Site To Promote Prayer Awareness! (When we work, we work. When we pray, God works!)

Once we were going  to Kerala as we were planning to keep Timmy with my parents for his studies from sixth standard.  He did his 6,7,&8 in Kerala.   For some reason we decided to go through Madurai.  At 7 pm we were in Coimbatore and filled the tank with sufficient fuel and proceeded our journey.   We had finished all our money except a fifty rupee note and a little change. By about 11.30 we reached Dindigul.  At Dindigul I got down and had a cup of tea and proceeded further.

Unknowingly I missed the by pass road to Madurai and got right into the city of Dindigul.  As we reached the central part of the city we had to go slowly as people were still in the streets.  Once I had to stop the vehicle.  On trying to move the vehicle, it would not move.  Engine was OK.  But the van was not moving.

When we were standing there not knowing what to do, a Muslim friend came to me and asked me what the problem was.  He had seen me in the previous place stopped for tea.  Now again when he saw us standing on the road he doubted some problem.  My van had gospel verses written all over.  That attracted the Muslim to us.  He asked us whether it was a church vehicle to which I gave a positive reply.  When he knew that the van had some problem, he looked at his watch and found it was12 midnight.  He became very concerned as he saw Joyce and five children in the van.  He said that it would be very difficult to get any help at that part of the night anywhere there.  Then suddenly he remembered a matador owner who had his own workshop.  He hired a bicycle from nearby and asked me to sit behind him and took me to that workshop.

As we reached there, the man  just closed his shop and he had one foot on his bicycle just about to leave the place.  Then I explained my situation to him and he said his van would come at 2.30 am and then he would come to toe mine to the work shop.  Believing his words we came back to our van and the Muslim friend consoled me and left the place.  So we were waiting till 2.30 in the van with much prayer for the arrival of the mechanic with his van which he did very promptly.  He toed our van to the workshop and dropped Joyce and children in the Gospel Hall and came to work on my van. 

The owner of the workshop was there at that time and he knew uncle C.V. Samuel. who was evangelist at Dindigul.  When he knew who I was and where I was going, he told his foreman not to wait till morning but to fix the vehicle and let us leave by early in the morning.  My van’s clutch had failed.  In the night he got a used clutch and by six in the
morning the work was over.  He asked me money for break fluid and I gave him the last fifty rupee note in my hand.  By 7 in the morning the van was ready to go.

As I did not have any money in my hand I gave him my wrist watch and told him that I would come back in a week and get my watch back by paying the workshop bill.  Interestingly the watch on my hand was a brand new Citizen automatic which would cost about a thousand rupees.  It came to me just the previous day.  Before that I had an electronic watch with me which was worth just one hundred rupees!

Just imagine if the Muslim had not help me, if the mechanic had already gone, if the owner was not kind hearted, if they had asked me money for spare parts before work began, and if I did not have a costly watch on me!  Even in that difficult situation the Lord was very kind to us.  We praise Him for His wonderful ways in our lives. After this incident we have used the same road several times.  Every time we had sufficient money for any emergency.

A throw away tyre which was meant just for a week or so, was on the van for a whole year and six months, running about 40, 000 kms. on the road.  A new tyre hardly gave 30,000 on that van!  The Lord was proving to me the truth of Dt.8:4 which says, their clothes were not torn nor the feet swollen during the forty days of wilderness wanderings.  Yes, indeed, “He is the same Unchanging Jesus, unchanging Jesus…  through eternity”.

Within seven years with our first vehicle, we have had three break failures.  The first one was a major accident and the Lord miraculously saved us from it.  It happened just within the first six months from the time we got our van.  I did not know driving when I got the van.  During the first month I hired a driver and he helped us in going to different places. By the second month I had courage to sit n the driver’s seat.  By then I had secured a learner’s license and it was without much difficulty that I learnt to drive.

In August we went to Madurai in the van for the wedding of Joyce’s youngest brother.  We took Rajan’s family and Selvaraj’s mother with us.  From Madurai we accompanied their new car to go to Kerala for the wedding. We went via Kumali to Thiruvalla.  Road was not very smooth as they had damaged road every now and then.  I was running behind the car.  The car driver was very fast.  He would apply sudden break every now and then. I had to do the same.   By the time we reached Tiruvalla my van had a crack in the break fluid kit and I did not notice it though I took the van for a check up before starting.  After the wedding, in the afternoon we started our journey back.  We were back on the same road to Kumali to go to Madurai. 

