Fieldwork News
E-Mail Excerpts From Allen and Tara Laban, India 2005
Allen and Tara Laben share their impressions, adventures, Bible School experiences, and pastoral activities, all of which were packed into their first month in India. Tara has a very engaging writing style, so these e-mail extracts make for an easy read. You will want to read all three!
October 10 | October 23 | November 5

Part Three
Calcutta Bible Week & Beyond—Nov 5, 2005

We're writing from Visakhapatnam, which we returned to after helping at a Bible Week in Calcutta, West Bengal. The city lies along the East Coast of India, just two states north of Andhra Pradesh—on the way up, our train passed through mountainous state of Orissa before reaching West Bengal. Each state has a different official language, and this entire Bible Week was done in Bengali, which meant that any Telugu we'd picked up was utterly worthless there. The theme for the Bible Week was centered around the life of Samuel, and one of our fellow-missionaries, Jamie Robson, gave some stellar classes directed at the 30-or-so Brothers and Sisters present at the Bible Week. Unlike our last Bible Week in Andhra Pradesh, this one only had about 100 attendees, and most of them were interested contacts. So it was a cozier Bible week where our discussion groups were smaller, and we got to know the attendees a little better.

Schedule & Classes
Our schedule here was pretty exhausting—especially for Allen, who had the greater speaking burden of the two of us. We all began our day at 7:15 for Bible readings, then breakfast, then the group split into baptized and non-baptized attendees for the two morning classes. The first principle classes (teaching the basics of Bible doctrine) were the biggest deal here, as they had the biggest audience. Allen taught some of the main classes, some first principle classes, gave a CYC class, led a discussion group, and co-coordinated two of the evening programs. I taught a Sister's class, taught Sunday School with a super group of Australian sisters who were visiting India just for the month, and helped Allen lead his discussion group. Several of the contacts who had been studying their Bibles for a while had come to the Bible week for baptismal interviews, which Allen and the other brothers conducted during our "free time" in the afternoons.

At the end of the week, there were 11 baptisms—what a happy occasion! It was such a joy to see these people who had learned so much now put off the fleshly life they had been leading and arise to a new life in Christ. They were baptized in a stagnant-looking pond on a property owned by a nearby school.

I was impressed by the way the new Brothers and Sisters just strode into the water without a second thought, especially because there were snakes swimming in it! In an especially ironic turn of events, one of the new Sisters was bitten in the heel by a snake as she climbed back out of the pond. We were scared for a minute that it might have been poisonous, but the headmaster of the school soon came running out to tell us that the schoolchildren who swim in this pond get bitten by the snakes all the time, and their bites aren't at all dangerous. Whew. But still, it reminded us of Genesis 3:15, and we rejoiced for our Sister who had just associated herself through baptism with Christ, the "seed of the woman" who had smitten the serpent on the head, defeating death through his resurrection.

Tireless Workers
For all the Indians that seem to spend most of their days sleeping the hours away, we met some of the most tireless workers at the Bible Week. Ronny, at only 18 years old, helped us during the entire Bible week by translating our talks, classes, and even our handouts and overheads into Bengali. While the rest of us rotated the speaking responsibilities to share the load, Ronny translated classes from 7:15am–10:00pm, only taking time off for meals! What amazed me was that he volunteered for this schedule. We only had him scheduled to translate one or two hour-long classes a day (since we had about 7 translators at the Bible week), but every time an opening came up, he jumped at the chance to sit in and translated another class. Even while the rest of the brethren had a couple of hours of free time each afternoon, he asked to help translate for the Baptismal interviews during that time. We tried to get him to take some time off to rest his voice, but his response was that Bible Week comes only once a year, and the more he translated, the more Bible talks he could hear.

There's a spirit of an eager learner. How many of us drag our feet to Sunday morning meeting or Bible Class and count the minutes until the speaker sits down? Ronnie's eagerness puts me to shame.

Full Days
Our work in Visak so far has involved doing lots of speaking, working with the CYC, encouraging the creation of ecclesial speaking rosters, dealing with money issues, reporting on the flooding situation of a couple of nearby rural colonies where many Christadelphians live, and just getting a handle on the schedule of the ecclesias here so we know what we're doing each week.

We visit a local school to teach Bible lessons, we try to get to Memorial service, CYC, and Bible class at 2 ecclesias and Sister's class at 3 ecclesias, we're helping co-ordinate aid for the brethren at local colonies that flood several times each year, we're giving first principles classes to interested contacts, plus we have to write talks and take care of our flat and meals and laundry. And that's just what we have on the schedule. It has been busy, to say the least.

The rest of our stories about Visak will have to wait for a later e-mail, we're afraid. Thanks for "listening" for this long!

With love,
Allen and Tara Laben

Newsletter Archive
Fieldworker Report–Winter 2007 (PDF)
Focus on P2P–Spring 2007 (PDF)
The Year in Review–Winter 2006 (PDF)
Outreach DVDs–Fall 2006 (PDF)
Sisters–Summer 2006 (DOC)
Fellow Workers–Spring 2006 (PDF)
Life Solutions–December 2005 (PDF)
30th Anniversary–Fall 2005 (PDF)
December 2004 (PDF)
December 2003
May 2003 (PDF)
December 2002 (PDF)
December 2001
January 2001

Fieldwork News Archive
Allen and Tara Laben – India–4
Allen and Tara Laben – India–3
Allen and Tara Laben – India–2
Allen and Tara Laben – India–1
Gospel of Peace–Hawaii
WCF Brethren Visit Romania and Turkey, March, 2005
Exploring Cambodia–Early Preaching Activities
Jamaica, December 2004–January 2005 [1.1 MB PDF]
Basic Bible Teaching in Joliet, Illinois

Bulletin Archive
August 2000
December 1999
July 1999
December 1998
April 1998
December 1997
November 1997