In Himachal Pradesh

Our bus to the town of Buntar in Himachal Pradesh departed at 8:30 PM and after 13 hours traveling during all night in the morning we arrived at YWAM base. According our program we had to stay there 1 month.

Before I continue to describe our adventures, let me say few words about Himachal Pradesh.

Administratively India is divided into 28 states and 7 Union Territories. Some of them are very little in population and territory, others are 3-4 times bigger than Bulgaria, with hundreds of millions people living there. Himachal Pradesh area is big as South Bulgaria, its population is 6.5 million people. The name “Himachal” comes from Himalaya, the World highest mountain range. The state is in the mountain area. There the Christian population is only 0.08%, i.e. the most little percentage of Christian population in whole India. As we saw later, the Church is sparse, weak and spiritually inefficient. And there are few reasons for it:

First, the leaders themselves are not trained and not enough mature Christians, which automatically reflects to whole meeting. They need a deep Bible teaching and instructing in the Truth.

Second, a big part of the Christians in India are uneducated, because they come from the lowest casts, which are also the poorest. And in India, if you are poor you cannot go to school, cannot learn to read and write. You know how bad is when a Christian cannot study the Bible by himself and know God better throw His written Word. Sadly many of the Christians also from Bulgaria, who can read ignore the time, which God requires from every one of us for reading and studying the Bible. Missing of such time is the main reason they always stay spiritual babies. Here is the place that I must say what a big blessing God has given to our nation, that 90% of the population can read and write, which compared with other countries in the world, is a real treasure. So, a big part of Indian Christians were in impossibility to grow spiritually by personally studying the Bible.

The third reason is the enormous number of languages spoken in India - 1652, which makes it the country with most languages in the world. Sometimes in villages only 5 km far from each other, people speak totally different languages. When the Christians gather in church, sometimes happens not all of them can understand good the language used for preaching God’s Word. The official languages are two: Hindi and English, but because of isolation and poverty of a large part of the population, especially in the villages they are not spoken.

Fourth, the extremely heavy spiritual atmosphere, caused by idolatry to the multiple gods. There is a valley in Himachal Pradesh, called “Valley of the thousands gods”, which is famous is whole India. Every October Hindus gather there from every place in India, to worship and celebrate vain ceremony. It is hard to describe in few words what a negative effect the idolatry gives over the whole nation. In such spiritual situation is very hard to succeed and gain souls for God.

When I analyzed the reasons for inefficiency of Indian Church, I realize that even only one of them would be enough to cause problems, how much more when all four combined. This made my mind to think about need of trained missionaries, working and helping the local Christ’s Body in order to be efficient. I believe, there are people in Bulgaria who are called from God to be sent in India for this purpose. Maybe you, reader, have India in your heart? She is waiting you.

“Youth With A Mission” base actually was a big house with two floors, with few rooms at the first floor and few rooms at the second, and there was a big yard with fruit trees and vegetables behind it. There were waiting for us the base leader Yan from Holland and few Indian Christians from various states of the country, who lived and served in Buntar city. I and my wife received a separated room at the first floor, with one bed for two people and a wall cupboard. After we took out from the luggage the most necessary things and arranged them in the cupboard, we laid down and slept, tired from the long trip.

First two days we relaxed. At the third day we went to downtown. The girls had to buy the national dress Punjabi, because dressed in western clothes, would impress the locals too much. The town actually was something like a big village with one central street with many shops at both sides. Generally, the people in this state compare with other states of India, live more poor life, because the most stocks are more expensive, because they are “imported” from other states.

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