It was around 4 pm.  The car was going in front at 70-80 kms/ph and I was just behind them.  We crossed Ponkunnam and there was a small slope.  On the left there was a car standing on the road.  Opposite came a lorry fully laden.  As the car was standing on the road there was no place for me to go through.  And I applied break.  But pedal went right down and the vehicle would not stop.  In the spur of the moment to save a collision with the car, I just turned the vehicle to my left and it went out of the road and in less than 10 feet there was a small mud hill and our van had a smooth landing on to the mud hill. The back wheel of the van was still on the tar road!  Since there was no gutter between the road and the mud hill, no one fell or was there a jerk in the van.  It stopped so smoothly as though someone had applied the break!   Rajan’s little child who was sleeping in the van did not even wake up.  No one fell from the seat.  At that speed surely the van should have toppled if God had not protected us.  If there was a pit instead, we would have fallen into it.  It was truly miracle of the first order that saved us from that break failure.

How true is the scripture when it says, “The eternal God is our dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms”(Deut. 33:27).

When our people in the car did not see us for half an hour, they came back and saw what happened and one or two got in the car and left.  Others went to Madurai by bus.  I stayed on to repair the van and took it to Madurai the following day. 

The accident took place just in front of the house of one my old seminary friends.  In fact he was watching the whole scene.  He entertained us in his house.  I had my meals from their house two or three times till the van was ready to go.

The next break failure took place several years later.  Once we went to a Kurumba village about 30 kms away.  By then we were 3000 feet below our place!  The hill road was very steep and narrow and winding.  We went there to bring children to our hostel.  The trip was smooth and successful.  On the following day I was taking the van from our shed. I slowly reversed the vehicle.  The van came out into the road. I applied break.  There was no break and the van’s rear wheels fell into the small ditch which was there in the opposite of our house.  I had to gather half a dozen people to lift the vehicle from the ditch.

If it had taken place the previous day, the ditch we would fall into would have been a 1000 feet deep in some places!

The third break failure took place a few moths later.  We were going to Coonoor from Kotagiri.  At an ‘L’ turn at 40 kms/ph, I applied break and found the speed was not getting controlled.  I knew there was no break.  So within the next one km,  I brought  the gear down from 4-3-2-0.  And when the van was at 10 kms/ph finding that there was no vehicle on the road at that time, I jumped down from the drivers seat and put a stone in front of the front wheel and stopped the vehicle.  Then I brought a mechanic and got it repaired and took the vehicle.  We knew that it was time to dispose that vehicle which we did soon after.  

By l984 we had five children.  The only conveyance we had was a Vijay scooter.  On one or two occasions we tried using it as a conveyance for the whole family of seven!  No one needed to tell us that it was very dangerous.  Once or twice some one commented on us  like “Sir is showing us free circus!” On another occasion some one else said: “You have a big family.  You need a big vehicle.”  Such comments from public made us to think about a bigger vehicle and we began to pray for one.

We had no sources by which we could look for a four wheeler.  There were one or two possibilities for getting a cheap vehicle.  One was to go for an old model petrol car like Standard 10 or an old Morris Minor which were still found on our roads during those days.  You needed a minimum of Rs.10,000/- to buy one.  But petrol cost is very high as it might give up to eight KMs per liter of petrol in the hills. Even for running the scooter we are looking to the Lord daily.  How to think of a petrol car? 

Then to go for a diesel vehicle was another possibility.   A cheap way of doing it was to buy a petrol Jeep which in those days were available for Rs.7,000/- and to convert it into diesel.  It would cost another 7 or 8 thousand.  So we would need some fifteen thousand if we went for that.  It would require a lot of strain in locating the Jeep and then mounting the engine and RTO problem etc.  So we dropped that idea also.

