Within months of meetings described in the main report, another effort took place 25 miles (about 40 kilometers) away. The following is a report on that event.—Editors.

he invitation came from the It Is Written and Quiet Hour ministries. Could they do a reaping evangelistic campaign in India?

And so it was that North American Division stewardship director G. Edward Reid and his wife, Kathy, teamed up with Brunswick, Maine, surgeon Dr. Gaylen Johnson and his wife, Kitty, and headed out to India last March for what turned out to be an exciting adventure in evangelism.

The location was Guntur, Andhra Pradesh state, in the southern part of the country. N. D. Samson, president of the South Andhra Section, and P. Wilbert, section ministerial director, prepared the ground by their personal participation and by involving 20 district pastors and Bible workers.

THE LUCKY ONES: The meeting hall could hold only about 4,000. Thousands who could not get in had to watch the program on closed-circuit television outside.

The meeting was the second to be organized and conducted using the new model developed by the South Andhra Section. Under the name “Ten Village Evangelism,” the plan involves contacting the leaders of villages surrounding a particular city where a major evangelistic meeting is to be conducted, and seeking local support for the preaching of the gospel in those villages. As soon as 10 villages have been identified, evangelism can begin. Several weeks before that, however, the pastors go to the villages in teams of two to conduct preliminary meetings and study with those interested in Christianity.

Adjusting to Local Conditions
When the 15-night reaping campaign began in Guntur, large numbers of people responded to the invitation and took advantage of the transportation provided via buses, open trucks, and trailers pulled by farm tractors. The nightly meetings, held in an outdoor courtyard on a Lutheran college campus, began at 6:30 with traditional Indian music as attendees from the city began arriving. Team members would arrive at 7:30 to set up the equipment. A portion of the Jesus video was shown each evening, followed by a health presentation by Dr. Johnson at about 8:45. Because it was harvesttime for the (world famous) Andhra red chilies, many nights people from the village could not get to the meetings until as late as 9:00 p.m., an hour when the typical evangelistic meeting would be ending. Accordingly, the gospel presentation and the children’s meeting did not begin until 9:00, continuing until 10:00 or later. Even so, many people would come forward following the service to visit and for prayers. This meant that members of the team usually did not return to their sleeping quarters until after 11:00 p.m.

Thousands Baptized
The typical daily schedule, following the first three meetings, began with a trip at about 8:00 a.m. to one of the local villages, where the village leaders and families would welcome the pastors and the foreign guests with a walk or ride through the village, with musical accompaniment. It was

SPECIAL WITNESS: As a family was baptized by Pastor Victor, a water buffalo took notice of the scene.

to alert the village that baptism day had arrived—and this could be any day of the week. People would come from all over the village to a particular meeting place where, after presentations from the evangelist and the physician, the ministerial director would examine the baptismal candidates. The baptisms were conducted in the rivers and canals near the villages.

We thank God that 2,815 precious men, women, and young people have joined the church through baptism. And, thanks to Maranatha, hundreds of churches are being built in India where villages are responding to the three angels’ messages.

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G. Edward Reid is stewardship director of the North American Division in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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