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NEWSLETTER November/December 2007 - VOLUME 32
INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN INDIA PO BOX 238 FREDERICKSBURG, PA 17026
website: www.indchurch.org email:info@indchurch.org Phone (717) 865-7885
 Page 1

Nearly One Thousand Leprosy
Victims Receive the Lord!

Just imagine, a person who has leprosy... That person may have nothing in this world, except for the rags he or she is wearing. That person with leprosy feels hated, despised, and rejected, not just from society, but their own families. Most people in their society think they are a cursed person, so no one will help them. These people have no job or money, and no one wants to get near them because they are considered an untouchable person. This unfortunate person with leprosy feels intense pain, extreme loneliness, severe hunger and cold, tremendous grief and emptiness.

At many leprosy colonies, the patients are not cared for. This man is very weak, and near death.

They feel lots of pain from their disease, but no money to buy medicine or even wrap their many infected sores and wounds.

Day after day they feel no relief emotionally or physically. They feel no purpose in life, and may even hope for death to come soon, but due to their Hindu belief, death to them is fearful and uncertain as to what may come next. They have been chased out of their homes and their villages, because their families and neighbors no longer want them around. They have been told to go somewhere else to die, so they may have wound up homeless on the streets or in a government-run leprosy colony or hospital. Wherever they are, they are not treated well. Their only means of survival is to go and beg each day, hoping that enough strangers walking by will have mercy on them to give them enough pocket change so they can eat that day.
A woman with leprosy.

A victim of leprosy.

If this leprosy victim lives in a colony or a hospital it may not be sanitary or a nice place to live. There may even be stress and fighting among other lepers in the colony because no one has any peace there. During the winter months and the rainy season the nights are cool and damp especially when there is no bed or mat to sleep on, nor any blanket to cover with.

After this person contracted leprosy, he has not had one good day in his life... until the day the Lord sent Independent Church in India to him. This day was the best day of his life! This day, he felt unconditional love, peace and joy like never before. He heard the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ for the very first time and he experienced the greatest gift of all... salvation in Jesus Christ!