A third possibility was to go for a Standard 20 diesel van which in those days were available for about Rs.20,000/-; though it as a problem vehicle, with no resources at our disposal we could think of nothing else.  We had no idea as to where to get this amount from.  But we decided if we went for a four wheeler, we would go for a Standard 20 van which could be used for school as well as for assembly out reach work.  We did not want a family car for ourselves. 

Just the day after we made this decision, we had a letter from my old friend Sam Mammen.  We were class mates in college for one year and since we both brought lunch packets we sat and ate lunch together.  Once a week we had Evangelical Union prayer meeting in the college and we both attended the same.  Only later we came to know that we both were from the assembly background.  Then we became all the more close to one another.  Until he finished his M.Sc. and was working in Bhopal we maintained our friendship.  We visited each others homes and were good friends.  From Bhopal he went to the States and I went to the mission field after my studies and we lost track of each other.  In ’84 Sam visited his home in Kerala.  That year I was one of the speakers at the annual convention of the assembly there.  When Sam heard that I had come to his home assembly, he was truly excited and he got my address from the assembly before he went back to the States. 

In his letter Sam told me how he got my address and he said he wanted to write to me for more than three months but it was not possible to do it earlier.  He enquired how we were doing and asked details of my family etc.  He was truly excited that he could contact me after all these years and that I was engaged in field work.  There was a cheque in the cover and Sam asked me to use it for whatever was my need at that time.  It was US dollars worth Rs.10,000/- 

We did not know how to thank the Lord for this wonderful provision.  We never ever had this much amount as gift in the mission field!  The largest sum received hitherto was Rs.5000/- when we were praying for the land.  Now the Lord had heard our prayers  for  a van.

When the money reached the bank, I set out tolook for a Standard 20.  I took a mechanic and went to Coonoor because I heard that a vehicle of our choice was there for sale.  But when we went there we found that it was a useless one.  Then the Lord so wonderfully led us to another place the very same day where we saw a Matador van in very good shape for Rs.40,000/- through a middle man who literally dragged me to the owner because I knew I could not buy a vehicle for that price.   But the owner agreed to give the van for Rs.25,000/- over and above my scooter. (I usually say that I got a Matador in exchange for a scooter because that’s all I had when I began to pray for a van)!   I came back home and both Selvaraj and Rajan were excited to hear that we were buying a van. We had never discussed this matter with them before.  They both decided to lent us all their savings i.e. Rs.5,000/- each without my asking for it!   The owner gave us a month time to pay the rest of the amount.   In just two days time we went and brought the van to Kotagiri where all I had to do was to buy two new tyres for the van.   It had a very good engine in it.  Actually we paid only the cost of the engine!

We witnessed three specific miracles in this particular event.   The first was how the money came from zero!  Then the next was how we were led to the owner of the Matador!!  It is a long story.  And the last but not the least was how the man agreed to give it for that price!!!  Another long story how the Lord performs miracles for those who put their trust in Him. The scripture I read the following day was Eccl.2.   And the last verse is “For to the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God.  This also is vanity and striving after wind.” 

Truly we had manna every day.  I know more than one assembly commented servant of God, who have their own magazines or who run institutions, who sent out appeals for buying a vehicle but could not do so.   But the Lord provided us with a good vehicle in l985 as a direct answer to prayer.   Is it only my privilege?  My Bible says that God is no respecter of persons.  

It was Bro. Ruben Karuppusamy who helped me drive the vehicle to Kotagiri for the first time.  He knew us for the past five years and he knew well our financial situation.  While bringing the van home he said it would be great if we could run the vehicle for three months!  He knew for sure that with our limited sources we would never be able to keep the vehicle for longer than that.  But may all praises be to God.  We used the very same vehicle for the next seven years.  From l985 on we have always had a running vehicle except for a few months in between when we needed to buy a different one or when the vehicle was in work shop.

Once some one came to our house requesting for prayer from Rob Roy Estate.  His wife had an attack of evil spirits and when she would get possessed she will fall down cramped and be in that position for hours.  They had two little kids.  Literally they were suffering.  She had this attack for several years and they spent a lot of money going to various people for cure.  But nothing worked.  At last in desperation he came to us thinking there would come some help though they were Hindus.

