Trip to Pastor Daniel's

This past weekend, we went to visit Pastor Daniel in Thrissur. I think we all forgot just how long the drive was. It was around 7 hours one way, with an average speed of probably 35 mph. I must say that having a good driver makes all of the difference in the world! Our drivers last time would floor it, then slam on the break. This cycle would occur every 30 seconds or so, so it was a motion sickness-fest whenever we went anywhere. We have a permanent driver this time, a young man named Raneesh who is excellent. He drives relatively smoothly (by Indian standards). More on Raneesh later…

At about one hour into the drive, we heard loud music coming from the streets. We eventually caught up to a procession of Hindus parading down the street, presumably toward their temple. We saw men with what looked like sticks held between their teeth. As we got closer, we realized that the sticks were actually protruding out of holes punctured through their cheeks! Even younger boys had this. Some of them even had apples on the ends of the sticks, I guess to add more weight and, one can only imagine, pain. It was all very disturbing. I witnessed a man who was obviously demon possessed, ranting and being pushed along by another man. The most shocking display of all was a man being suspended by hooks in the skin on his back from a palm tree trunk that was strapped to the top of a truck. It was akin to the Sun Vow ritual in the 1970’s movie ‘A Man Called Horse’. We didn’t get any photos or video of this mostly, I think, because we didn’t realize what we were looking at at first. Fortunately, the girls didn’t see this. The sticks in the face were more than enough for a kid to see.

We finally arrived at Pastor Daniel’s, and it was really nice to him and his wife Lilly. Lilly always takes such good care of us. We joked that she was actually an Italian mother at heart, because she is always pushing food on us. She even gets little ice cream cups with the little wooden sticks for the girls (okay, and for me and Adam as well :) ). They had a 70 year old woman staying with them for the next month from America, so we stayed at the nearby hotel that we stayed in once during our last trip there. Daniel and Lilly always seem to have people visiting and often staying for extended periods. They are very gracious hosts. We went to their church on Sunday morning, and Daniel called up the whole family and Adam shared a bit with the congregation. The people are so genuine in their worship. I think for many their faith has come through major hardships. I can see, especially in the faces of the women, how circumstances have affected them physically. It is a hard life for many.

Back to our driver Raneesh…. We were pleased to find out when we first arrived that Raneesh is a Christian. He is able to converse a little bit in English but not to the level we would like. You are never quite sure if he really understands what we’re saying, and its hard for him to find the words to express things to us. Adam tries to talk to him every day to and from the drive to work. As our driver, he accompanied us to the trip to Pastor Daniel’s. While we were there, Daniel talked with him a bit about spiritual matters. At one point he went in to the guest room where the drivers stay to find that he had taken one of Daniel’s theological books off the shelf and was reading it! Raneesh had gone to college, but from what we can gather, he couldn’t get a job and became a driver. Adam also got it out of him that we are his first clients! The long and the short of it is we feel like God has more for Raneesh. He told Daniel that he had been involved in work with orphans and other things like that. So we are asking ourselves, does God want us here again to change the course of yet another driver’s destiny? We have been joking and calling him Pastor Raneesh. We look forward to taking him to Mercy Homes and letting him spend more time with Daniel. It will be interesting to see how things play out.

Lastly, we ask for continued prayers for the Pastors who are leading Mercy Homes. Daniel told us about a story of persecution, right here in Kerala, where the majority of Christians in the country live. To make a long story short, one of the girls in a Mercy Home had started the equivalent of community college and one of her Hindu professors essentially seduced her into coming back to the Hindu faith. He prompted her to make false accusations against the Pastor saying that he made inappropriate advanced toward her. What struck me most in this was that teenagers who go to college are the same, whether its in the US or anywhere else in the world! I became a rabid animal rights activist in college, under the influence of some older friends. Anyway, the local Hindus have been targeting this pastor for over 6 years. A few years ago, they killed his father-in-law, and told him ‘if you keep converting Hindus, you are next!’ All of the allegations that the girl made were of course bogus and come down to him standing in her room, or something silly like that. The ridiculous part is that the pastor was out of town at a conference during the time that this allegedly took place.

The police came to his house and took him to the police station where they proceeded to beat him violently. He is a small, thin man so he was hurt so badly that he now has a life-threatening blood clot in his right lung. The only upside to the story is that, thanks to God’s mercy, the case against him was tried in a neighboring city and the magistrate there threw out the case because of its absurdity. As one can imagine, the pastor is demoralized and beside himself over the loss of this girl that he’s raised for the past 7 years. Pastor Daniel told us that this is the new tactic the Hindus are taking- trying to discredit the work of the pastors and demoralize them in the process. Prayers are needed for the courage and strength of these men and women who are truly suffering in the name of Christ.