The Chittoor Postmortem

It is over. The chairs have been put away, the tarps stored, and the sound equipment packed. The evangelistic meetings have concluded. It was not an easy four days, but it was deeply meaningful. I think that we made the most impact with the children of the town of Chittoor. Coincidentally, I believe they also made the biggest impact on us as well. At least, I know that they made a significant impact on me.

From the very first, all of the kids would crowd around me, wanting to shake my hand, talk to me, or have me join their coloring group during the VBS activities. To my surprise, even after the initial excitement of having a foreigner amongst them, the kids still wanted to hang around me 100% of the time. There were especially two brothers who loved to be around us (Quinston, Vandeman, and me) and help us in whatever way they could - by carrying our things or going to get us something we needed. In fact, on the last night of the meetings, Sridhar and Joy (the brothers) honored us with "one small gift." It was some sort of display ornament made out of a CD and some plastic decorations. We thanked them profusely and "snapped one photo" (Indians often use the word one instead of the indefinite article a) of us, them and the imparted gift. We also went to their house to visit them the next day after having breakfast, which they were greatly excited about.

To support the view that these children were very excited about having us visit their town, I will relate a story that I heard. Apparently Joy, the younger of the two brothers was so taken with us that one night, after the rest of the family was in bed, he had risen from bed and sneaked out of the house. Making his way out to the main road, he hoped to see us on our way back to the hotel from where we ate supper at the Principal's house. Of course, after hearing a story like this and receiving such a fine gift we had no choice but to visit their home. Their hospitality was exemplary and they offered us all Fanta (which Joy purchased from a nearby shop while we were talking with his mother).

Speaking of talking with the people there, one thing that made it possible for Sridhar, Joy, and S. Mohan Raj to be our little buddies is that they could actually speak English reasonably well. This was not the case for many of the people there. At every house we went to visit the conversation was carried on in Telugu and I just sat and watched the people's expressions and body languages and thought about whatever came to mind since I had no idea what was going on. Every once in a while everyone would start laughing and look at me which would notify me that I was the topic of conversation. The funny thing was that they all seemed to expect a response, but I would just stare dumbly back and shrug. At this point, Dr. Wilson would usually say, "The comment is on you, how do you respond?"

"I have no idea what the comment was," I would reply. Then someone would relate to me what had happened and I would try to come up with something witty to say in response (which would inevitably fail). One thing that I started to notice about not being able to take part in the conversations is that it takes a lot of social pressure off. I enjoyed doing the visitations because all I had to do was sit there and reap the rewards of the Indians' hospitality and be off in my own little world, or try to guess what everyone was talking about.

The meetings themselves went well from what I could tell. We had a good turnout -- we almost filled the venue every night. Hopefully the meetings will help to jumpstart the growth of the church in Chittoor. The membership at present is VERY small. On Sabbath we had a grand total of five adults show up for the service -- the attendees were mostly kids. Not even the people who were baptized at the end of the meetings bothered to come to church on Sabbath. We did have over ten baptisms at the end of the meetings, however -- hopefully these will add to the foundation of the church.

Chittoor is a decent sized town and not at all hostile towards Christianity so the church there should definitely be bigger than it is. Unfortunately, the Seventh-day Adventist church there has gained a reputation for being both a poor person's church (there are no prosperous members at present) and a fighting church (the previous pastor and principal of the school did not get along). Please pray that these false impressions will be laid to rest by the new leadership there and that the people of Chittoor will be lead to the truth.