Bhutan Campaign - October 2021
(The following unedited report is from Thomas Maher, our India Director)
Dear Dr. David Wood,
Greetings to you in Jesus Name! I am so glad to write a very brief update about the Bhutan mission report. We, as a team of three members Rev. Simon (Chennai), Rev. Peter (Pune) and I, went to the country of Bhutan on October 29th Wednesday and reached back home on 4th Monday night. We reached the India and Bhutan border after travelling a 9 hours flight via Delhi, reached Jaigaon border of Bhutan and travelled by Jeep to Bhutan.
We travelled through very remote mountains to reach the destination. We were not able to travel through the highway because of a logdown in that country.
We travelled about 6 hours by jeep from the border of India gate. The roads are so pumped and very stony. There were no phone signals and internet facilities in most of the places. There were phone and internet signals but not strong.
The conference started on October 1st of Friday and ended on 2nd Saturday afternoon because of Covid and log down situation. We had about 128 pastors in the conference from different parts of Bhutan. We had pastors from 9 districts out of 20 districts of Bhutan. All of these pastors travelled by bike, rented jeeps and even 19 of them walked about 5 to 7 hours. It was unbelievable when they shared their travels and how they reached the conference venue.
Honestly, the pastors are so poor and have great need. Most of the places are mountains and have very poor public transportation. The country of Bhutan is closed to the gospel so they can't preach in public. They can do the evangelism only by doing personal evangelism. Our conference gave them a big understanding of personal evangelism and systematic soul winning teaching of 13-point plans. They received this training with great enthusiasm.
We had distributed 125 Bhutan language Bibles to the pastors. The pastors said that the Bibles are so needed to the people there. The people can't download anything on the web because of internet problems and also there was no unlimited internet package but they must pay for every second they use so the people are not willing to use the internet much. The people are so poor and have no money.
Rev. Simon, Rev. Peter and I taught the ISWDI to these pastors. All of the pastors made a big commitment at the end of the conference. They were committed to train about 6817 people and plant about 426 home churches in two years.
After finishing the conference, we travelled to the India border and visited a few churches. These churches are located in India but just walkable distance of Bhutan. The Bhutanese pastors have the church tent here on the India border because they can't have a tent for worship in Bhutan. However, the pastor and the people walk to the tent every Sunday for worship. It's very strange but we could realize the thirst they have for Jesus and to worship Him.