During those days I was not very fluent with Tamil.  Any how I went there to pray.    Spirits became very angry with the family and their trouble increased all the more because they came to me.  Whenever I was with them they would not have any problem.  But as soon I came out, spirits would create havoc.  This continued for about a week.  Then I went to a brother who had experience with casting out evil spirits.  He told me a great secret.  When the person shows symptoms of possession, if we catch the person by our hand, spirits cannot leave until we release our hands!  Till then I had not touched that lady.  But now with this secret known to me, I was waiting for an opportunity to take hold of the person while in actual possession.  On the following day, we spent the whole day in that house fasting and praying. There was no sign of possession the whole day.

Evening again I went back to the house to agitate the spirits. We had several brethren with me.  We went to the house and started singing.  In the evening as we were singing the lady began to show signs of possession. She began to shiver and shake and her facial expressions changed.  Bro. Elango of Lalgudi was present with me and asked him to handle the lady.  He took hold of the lady by her hand and got into conversation with the spirits.  Following conversation emerged at this first encounter.

Lady under possession:  “I am not happy here.  Let me go to the other meeting below.  I do not like the music here.  There it is good.  Let me go there. Please let me go there.” (The same evening a group from Salvation Army music band was conducting a public meeting half a km away.  The spirits may have been referring to that)

Elango: “ No.  Never.  We will never let you go there.”

Lady :  “You do not have grace to chase me.  You cannot do anything to me.”
Elango: “We have received grace upon grace through Jesus Christ.  We will chase you.”

In similar terms the conversation went on for some time.  Later the spirits agreed to leave the lady and go.  So Bro. Elango after some time rebuked the devil in the name of Christ and the spirits promised that they would leave the lady never to come back.  The lady became normal.  We conducted the evening cottage meeting there in the house.  Prayed and committed the family and the house into the hand of the Lord before we left.  It was 11 pm by the time we finished that evening.  We all went home thinking that the problem was over.

But at  2 in the morning came the husband to our house and woke us up saying that his wife  was under very heavy possession and she was dancing on her feet with her hair let loose and threatening people with death.  By the time I went to their house about fifty neighbors had gathered around that house at that part of the night!  All were just frightened to see the lady doing very unusual things.

I did not have Selvaraj or Elango with me this time as I did not want to disturb them at that part of the night.  As I entered the room the lady was still dancing.  I caught hold of her hair which was flying in the air.  As soon I touched her, the devils became quiet but began to shiver like leaves in heavy wind.  I saw with my own eyes how devils believe and literally tremble (Js.2:19).   The Lord gave me great courage to handle the situation.  I made her sit on the floor and for the next two hours conversed with the devils. 

I said:  “Who are you?”
Lady under possession:  “We are five of us.  Our names are so and so.”

I said:  “Why do you trouble this lady?”
Lady replied: “We did not come on our own.  We were sent by some one else?”
 
I said:  “Did you not know who I was but still why didn’t you go all these days?”
Lady replied:  “Sir, we know who you are.  We know we cannot escape from your hands.  But we have no freedom.  We are tied down here.”

Some one standing around:  “Who tied you here?”
Lady replied:  “We will not tell you who it is.  I know you will fight between each other if you know who it is.” (I thought devils sometimes have more common sense than the so called believers!)

I said:  “Don’t tell us who it is.  But leave immediately”.
Lady replied:  “Sir, please release the knot.  Only then we can go.”

By now the devils began to shiver all the more.  I had held on to her hair so tightly that the devils felt there was fire on their head.

Lady began to shout:  “Ayoo,  Fire on  head.  Fire on head!   Please let us go.”
I said: “Nothing doing.  Unless you leave this lady permanently, I won’t let you go”

Then the lady under possession asked us to bring a shovel and dig in such and such a place in the room and then we would find the knot there.

Some one standing around: “Are you trying to cheat the poor preacher?”
Lady under possession:  “Don’t call him a poor preacher.  He is a servant of the Most High God.  I can never cheat him” ( What a tragedy.  Some times people close to us, even  some who break bread with us do not recognize this.  But devils do!  All the more our Father in Heaven who considers us as co-workers with His beloved Son!!  Servant of God, take heart and live a life acceptable to Him.)

