Husband and Wife Planting Churches in India!

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This is the Truth Network. What is the Lord doing in India? Billions of people, so many have never heard the gospel. I just heard a man of God speak across the street, and I'm so passionate about this that I've opened up my recorder in Biscuitville on Robin Hood Road in Winston-Salem. You gave a great message at the lodge for our new Canadian society, and Jeeth is your name, and you are serving God in India. And your dad looked you in the eye and said, do not become a doctor or an engineer.

How does that work? Yeah, he is a man of prayer and a man on a mission. And when he moved from South India to North India, he saw this incredible need.

A lot of people unreached, millions. When he was in Rajasthan, it's one of the province that he went first and started working. He saw the need and he thought, man, there is no enough workers here.

There is a lot of harvest, but less labors. So he had two boys. So he said, I'm going to give my boys to the mission. And so growing up, he told us the only purpose for your life is to serve the Lord and don't become doctors or engineers because serving the Lord is much greater than that.

From then on, like growing up, we committed ourselves to mission, and now we're involved in church planting. And God has done amazing work using us. He's using us to reach the village people in unreached places in North India because 90 percent of the unreached people reside in the villages.

And that's like millions. And they have never heard about Jesus. So sometimes when we go to some villages and ask people, hey, have you heard about Jesus? And they would say, well, he doesn't live here.

He may live two straight down the road. So that much people are ignorant about Jesus. And it is a privilege to serve the Lord there. And because their lives are transformed, these people are coming from darkness to the light. And from generation, they've been in idol worship and other kind of thing. And they're tired of it, tired of what they were doing.

And they are looking for hope. And when we go with the gospel message, the light shines in their lives and they're like, well, we want to believe in Jesus. And then the disciple making process happened because disciple making is not like overnight process.

It takes weeks, months and years. And we do through by empowering the local pastors and local missionaries there who are working in the remote villages. So our work is mainly in the villages, not in the cities, because that's where a lot of work has to be done, especially the great commission work. And sitting next to me is a guy named Steve Jumper who loves Jesus, who's committed to a ministry called International Commission.

He's a business guy who just recently said, God, I'm going to go reach America with the gospel and all the people here. And we're in a kind of a loud place. We're hearing the children in the background, which is refreshing, by the way, in Biscuitville. But the children here in America, even though they are hungry and there's issues, they don't maybe have the same problems as the children in India who are on a large scale sold as slaves. And they're promised, hey, mom and dad, you're going to starve. That kid's in a bad home situation. We'll take your kid, we'll pay you some money, and then we'll give them a great job and they'll be a rock star one day. But it doesn't turn out that way, does it?

Yeah. I mean, India has a huge, you know, young people population. And I mean, if you are going to cities like Delhi or Mumbai, you would see kids begging on the street.

And many times you're like so tempted to snatch them from the street and like take you to take them to your home. But you can't do that because they are controlled by some local mafia or there is a network controlling them. And sadly, the local authorities are most of the time involved. But we can prevent that from happening. We have children's program in India where we go to the villages where kids are not getting education and, you know, other thing because there is this caste system in India where if you're born in certain low caste, you belong there. You have to do good karma in order to, you know, work your way up and take a birth in a higher caste next time.

And then you will have a chance for salvation. So these kids have no opportunity. So we go into the villages and give them education because you can give them a bag of rice, but that's not a way. You have to provide them education. And when I left India, we had 20 children. And within last year, we had 280 children. And these are in the remote villages. And God is working among these kids and their families.

And I feel like this is how the Great Commission has to be moved forward. And young people and even adult, everybody needs to hear about Jesus, especially the kids. And you're doing it and these are 280 warriors for Jesus who are going to take the gospel to India and all over the world. Now, your First Lady is here, Miriam, you have served with this man. What is it like being a missionary's wife and seeing all this happen? And you're so gracious to support this man of God. So when I first moved to India, I actually connected with his brother first before ever meeting him.

Started a business with his brother in textiles, training women how to sew and stitch and do natural dyeing. And we now export those to the States. But yeah, growing or, you know, just being around them and their family on the mission field was extremely inspiring and challenging, began to wake me up to just the reality of the need on the field. You come from, you know, an American perspective where church is a normal and somewhat biblical truths and biblical living is taken advantage of here in so many ways. But when you see it in a place like India where there's true light amidst some of the darkest places, you really begin to affirm that faith, you know, and say, okay, this is truly what I believe.

And if I believe this, then I have to take steps, you know, that are complete contrary to the culture and to my people and to my communities. And so just seeing them, Jeeth and his brother, living out that calling and that life of faith with such joy amidst such sacrifice was just some of the most, yeah, inspiring. And it's truly taught me so much in my faith as well.

