This article was originally published in the June 2019 edition of ITMI Monthly.
It was a text you wouldn’t want to receive. The photos that came with it provided visual confirmation of the news.
Paul and Molly, our humble and faithful partners in India, so passionately want to reach the unreached and forgotten of that billion and a half person strong country.
As we have shared with you in the past, Paul wants to minister to the people that are, and have been labeled the “Untouchables.” The specific village that he has currently adopted is called the “Fox Village” (English translation).
These people need everything that you and I could easily take for granted. They didn’t even have the ability to shower and go to the bathroom with privacy.
(By the way, that’s changing soon, thanks to ITMI supporters!)
A home in the village inhabited by people labeled "untouchable" by their society.
Paul visits a dying young man from the untouchables village.
Villagers sit to listen as Paul explains the concept of human value instilled by the Creator of all things.
Paul placed a call and contracted with a drilling company. It was the very same drilling company that was able to find water multiple times on Paul and Molly’s girls home property.
Finding water on their property was totally an answer to prayer since almost no one in the surrounding community were able to find any semblance of water in their attempts to drill for this precious liquid.
Paul was hoping and praying for another display of God’s unique provision as he brought the driller to the nearby Untouchable's village in hopes of providing them with clean, safe water.
The village people cheered and were most animated in their realization that something was really going to happen, that someone really cared for them and was proving it.
The well driller searched all over the village for a promising spot to drill. There was only one location that had any indication of possibly being successful in tapping underground water.
Five hundred feet of drilling later…the powdery, dry dust that was once in the ground, now lay on the surface with zero, none, no water at all. A dry hole! This was not the outcome any of us was hoping for.
Failure is never fun.
The world seems to gloat and even smugly praise the failure of others. The enemy must gloat often as he “comes to “steal, kill and destroy…” (John 10:10).
But our Father has ways we haven’t even begun to understand that turn human failures into events that bring glory to Him and His name.
The great thing is, this well - or future well - belongs to our Heavenly Father. His ways are not always our ways. So, we can rest in this human failure and know that He is doing something that we can not yet understand.
Paul was momentarily disappointed, but he knows God will provide in His time and in His way. Pray with us that we will be more concerned in following God’s plan than in finding water.
The Keller Family, Zambia
Timothy has a steady stream of opportunities and invitations to share Biblical Worldview Seminars with law enforcement precincts.
Timothy points to the future site of the simple retreat center.
We will be sharing with you in the coming months a really great, yet large need in Zambia with the Kellers. Their ministry has grown to a focal point in the Kabwe, Zambia area.
They have a steady stream of opportunities to host increasingly larger groups – police, pastors, church leaders, mission teams from all over the world – to do intense and intentional training and discipling.
Many of you know the benefit of having gone to a summer church camp as a young person.
If you didn’t get to experience this highly effective time of “getting away” from one’s normal life, you might miss some of the richness of this generation’s old discipling experience.
Most Africans have not experienced this beneficial camp-like isolation of “getting away” where God seems to be able to speak through the normal loud “noise” that makes His still, small voice that much more difficult to hear.
Tim and Ashley are being called to step out in faith and build a small, and by our standards, simple retreat on their currently bare property that doesn’t even yet house their own needed home.
They also don’t know how God is going to provide for this, but Tim is ready to break ground when God moves the likes of you and I to help them provide that life stopping, life changing, life growing retreat where God many times provides a personal revolution in one’s heart, mind and soul.
In His Service,
Steve Evers has advocated for and served the ITMI partners as ITMI Director since 2001. Approximately once a year, Steve visits with ITMI partners in their countries and brings stories back to encourage supporters. Steve enjoys photography and mechanics, (both hobbies that have greatly benefited ITMI partners!) Prior to becoming ITMI's Director, Steve served on the Board of Directors for 4 years. Steve lives in Arizona with his wife, Darlene.