In the summer of 2002, Lowell and Kathy Smith got an unexpected email from a young Indian pastor named Britto Joseph, humbly sharing in broken English about a ministry called Independent Church in India. Earlier that day, Pastor Britto had felt led of the Lord to go to a browsing center in a nearby city where he spent all the money he could save, around 65 cents, to go on the internet to try to make contacts for help. While using the computer, he felt that the Lord impressed on him to type “fill the void” into a search engine, though he wasn’t clear what the English words even meant. He found the evangelistic website which the Smiths had created, and through that he sent a message requesting some Gospel tracts. After receiving his email, the Smiths wanted to help, so they sent him some of the Gospel tracts that they had, which were in English. While passing these tracts out in the city where some people could read English, he was attacked and beaten badly by a group of angry religious extremists opposed to the Gospel. Pastor Britto spent three weeks in a hospital, where the doctors told him that he would never walk again. Yet, God miraculously healed him, and soon he was out preaching the Gospel again.
Impressed by his passion for the lost and dedication to the Gospel, Lowell and Kathy soon received many confirmations that they were to work together with Pastor Britto in some way to help spread the Gospel in India. By December 2002, though they had not had any training or experience in foreign missions, the couple was on a plane to India for the first time. Little did they know just how profoundly that two-week visit would transform their lives!
On the field in India, they observed how much Pastor Britto and his small team were constantly struggling with hunger, persecution, discouragement, and many other hardships. Yet every day, with little to eat but stale government-rationed rice, they were walking long distances or riding old bicycles to remote villages to preach the Gospel to literally thousands of unreached villagers. They learned that Pastor Britto had started his first church at the age of only sixteen, and that God had then used him and his brother over the next seven years to reach tens of thousands with the Gospel and plant eight churches. By the time they returned home to Pennsylvania, the thought on their hearts was if they could work together somehow with Pastor Britto by raising even a small amount of financial support for this amazing indigenous ministry, how much more the Lord could do through it!
During the next year, the Smiths began sharing about their experience with their church, their friends, and with whoever they could. They began connecting with other churches and using their photos and videos to encourage others in how powerfully the Lord was working even in a difficult place like rural southern India, about which very few had heard anything at all. Soon, others began to join with the Smiths in prayer for India, and giving toward helping Pastor Britto’s ministry.
Early in 2004, Lowell and Kathy took a step of faith and went back to India with their two small children for over four months. During this time, Pastor Britto planted a new church called Bethel Prayer House with just a handful of believers in a nearby city. By the, God had provided a micro van for the ministry. As a team, Pastor Britto and the Smiths began evangelizing daily in the surrounding villages. By the end of the trip, they had reached hundreds of villages and towns in the district with the Gospel, and planted home churches, Bible studies, and children’s ministries. Bethel Prayer House was filling quickly, and there were a growing number of young energetic new believers that were excited about helping with village ministry whenever we went out. Many of these went on to become the core of ICII’s indigenous missionary team in the following years.
Also at this time, ICII began outreaches among desperately needy leprosy victims, and a number of people with leprosy accepted the Lord and began attending the church. Through this the Lord opened the door for leprosy ministry to become a major part of what ICII does today.
Back in the US afterward, the Smiths began publishing our newsletter “Finding Lost Souls”, producing videos on the ministry in India, and expanding fundraising work through church presentations and an email subscription list. The Lord blessed their efforts and brought faithful partners and supporters, both churches and individuals, to help the work of Independent Church In India.
Year after year, the Smiths returned to spend time in India as a family, and the ministry continued to grow. Independent Church In India became a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the US, and this website was launched. God also enabled the ministry to develop new projects to help the needy, such as the Home Of Compassion Orphanage in 2006, the Promised Land Leprosy Community in 2007, and the Promised Land Children’s Home in 2010.