Text Box: Text Box: I felt very lonely and endured terrible suffering in that place. One day, I escaped from that place. I didn’t know where my father was, so I went to my mother who was staying at a relative’s house. My brother was also in jail at that time. Finally, my father and mother joined together again and we ran away to another distant place where we didn’t know anyone. Our life was very hard here. During the harvest rice season, from morning till evening in the hot sun my father and I would pick up the rice stalks that had fallen by the wayside, from those that were harvesting it. We would give this to my mother to eat. and we would go inside of the village to beg.

After this, my father and I would take containers and beg for our own food. Many times I would cry out “why I have this much suffering in my life?” Before this, my family had had lots of money by selling alcohol, but now my father and I had to beg. We didn’t have a home, so we would have to sleep in the streets at night. After many months living like this, my father got very sick and died. My mother then took me and we lived at my grandma’s village, but she also was very poor and she took me to beg at the Hindu idol temples. We will beg for food from others and eat and sleep on the streets. After this, someone had pity on us and gave us money for the bus fare to come to Dindigul city. In the village of Thavasimadai near Dindigul, my mother and I would go to the mountains to cut the trees down and sell the wood, so we could survive. When I was grown up, my brother got out of jail and we started up the same alcohol business, which my father did. All over the Dindigul district the alcohol sellers knew about our business, and it developed rapidly.

 

 

We again began to make lots of money, but through this lifestyle I didn’t have any peace in my heart. Some of my friends ended up getting killed in accidents because they were drunk on the alcohol we were making. All the people in my area knew about me and I became a well-known alcohol seller. After time again, the police stopped my business and I lost all my money once again. In my heart I felt, “every man and woman that is born into this world ends up dying, so what is the meaning and benefit of a man’s life?” As time passed, my life began getting even more ungodly, and I joined with a team that would rob people. Many times our team would stop buses and hold a knife to the man who collected the bus fare from the  passengers, and then we would steal the money.

 

After time, I became determined to stop all these ungodly acts, so I went to work at a truck workshop. At the truck workshop, my co-workers and I would mock one co-worker who was a Christian. Many times I argued with this Christian man about God, but he would always tell me to believe in Jesus and that He is the true and living God. This person planted seeds in my life about the Lord, but after I left that job, I forgot about Jesus. One day my friend and I were walking from the town to our village. While walking, I found a piece of paper on the road that said, “Hell is For Real”. I picked it up and asked my friend to read it to me as we walked home. This tract touched my heart and convicted me that I was a sinner and that I would go to hell when I died. There was a church named “Bethel Prayer House ICII” that was listed on the back of the tract with an invitation to attend the church. I felt that this was a divine appointment for me to find this tract on the road. I planned in my heart that when I reached my village, I was going to talk about this tract to my two friends named Francis and Sebastian to ask them to go to church with me on Sunday morning. Francis and Sebastian  were the ones with whom I always carried out my ungodly deeds. When I got to my house that day, Francis and Sebastian were also there, and they were waiting for me, because they too had just read the same tract the Independent Church in India Gospel team had left at their house earlier that same day! My friends were waiting to tell me that they had decided to come to the church listed on the tract!

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The following Sunday, Francis, Sebastian and I went to ICII’s church and we felt God’s love, peace and joy during the service. The next week we invited the ICII Gospel team to come back to our village to have a Bible study. After the Bible study, and learning more about the importance of salvation in Christ, Francis, Sebastian and I all received Jesus into our lives. From that day on I felt God’s power working in my life. My friends and I began sharing the Gospel to my village people. One day, I met my village leader and I shared the gospel to him. He also began coming to church, and he began to help to serve the lepers at the medical and food outreach. I also began to show love to my mother and led her to the Lord. One of my relatives named Aburvaraj was in debt of 600 rupees ($13). Because of this debt, Aburvaraj was about to committee suicide. I felt the Lord wanted me to help him to pay off his debt. So that day I paid the money for him and I told him Jesus loves you. Because of this act of kindness, Aburvaraj has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and is coming to the church each week.

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