatam and then have gone out to the nations. And we're going to talk to Monica in a moment in the next segment. In our studio now, we can actually do live camera interviews, but just with one person at a time. So we're going to bring in Monica and then a surprise guest from India as well that we're going to bring in. But when we went the first time to India, we met your first wife, Padmini, and she had died before we met her.

Yeah. Were you in the hospital when they pronounced her dead? Yes, I was sitting by her bed. So she had cancer years earlier. They expect her to die. She lived about 10 more years, then got cancer again.

Exactly. And it's from brain spread through her spine. Was she crippled at that point? She could not get up and walk because her spinal and brain was also affected.

All right. So the doctors pronounced her dead and you were praising God for the years you had. There was another brother by the bedside.

What happened? You know, I was, they were removing everything, either with flutes and everything. They said, doctor came to him and said, I'm sorry, yes, father, you know, we could not help. And I was sitting there actually praising God for his faithfulness.

All these years, she was supposed to die in one month, but she lived for many years. You know, I was not complaining. I was thanking God. And suddenly she woke and opened her eyes. And immediately she said, did you see me going up? I'm like, I was shocked. I'm like, what is going up?

What happened? And she said, I died. I was going up and I was going through the darkest place, entered into the place where it is so bright. And there was such a presence of the Lord. I wanted to see Jesus.

I called a couple of times. Then I felt like I was coming down. And then she got up from the bed. She got down the bed. She was just literally jumping up and down to the point the doctor and the nurses saw her.

They started coming running towards her. And I could still hear her saying, doctor, Jesus heal me. And she lived two more years.

Yeah. So we met her. We met her after that. But you were going to be single. The brothers were coming to you and they were saying you should get married.

It's better. Maybe there's a widow. It's just better for the ministry and people won't be trying to marry you and all that. But you were going to stay single.

So we've got about a minute and then we're going to bring Monica next. So you prayed a prayer. Remember, friends, this is an Indian prayer, not an American, an Indian.

What did you pray? I prayed a prayer thinking that I'm shutting the door forever because I didn't want to marry. I said, Lord, if you really want me to marry again, she must be a white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes.

She should come and ask me. So there are not many Indians with white skin, let alone white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. And then it's totally contrary to the culture for a woman to come to the man and say, we're supposed to get married. So he knew in doing that, he was shutting the door on marriage forever.

But God had another plan. When we come back, you're going to hear about the rest of this plan with my friend Yesupanam. I also want to tell you how you can invest in this ministry, one of the greatest spiritual investments you could make on the planet, eternal bang for your buck, lncministries.org. Love and care, lncministries.org.

We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-3-4 TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on this very special edition of the line of fire as I speak with some of my dearest friends on the planet and some of the truest Christians I know on the planet. If you ever want to come to India with me one year, maybe we could make that happen.

To find out about the ministry, lnc, as in love and care, lncministries.org. All right, so Nancy and I went on some of the early trips. She went on three of the four first trips that I made to India. We'd stay actually a month. It's long trips now.

I'm there for about four days just because of schedule. But on one of the trips, every year there would be folks from other countries that were there working at the children's home, volunteering in other ways in the ministry that just felt called to India, wanted to learn to evangelize, serve the ministry, serve the poor. So one of the trips I met a young lady from Canada named Monica. Just one of many folks who served there, excuse me, kind of quiet and faithfully serving the Lord.

And there's an interesting story that didn't stop there. So Monica, welcome back to the line of fire. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Mike.

It's good to be here. All right, so when you went to India, was it just a trip you were making or did you have a prior calling to India? Yeah, when I was 12 years old, I told my mom, I'm going to be a missionary someday. Don't really know how that all came about, but God just put on my heart. Actually, when I was seven, when I got saved, I right away said, Lord, I want to serve you with all my life.

And so, yeah, I was 27 when I went to India. I'd waited many years to know where God really wanted me long-term. Did a lot of short-term mission trips and things, but nothing seemed long-term. And when I went to India, it was so clear God was calling me there, clearer than anything ever before.