I said:  “Nothing doing.  You must somehow go.  We can’t follow your instructions.”
Lady under possession:  “Sir, we cannot suffer your hand upon us.  Please let us go.”

After about one hour under my hand the spirits became so desperate and the lady was continuing to say,  “We can’t suffer this fire any more.   Please let us go.”

I said: “OK, You know where the knot is.  Under my hand you can go and release the knot and go from this lady permanently.  Until you do that I won’t let you go.”

So the possessed lady went into the corner of the room and went under a cot.  All the while her hair was in my left hand tightly held.  With her bear hand she dug a shovel full of mortar from the floor and then screamed.  “It’s gone.  It’s gone.” (The suddenly we heard the noise of the door slash open.)

The house was in the estate line and the flooring was not done with cement but with lime mortar.  But it is not possible for any of us to dig down into it with our bear hands. The possessed lady did it with her bear hand with ease. 

By now the lady was profusely sweating.  It was cold sweat.
 
Crowd was watching all this all the while.  Now the lady came out from under the cot and there was a lot of relief on her face as the devils knew the knot was released.  As soon as she came out, I made her to sit down once again.

I said:  “Are you all ready to go out of this lady permanently “
Lady:  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

I said:  “Will you ever come back again?”
Lady:  “No, sir. No, never.”

I said: “OK. Now, one by one come and promise me that you will never come back to this lady again.  You must do two things.  First, you must take hold of the Bible in your
hand and then you must give me promise in the name of the Father,  the Son . and the Holy Spirit.”

Lady:  “Sir, that is fire in your hands.  We cannot take it.”
I said; “Unless you take the Bible in your hands and promise me, I won’t let you go whatever you say.”

I said: “Now, come on.  Who is coming first?”
Lady: “Sir, I am ready.”

I said:  “Who are you?”
Lady:  “My name is so and so. ” (and the lady gave me a male name.  Four spirits gave male names and one a female name).

I said: “Take hold of the Bible and say after me what I say as your promise.”
Lady: (with hesitation) took hold of the Bible.

I said: “Now say after me. OK. In the name of the Father,  the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I, so and so promise to leave this lady permanently never to come back.”
Lady repeated after me.
I said;  “Get out, you devil in the name of the Father, the Son, and  the Holy Spirit.  Never come back again.” And the first devil left the lady. 

I repeated the process for all the five devils individually and made absolutely sure that all five devils left the lady. I did this because in the evening the devils had promised to leave the lady; yet they came back in the night with greater force.   When the last one was gone, there was a blush and a smile on the face of the lady.  Every one knew that she had become normal. She got up and washed her face immediately to live a normal life.   Under possession the whole personality changes including the face cut.   She was now healed completely and the family later became believers and the devils left her permanently.

Then at 4.30 in the morning I shared a brief word of the Gospel to the people who were standing around and some one by then had prepared a cup of tea for us.  I prayed and left the house to go home.

This particular case took so much time and struggle because some witchcraft was involved in it.  Later the man in the house told me that they had hidden some magic spelled items in various part of the house as a magician tried to remedy the situation.  So after the lady became normal, they dug three places in the house where magicians had hidden magic spelled boiled eggs.  To my surprise, boiled eggs without shell remained exactly the same after being buried for months!

This incident made me a famous exorcist and several came from different places with their problems and were healed almost instantaneously by a simple prayer.  But I found
that there was very poor response to the gospel even from those who were healed.  There was one occasion when I failed in my attempt and I had to call on another brother to help me in prayer before the devil left.  Later I knew the one whom I had taken along with me first was keeping grudges against me and our prayer was not effective.

Once when a possessed person came to our house for prayer, I gave her the Bible which she refused to accept.  But when a news paper was given the possessed held it close to the chest saying, “This I can keep.  Please, don’t give me the other”(meaning the Bible).

Selvaraj took me to one of the houses where there was a patient for several years.  Philip Rajan hailed from Kerala.  His parents came to work in tea estate in Aravenu.  Though Rajan’s brothers and sisters were in Kerala, Rajan  was with his parents in Nilgiris. Now his parents went back to Kerala but Rajan stayed back to continue in estate as supervisor.  He married a girl from Tamil background.  They were happily living for some time. 

