Fieldwork News
Visit to Nayudapeta, India
January 2008, Allen & Tara Laben

We left the noisy city of Hyderabad on a train bound for Nayadupeta to visit an isolated brother and sister for the weekend, and not quite sure to expect on our first trip of this kind. Though we had already spent three weeks of our latest journey to India traveling throughout Andhra Pradesh, most of our time was spent in familiar territory – visiting our former “home” in Visak, giving Bible Classes, helping out at a Bible School, and working with the young people. But as my wife, Tara, and I boarded the crowed train along with our fellow-missionary brother Jeff Lange, we knew that the next few days would be quite different.

Once on the train, we followed the seat numbers printed on our boarding tickets, through the tight aisles to our bunks – a column of three three-foot-by-six-foot mats suspended above each other. The trip would take all night and since it was already late, we set to work making our beds. Windows latched to keep out the rain, sleeping bags out and backpacks secured, we drifted in and out of sleep as the train lumbered through the countryside toward Nayadupeta.

The town of Nayadupeta is hardly a town at all. Graced by a stop on the train route only by virtue of its position directly between the big cities of Hyderabad and Chennai, Nayadupeta warrants only a few second whistle blow stop. When our train paused at the single-room Nayadupeta station, no one was boarding and we were the only ones getting off.

But near this small town lived brother Moses and his wife, sister Lalemma. With the nearest ecclesia being hours away Chennai, they had not seen any Brethren in almost a year. When Brother Tim Galbraith suggested that we visit brother Moses and sister Lalemma, we were excited to do so.

As soon as Moses appeared at the train station to pick us up, it was immediately apparent that he too, we excited to see us.

“By the grace of our beloved God, I am brother Moses! And you, in the light of our beloved God, are my dear brothers and sister!” Cried Moses as he carefully made his way to meet us. He walked with a limp, but exuberance shone through his every movement.

“Slowly and carefully, my brothers and my dear sister!” he cautioned us as we stepped over the moat of puddles encompassing the little train station. “Nothing to fear!” Moses, a retired bus driver, was an expert at avoiding potholes and deep puddles – a skill much needed in the rainy city. After a quick breakfast at a street-side shop, we learned that the city of Nayadupeta was only our meeting point; Moses and Lalemma lived outside of town, an hour away by bus.

The rain continued as we boarded a rickety, crowded bus and roared down the muddy roads, twisting around flooded rice paddies and the occasional cow. During the ride, Moses laid out the plans for the weekend. “We may take some rest at my house,” he advised, “and then some good fellows will come to hear the word of God. Or they may not come, because of the rain.” When we arrived at Moses’ palm-roofed home, Lalemma met us with hot coffee and welcomed us into their tiny, clean dwelling. No bigger than a couple of hundred square feet, this building housed Moses, Lalemma, their son, and their son’s wife and children. As Moses had warned, the continuing rain kept people in their homes, but we were able to spend the afternoon and evening with them doing the readings and discussing the hope of the Kingdom, and learning a little about their current situation. Night fell too soon and Jeff, Tara and I caught a bus back to Nayadupeta where we stayed the night in a hole-in-the-wall hotel, where our rooms cost the equivalent of $2.00 a night.

Moses met us in Nayadupeta the following morning to accompany us back out to his home. “Maybe today, by the grace of God, there will be some good fellows to come to our home to hear you give a message from the Bible… if they are not stopped by the rain.” Like the day before, rising waters and muddy roads kept people from venturing out. Conscious that we were providing the only fellowship Moses and Lalemma had received in months, we spent the time in Bible readings and conversation, supplied continually with coffee and food by Lalemma. However, that afternoon Moses received a call on his cell phone. Though the local villagers couldn’t make it to Moses’ home, if we could find a way to get to the village church, we would find a crowd already assembled.

Moses was able to find an autorickshaw to take us to the local Christian church, a white-washed, one-room building built by the Lutherans. As the only Christadelphian Brother and Sister in their immediate area, and unable to afford to leave their family home and move out of isolation, they have made many contacts in the local churches that they speak with at every opportunity. Someone had called together quite a crowd this evening, and the one-room church was full of women and children, as well as a handful of men (the usual demographics one finds when preaching in India), singing songs and waiting for us to arrive. Although their pastor lived in Nayadupeta and traveled out to the village on Sundays to preach, the church members in the village had a key and could use it during the week. The singing continued as the sun set and more listeners came in from their work in the fields, and we waited for our translator, as Moses’ English works well in casual conversation but is too limited to translate an entire Bible talk. Finally, our translator for the evening arrived – a former businessman-turned-traveling preacher, able to translate for us because he was an English major in university.

Jeff and I had decided in advance to take turns speaking about the promises to Abraham, tying them in with teaching about baptism, the resurrection, and the Kingdom on earth. It was wonderful to speak to people so hungry for a Bible message! The women, in particular, eagerly flipped through their Bibles to follow along with the passages we read, sharing with their neighbors and showing the text to children. Our translator also got excited about the message, mirroring our enthusiasm as we spoke about the coming Kingdom. After our simple class, nearly all of the women in the hall crowded around Tara, who took down names and addresses of people interested in receiving correspondence courses and Sunday School courses, which we would take back to Hyderabad to be processed at the Christadelphian printing office there. We were amazed at how many of them wanted to hear more about the true hope of the Bible. As we departed, tired but happy, we told Moses he was going to have his work cut out for him. “By the grace of God!” he replied. He didn’t seem to mind.

Our translator asked if he could accompany us on the hour-long bus journey back to our hotel, so that he could speak with us further – and there, we learned the reason for his enthusiasm as he both heard and translated our message. He had recently stumbled upon the promises to David in his own Bible reading, and was just starting to make the connection between those promises and the Messiah. After hearing about how the promises to David reach back to Abraham and are fulfilled in Jesus, he was so interested that he insisted on meeting again. Thus, the next morning, he met Jeff, Tara and I at our hotel, where we spent an hour looking deeper in God’s word for more details on what the Bible says about the resurrection, the Kingdom, and baptism.

After breaking bread and saying goodbye to Moses and Lalemma later that morning, we departed, knowing that we were leaving a place where there was much potential for growth. Seeing such a bright spark of interest in the true Gospel after just a weekend’s work made us wish that our trip could have lasted much longer. There is always a need for missionary help in India – men and women, couples and singles, who can travel to meet with and try to help our Brethren in places where there may be much fertile soil. May it be that God will give the increase in Nayadupeta, that it may grow to become a bright lamp stand for the Truth!