So I thought I'll go for three years and I'll see what else God has for me after that. So what did you think of the ministry when you got there? Oh, I was so amazed with, actually, when I first met Yesuparam in Canada in 96, and he shared about the visions God had given him, how God spoke to him to do certain things, how he showed him the globe, two hands holding the globe, and how God spoke. I was like, wow, a live person who hears from God and does it. So when I went to India and saw the vision played out and buildings and all of that, I was just amazed that this was happening, not just in a book from, you know, people we read about that have passed away.

So I was really touched. And all the more when you think that he was an untouchable. You know, when he first came to America and saw an ATM machine, he thought there was a little person inside giving out the money.

I mean, this is all completely foreign and new to him. I remember when we first met, just changing an airline ticket and spending a few hundred dollars, that was a massive step of faith to do something like that, to come in and meet me and spend time together. So when you realize who God used and the scope of the work, it becomes all the more mind-boggling and Jesus glorifying. So, Canadian spirituality in the church, similar to America in many ways, what did you think when you saw the kids in the children's home, little kids, 3, 4, 5 years old, getting up at, what, 4.35 in the morning to spend time in prayer and the Word? How did that impact you?

Oh, deeply. I was so impacted in every way spiritually. I was so challenged in my faith and my prayer life. And yeah, just we feel like the children there are the backbone of the ministry, and they carry it. And the fruitfulness of the ministry has so much to do with the prayers of the children.

Women get up 3, 4 in the morning and pray for hours. And so, yeah, very deeply impacted my life. All right, so then something interesting happens, which is how we become such dear close friends over the years and work together around the world. Tell us the story of how God connects you now to Yesupadam. So, I got off the plane in Mumbai in January 97 in the middle of the night, and I heard a still small voice, you're at home. And I had been praying for six years where God wanted me to do, but also for my husband, that God would show me very clearly who He wanted me to marry, that He'd arrange my marriage and that I would have no doubts, that I would know, that I know, that I know this is the person. And when I went to India, I really gave that to the Lord and I said, Lord, even if I'm single the rest of my life, it's OK. So, I went there ready to be single for Jesus. Got off the plane, God spoke to me, you're at home, and then went to the ministry and felt such a peace and such a grace to be there. And after three weeks of being there, actually, when I got there, I found out Yesupadam's first wife had passed away.

He had two children. Three weeks down the road, we were busy traveling, doing crusades and evangelism in the villages. So, hang on, you've only been there for a few weeks. This is not after years, you've only been there for a few weeks.

OK, go ahead. And we were traveling, and then God burdened my heart. It was like I literally felt the burden that He carried as the leader of the ministry. So, for three days, I was just praying for Him, and I even prayed for a wife for Him, and it was so strong. And on the third night, we were at a crusade meeting, and the burden lifted. And then it was the altar call time, and Yesupadam started calling people forward for prayer, and He said to all of us 30 foreigners that were there, Koreans, Americans, one Canadian, me, He said, go and pray for the people. And I walked out in the crowd, looked back towards the stage, and again, that still small voice, so clear, He is your husband. And this peace and joy filled me, and it was like my whole life made sense to that point.

I realized what God had been preparing me for all those years. Now, for those that are listening on radio or on podcast, Monica has white skin. Monica has blonde hair. Monica has blue eyes.

Monica is also not the kind of person to just step out and do some kind of crazy, radical, well, God told me thing, especially when it involves somebody else's life. But what did you feel God was telling you? Well, the next morning, it was just a divine setup by God. I was crying out to the Lord, do I tell Him this or do I not? We had a breakdown in our vehicle in the side of the road. Him and I ended up there alone at the side of the road, while the others fixed the flat tire, and I knew it was a setup from God.

I didn't waste any time. I said, I need to tell you something. Last night, God spoke to me that you're my husband. And when God showed you that, you had this tremendous sense of peace and joy. What did Je Su Patum look like when you told him?