Then struck a misfortune in the family.  She became sick of paralysis and was bed ridden for several years.  By the time we went there it was more than five years and Rajan had tried all known sources to relieve her of her sickness. All medicines failed.  So they turned to secret acts.  Nothing worked for her.  It was very pathetic to see the family in that situation.  They were in their late twenties.  She could not cover herself with a woolen blanket as the weight of the blanket would give her pain.  In Nilgiris one cannot live without blanket! Just imagine the plight.

We went there every Saturday evening for half an hour.  We will sing a song, read a portion from the Bible, say a few words and then pray as she would be just lying on her bed.  Rajan would give us a cup of tea.  We would come away.  No one imagined that a miracle was in the offing!  We continued quietly for months and slowly her pain subsided and she began to get up from her bed all by herself which she had not done for years! This happened now without any medicine as a direct answer to our humble prayers.  Before the end of the year she reached her normalcy.  No one acclaimed us as it was quiet and very slow.  In a couple of years she became pregnant and eventually became the mother of two.   Every one in the locality knew about this incident.

Rajan and his wife continued as friends and they continued to come to meetings with us. They are witnesses of other mighty works of the Lord in other lives. But tragically they never committed their lives to Christ though they knew for sure that it was the Lord who healed her.  Rajan remained a nominal Christian after twenty five years when I met him at the reception arranged for our second son, Rajan said his wife was showing symptoms of her old disease now.  What a tragedy!  Though they experienced the power of God in their lives first hand, they never let that power to transform their lives and become God’s children.  There are many like them in my experience.

We went to Kotagiri for worship and fellowship on Sundays. During week days every morning I went to the village for language learning.  Five evenings a week we went for cottage meetings or Bible study in different places.  I was not very fluent in Tamil but I started reading Tamil Bible for the sake of ministering in Tamil.

One of the first contacts we had at Aravenu was Bro.Selvaraj who was from Rob Roy estate.  He approached me to learn spoken English.  Though he never learnt spoken English from me, we became good friends.  He was a baptized member from Open Bible Church.  He had so many questions about spiritual matters and I spent several hours discussing and clearing his doubts.  He became my associate as I went for evening out reach. 

Jayakrishnan was the post man at Aravenu.  Though he was from a Hindu background, he had accepted Christ and was continuing without any church affiliation.  He was very happy to see me in Aravenu as there was no other Christian worker in that Area.  He opened his house for Bible study and in six months he was ready for baptism.

Jayaprakash was another staff at Aravenu post office.  He was a young chap of about 26 years and no one would doubt any thing about him as he quietly worked in the office.  But through Jayakrishnan I came to know that he was a drunkard of the first order.  Once he was admitted in the hospital for vomiting blood.  But after getting discharged from the hospital he could not get over his habit though doctors warned him not to have any thing with alcohol any more.  By the grace of God, Jayaprakash   began to attend Bible studies in Jayakrishnan’s house and the Lord gave him grace to get over the habit slowly.  He too accepted the Lord and they both were ready for baptism at the same time. 

Selvaraj was helping me during those days and we fixed a date for baptism.   Selvaraj located a place along the brook which ran near his estate suitable for baptism.  But for some reason he changed his mind and asked permission from estate to use one of their tanks for baptism.  This meant less work as the first place located must be made ready clearing the place and making sure that water was deep enough.  We had our baptism in the estate tank and every thing went on well.  After the service was over, we came to know that there was a dead body in the brook near the estate.  Later we discovered it was exactly in the same place where we had planned our baptism.  If we had stuck on to our decision to have baptism there, who knows, we would have been the first ones who would see the body  and our baptism should have been postponed!

When we decided to settle in Aravenu which is a small township near a Kurumba settlement, we had to think about the schooling of our children.  At Kullakamby where we stayed first, Timmy was already going to KG class.  But now in Aravenu there was no English school.  There were schools at Kotagiri which is about 6 KMs from Aravenu.   But no school buses came to our place  which meant if Timmy was admitted to one of the schools in Kotagiri, daily some had to accompany him in the morning and evening using public transport.