Amen. Just to come to Christ in India, you could lose everything. There's a caste system like you mentioned.

You could be severely persecuted. But then when you do come to Christ, there's a little different intensity because now you are, there's a lot more of a missionality. And we, you know, this morning you spoke to a bunch of men and we're in a restaurant where a bunch of people don't have the same problems that you see. None of us are going to starve to death by and large. And none of us are going to have to drive 600 miles to find another Christian or find a church.

And yet the need is so great. Steve Jumper, you've seen the need here in America, but what is your question, your thoughts for Jeeth? And as you're just, I know your heart was stirred, you rushed up to him and met him and hugged him after he spoke. What are your questions, your thoughts? Yeah, Jeeth and Marianne, thank y'all for being here.

I really appreciate what you're doing. India is quite a big place. How did you decide or land on the area that you actually work in and do you move around in India at all in different places?

That's the first part of the question. And Marianne, you mentioned earlier about a business, kind of the chicken and the egg, which came first, the business, because I think the business you mentioned helps fund your ministry. Yeah, so deciding where to work. It was, first of all, my dad moved all over North India. He was in multiple provinces, planted a lot of churches. So I had a better understanding about the unreached places in North India. Where we're working now was decided by God. I think when we were doing our Bible training, we saw this tremendous need in that place where there's Ganges River and people come to drink the water from that, believing that their sins will be forgiven and zero church, zero church and zero Christian, like a lot of need. And it was challenging. We remember telling our dad, my brother and I, that we want to go to that place to start a church. And he was like, are you serious? Do you have a death wish? Do you know what they do to people there?

Although he was involved in the ministry there. But we had a long talk all night. And at the, you know, it was almost 4 a.m. And he said, you know what?

Go ahead. And if something happens, we'll see you on the other side. But serve the Lord. So it was a commitment. It was a step of faith. And God honored that.

God used that. And yeah, Miriam can answer the business part. How's the business working for ministry?

We're almost out of time, but real quickly. And how has that been a blessing? So I would say the ministry was probably first. I came in with a heart for missions. And as a Western missionary, sometimes it's hard to find that platform to get into some of these under each places. And so I studied in entrepreneurship and began to see just the huge need amongst women being a lot of, you know, just the marginalized community there and vulnerable people. And so decided that we would kind of bring a business into the, you know, into the realm of ministry and mission. And it really just kind of comes as a supplement and another platform to be able to share the gospel with people. What is the best way, folks, to learn more about your ministry? Is there like a website, a safe place? Again, we want to be careful because there's all kinds of, you know, we're fraught.

And Steve, you've worked in third world countries, fraught with all kinds of security issues. But what's the best way folks can learn more, find out, you know, about you? We have a website, small website. It's called GodForNations.org. So you can check out, send an email.

Yeah. GodForNations.org. I want to close. You had a godly father who loved the Lord. You talked earlier to the men. It was heartbreaking where you go to UK to kind of get refreshed and kind of get built back up in the Lord to come back to India, only to find out that your dad has stage four pancreatic cancer. So you came back, you only had a little time left with him. But talk about really quick those final moments and your dad's last words to you and your brother.

So came back from the UK, found out he's going to only live for two weeks. And every single day he would hold my hand and tell, do not forget about the unreached people. We have a huge need here and we need you here.

Plant a lot of churches. And a few hours before he died, he held both of our hands and said, don't stop serving the Lord. We will meet on the other side. And he gave us that hope and passion to move forward to reach the unreached people group in India. Wow.

That's so powerful. Thank you, Jeeth, Miriam, Steve Jumper, quick prayer for Jeeth, Miriam and their work in India real quick as we wrap up this segment. Let everyone pray with Steve as we lift them up and lift up this great need in India.

Maybe God's calling someone listening right now to go to India to reach people for Jesus. Father God, we just want to come to you and we pray for Jeet and we pray for Marianne. We pray for their ministry, Lord. We raise it up to you. They have stepped out in faith, Lord, to serve you and honor you and to glorify you. And we ask that you send your Holy Spirit to bless them, bless their ministry, bring their, bring prosperity into their lives so that they can continue to grow and share the gospel in the places they go in India.

And we thank you for this time in Jesus' name. Amen. This is the Truth Network. Hola. I'm Daryllyn Castillo and this is the Morenita Podcast. I kept searching for a podcast that was about my community, about working and living as a Latino. So I went ahead and made it. I think that conviolencia with attitude and tambeliparate, we're not going to get any where I think it's just having that conversation. Most of the time, it's us starting that conversation, us leaving that door open so we can invite people in that conversation. Listen to Morenita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gold Peak Real Brewed Tea.