Source: Christian Aid, March 17, 2016<\/p>\n
In one of India\u2019s most remote jungle areas, among one of its most primitive tribes, a most unlikely candidate to be a missionary wandered aimlessly among the wildlife as mental illness deprived him of his right mind for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cPratik\u201d would intermittently come back to his senses and return to his wife at their village home in an undisclosed area of Chhattisgarh, one of India\u2019s poorest and most illiterate states. For six years he bounced between lucidity and insanity, caroming between home and jungle thick with flora and predators. His wife feared for his life.<\/p>\n
This cycle might have continued indefinitely if someone from an opposite background\u2014a well-educated man from a Christian home in a more modern part of India\u2014had not hit upon a compelling missionary model. In 2002, after working as a near-culture missionary planting churches in central and north India for nearly 20 years, \u201cSiddharth Subramani\u201d was concerned about the thousands of people groups in India yet to hear the message of salvation in Christ.<\/p>\n
In prayer, he received the idea of concentrating efforts on the more responsive people groups, who in turn would set off movements to embrace Christ among other peoples\u2014a \u201cchain reaction\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n
He began with the Gonds of central India, idol- and nature-worshiping animists who suffer daily from hunger and other conditions of poverty. With the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit, Subramani and his team of indigenous missionaries gradually saw Gond villagers\u2019 addiction to alcohol turn into zeal for the Lord.<\/p>\n
Hut-to-hut evangelism, praying for the sick, evening meetings, and proclaiming Christ through music\u2014a powerful communication tool in India\u2014gradually produced worshiping congregations. Literacy programs and Christian schools addressed a major impediment to the advance of Gonds, many of whom had only a third-grade education. New believers were then trained to minister to other near-culture groups.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read what happened next<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb You might also be interested in another story from India, Amira Meets Jesus on Her Cell Phone<\/a> (Mobile Ministry Forum).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Christian Aid, March 17, 2016 In one of India\u2019s most remote jungle areas, among one of its most primitive tribes, a most unlikely candidate to be a missionary wandered aimlessly among the wildlife as mental illness deprived him of his right mind for weeks at a time. \u201cPratik\u201d would intermittently come back to his … Continue reading INDIA: Defeating Dark Powers in the Jungle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6303,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions\/6303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}