Greetings to you from Visakhapatnam in the precious name of Jesus Christ our Savior. By the grace of God we are all doing well and hope the same with you.
Bob, hope you are good time traveling to Honduras, I bet it is really exciting to attend a graduation ceremony which is certainly an accomplishment.
Short Courses:
Our mission is to equip the next generation evangelists to seek and save the lost in India. This mission is also carried out by the students of the school. Certainly these two short courses equipped these evangelists with more courage and content which is very beneficial to accomplish their mission. Short courses we had scheduled from 24th Jan till 4th Feb went really well. In fact our brethren from Bear Valley left one day earlier which has given time for us to catch up with the due work and complete all the assignments on time. Brother Garry Fallis and Jerry Bates have done a marvelous job teaching two subjects each. Our undergraduate students have been really blessed to learn a lot from both the subjects brother Jerry has taught. One of them is ‘Leadership.’ Indeed it plays a very vital role in the growth of the Church in India, in fact it is a big time lack among Indian brotherhood. You believe it or not, our students have complimented this course and the way Jerry presented and the material as well. Second week class is about the ‘Preacher & his work’ We studied in great length about this subject especially emphasizing the practicality of preaching. We learned preachers’ main mission should be, just preaching. At the end of the class Jerry was asking the students how much beneficial is these two courses for their preaching profession. They marked it high. When he asked about how many people they brought to Christ in last 6 months, the total we had is 34. Jerry remarked at their evangelistic efforts being full time students. We had only 9 students out of the 10 regular students were present during this session. VJ's daughter is not feeling well. She had some problem in the eye for which she is taking doctor's treatment. They had spent good two weeks learning new subjects one of them is about 'Preacher' They truly learned something which would enhance their knowledge of preacher-hood.
God answers prayer
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” James 5:16-17
Rama Rao is one of our undergrad students who was married a year ago. Good news is his wife is pregnant. He was present during the two weeks of short courses we had recently. During the second week he had a call from his home town that his wife was expecting a child that day. So he rushed his home town and for the goodness sake we all heard from him the Lord blessed them with a baby girl. Couple of hours after that we had a shocking news that she is bleeding and it couldn’t be stopped. She started losing strength. Doctors in their home town recommended her to a doctor in the city which is about 80 kms far from their home town. So we all bow down and prayed to our God for His mercy. She was brought to the hospital in the town (Visakhapatnam), while they were on that way she said she doesn’t have any hope to live any longer, so he started crying. God has been good to her, as a result of our prayers doctors get hold on her condition and it took a complete day for her to overcome this life risk. We are thankful that our Lord answered our prayers and blessed her with good health and healthy child.
Graduation Exercises:
We are excited about the upcoming first graduation exercise ever we had since the establishment of the Bible school in Visakhapatnam. We are so excited and requesting you brethren to come and solicit your gracious presence during this most exciting event in the history of Churches of Christ in this area. There is never been a full time Bible school established in this eastern region of the state of Andhra Pradesh. If there is one it has never produced this number of graduates who have been trained for two complete years. It is truly a greatest accomplishment which we achieved together. It is time for us to celebrate and elevate the school program so that it will bring congregations together as a result we shall have more congregations involved in this Bible school program. Hub school concept will be more appealing and will be successful when we have more congregations getting to know about this program it will certainly makes them a part of the glorious Lord’s work. We request you to kindly consider blessing us with your gracious presence on this very special day in our lives.
This is the last quarter for 16 students who will be completing their course. I am currently teaching Elementary Greek which will be completing by the end of March.
We have the list of students with their names written as they wanted them to be printed on their certificates. I will mail them in my next email. We thank all of you for your prayers and thoughts which is giving some amazing results in the Lord's work here. Please convey our greetings to the supporting congregation and to the Elders at Bear Valley Church of Christ. We are thankful to brother Steve Wiseman & Ralph Williams who have done a great job, along with the Lake Houston Elders for continuing their monthly support to run this School.
Talk to you later,
Your brother in Christ,
John Dean and Samuel Raju Muppidi