Well, I didn't see his face, but he took some time to reply. And then he started telling a bit about his life, his wife passing away. And then he told me about this crazy prayer. He prayed that he did not think God would answer. And then it was very clear to both of us how God led us together.

Yeah. And I still remember the call when he called to talk to Nancy and say, brother, brother, what do I do? This is God. He told us. And that's when we found out the whole story, because I had only known about him, thanking God for the years he had in ministry and basically telling the brothers, no, I'm not going to marry.

I'm just going to stay single. I had known that part. I didn't know about the prayer that he had prayed to be sure to be sure he stayed single.

But God knew that God heard and God orchestrated all of this. So how long have you two been married now? It's almost 25 years.

I'm almost 26 years in India. Amazing. Yeah. I really saw just how God bringing East and West together, especially for the expansion of the international part of the ministry.

Yeah. Really was God's. And has it been sacrifices for you? Oh, 110% 110%.

Everything is different. Of course, you know, leaving my family for that long and just being in such a different culture. But God gave so much grace and knowing so clearly it was God every step of the way that I go there and that I marry him has kept me so clear, clear like this is God and I can't run no matter how hard it gets. And God has carried me through so much. I'm so grateful. And you've got two amazing kids that are Oral Roberts University. Yes. Bethany and Benjamin.

Yeah. Just so, you know, I remember, of course, you being married, the kids being born, watching all of this. And we got home last night after dinner together, and Nancy said, you know, that ministry would not be what it is without Monica. And God's used her in amazing ways. And as you said, with international expansion, with the women's ministry there and so many other things.

We've just got about a minute and a half before the break. What would you say to others who are considering a call to the foreign field? They feel God's calling to missions, but they wonder, can I do it? Can I handle it?

What would you say to them? Well, none of us can handle it. It's not us. It has to be God. But the most important thing is to know it's God. Because after that, it doesn't matter anymore. You know you're doing God's will and you just obey him and he leads the way and he gives the grace to go through it. So it's not up to us.

It's not about us. So surviving dengue fever, surviving the heat, surviving the travel around the world and putting all your kids in a little room, all that. Yeah.

The death threats on your husband and all that in years past from some radical groups. All worth it. All worth it.

You know it's God. Yeah, absolutely. Friends, check out loveandcareministries.org. LNCministries.org. You can actually sponsor, how much does it cost to sponsor a child for a month? $25 a month. For everything? Yes. Food, clothing, shelter, and education.

Yeah. $25 a month. Get online, lncministries.org. Sponsor some kids.

Trust me, if you could meet them, you'd want to sponsor all of them. What about a pastor in the tribal regions of planning churches reaching the unreached? $50 a month. Help them with their basic needs of the family. Okay.

Pastors, leaders, churches, individuals, business people, singles. Think of this. $50 a month. You can, this is not to help support a pastor as he's raising thousands a month.

No, no. This is to pay his bills. This is to help meet his basic needs for him and his family for a month while he's reaching the unreached.

$50 a month. Go to lncministries.org. You can make this happen and, oh friends, if you could see face to face some of these tribal regions where we've been, we're so lost, so unreached. Now reach with the gospel. Now many people have come to know Jesus. It's worth it.

It's eternally worth it. All right, we've got a special surprise on the other side of the break. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Thanks so much for joining us on this special edition of the Line of Fire broadcast. When I'm in India, I'll get to meet some of Yesupatam's friends and colleagues, and I've met a dear brother named James, Professor James Mecca of Andhra University. And we've got to chat, and Yesupatam's told me about how the Lord has raised this young man up in the academic community in India. And he's on the trip with them.

He's also visiting different universities and participating in conferences here while in the States. So before we get back to Yesupatam, I want you to meet Professor James Mecca. Hey, welcome to the Line of Fire broadcast. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, sir. I feel it as an honour for me.