So we decided we would have our own school which would help also people from lower middle class who could not send their children to Kotagiri.   While we were staying in the rented house in Aravenu we hired another place to run the school.

Joyce was trained in Child Evangelism after her B.A. and when we were in Madras she attended Balar Kalvi Nilayam, one of the best schools for children below five, as an observer for over two months.  These were sufficient for her to start a school in the village.  We had twenty five to thirty children in all and Joyce would give each child personal attention while the whole class will be engaged in corporate activities like singing, drawing, reciting etc.  Occasionally Joyce had some one to help her.  Other wise she managed it all by herself. 

My role in the school was minimal; it began after l985 when we bought a school van and I was the driver.   I helped in the morning and evening with the school trips.   All our four children except the youngest did their primary school with us.  When they reached class six they were able to go to Kotagiri by themselves.

From ’82-‘86 three children were born to us in the Nigiris.  By l984 we had five children below ten years and it was a tough time looking after them along with language learning, school, and evening out reach etc. in routine.  Added to all this we had a small dairy, a poultry, rabbits and bees to look after.  All these made our life very busy.  Those were truly very exciting days indeed.

Two years after we were in the field it pleased the Lord to give us 5 cents of land to build a small house.  Half the amount came from my parents who gave us a small lump saying that we should keep some money in deposit as we had three small children and any emergency might come any time.  But we knew better.  We did not require any emergency money as the Lord is there to provide any need any time.   So I approached a land lord who was selling his land and we gave him half the amount as advance asking him to give us six months time to pay the other half and the agreement was made.  To our great surprise we received a lump amount as gift the following week from a friend of ours who got married around that time    So we bought that piece of land in less than a month  instead of waiting for six months!  God’s ways are always mysterious.

We planned a 400 sft. brick house and tiled roof with insulation as the Nilgiris would be very chill in winter.  Unknown to any man any where the house was completed by March ’82.  Our parents came visiting us then as our fourth baby was born then.  She was born 20 days before due date on the l0th of March when the unusual alignment of planets took place!   Parents were greatly surprised not only at the child, but also at the completed house waiting for plastering.  They gave us money for plastering after they went back home.

Behind the house in one corner of the land we marked an area for a Safety Tank and stared digging 12’x6’ area.  When we reached about 4 or 5 feet, I said to myself,  “Why can’t this be a well instead of a Safety Tank?”  We had faced heavy water shortage in the rented house that we were staying.    In the Nilgiris there is water shortage and people depend on government supplies or nearby brooks for their water needs.  In our place there was no government supply as our house plot was away from village and the brook nearby was not very hygienic.  So depending on the Lord and asking Him for grace, we changed our plan and began to dig down 6’x6’ below that level.  I hired a coolie and between two of us within a month we dug about 20’ deep.  Any one looking into the well can see our unprofessional work as the well is kind of zigzag in shape!  Fortunately from top to bottom it was soft brownish yellow rock under the earth and we picked bit by bit with a pickaxe as we dug down.  Though moisture was found after about l5’ we did not find any trace of any spring in the well.  So we left the work undone for a whole year.

When we opened our house in May that year, we asked the brethren from Young Men’s Evangelical Fellowship to come and stay there for two days for Bible Study and prayer.  Several joined us at the time and Bro. Yesudas of Karamadai assembly was there in the group - himself a water diviner.  He examined the unfinished well and said we could strike water in one two feet below.  He also said there were two strong streams running through the place where we dug.  We could have missed both if we had dug five feet away either way!

But we had to wait a whole year before we could muster some money to dig deeper.  By May we started living in our new house.   We used water from the nearby brook till the following March when the brook was showing sings of becoming dry.

During 1983 February there was a very heavy drought all over India.  It was so heavy that as never before government was supplying water by railway wagons to several villages. On the 1st of March we called three laborers and they went down into our well and cleared some rubbles and dug only one more foot and we struck water in our well!  By evening on the same day we were able to draw water with a bucket from our well.  I said we would not dig deeper because during this severest drought if we have so much water, this source would be more than enough for us.  Thus with just one day we stopped the work.  We stayed in that house till l99l and there was more than enough water for several families in that well.