Join Us As We Celebrate What God has Done

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Its celebration time again at HBI! Celebrating God's faithfulness in enabling the ministries of HBI to join Him in fulfilling His mission in India! Our pastors' conference is coming up in September and we want you to be part of what the Lord is doing through these simple barefoot church planters.

Before I give you all the details of our pastors conference and our invitation for you to invest in this conference, I want to share with you something very exciting that God did among an unreached people group called "Irulas". The term Irular is derived from the word "irul", meaning darkness.

We identified this people group about 9 years ago and placed a cross cultural team to work among them. Initially, they went through rejections and discouragements. As the Irulas were uneducated, following ancient customs, believing in mantras and sorceries, it was difficult to connect with them and communicate to them. God gave our cross cultural team a break through by learning to sing songs in Irula language and participated in their celebration.

Our team also noticed many children were not sent to school. So they started a primary School, after obtaining permission from the Village Head. This helped our missionary couple to build bridges with the parents. Secondly, they found out there was no medical facility and they helped the people with medical camps and rendering first aid.

The Irulas were touched by their love &care and started to connect with them. They began to share their problems such as poverty, curses, witchcraft and sickness to the cross cultural team who prayed for them and counseled them. A Tailoring School too was started for the economic development of the women. This was a huge success as many women made use of the facility and developed their skills.

Difficulties like travelling long distance, climbing mountains, oppositions from the anti Christian movements and the threat of wild animals did not hinder the team. Their commitment and desire to see the Irulas come to know our Lord paved the way when the Lord opened the door to conduct meetings at homes of the Irulas. It was fascinating to watch the Irulas trickle in for the meetings and within a short period they had about 25 families worshipping the Living God.

Praise God! The Mission work that was initiated among the Irula people group almost 9 years ago, resulted in developing four indigenous evangelists to work among their own people! 2,000 children have heard the gospel! 50 families have accepted Christ and among them 10 families were baptized! 5 worshipping communities emerged among the Irula people group! This is simply God's doing and its marvelous in our eyes!

Friends, God is at work in India especially among unreached peoples and truly God is using the simple barefoot church planters to touch the lives of thousands of people. Just in the last 12 months, we praise God that He enabled our mission to plant 414 new churches that means more than one church a day! We also praise God 218,248 people heard and responded to the Gospel! 54,008 people accepted Christ as their personal savior, out of which 49,410 were discipled and added to the church. Hallelujah!

Once a year we bring all our village church planters and pastors to HBI campus to rejoice with them for all the wonderful things God has done through the ministries of HBI, envision them, equip and skill them to move forward in fulfilling God's mission in India.

Our 2008 pastors' conference is scheduled from 1st to 6th of September 2008 and the theme of our conference is "Radiating Christ… Reaching our neighbors… Rebuilding lives…" We have invited our village church planters, evangelists, pastors, Bible women and our students to the pastors conference. We will have a total of 800 participants.

This year our emphasis is on reaching neighbors! India is the second largest muslim nation in the world and 11% of our 1.2 billion people are followers of Allah. We have two special resource persons to help us understand the need and challenge in reaching our neighbors and how should we be prepared and committed to stay focused on reaching them for Christ.

Friends, first of all we want you to please begin praying for the conference at least once a week. Pray for the planning, the conference teachers, speakers and the participants. Please pray that every one that participates in the conference will gain an understanding and passion to reach our neighbors. Pray for the finances needed for the conference. Your prayers make a significant difference.

The total need of the conference is $32,000. On an average it costs only $40 to bring an indigenous pastor from the mission field, provide board and lodge and train him for 6 days in the conference. God has already provided us $8,000/- We just need the balance $24,000/-

You can sponsor 1 pastor, 5 pastors, 10 pastors or more, that will make an incredible impact in the lives of these simple grass root village pastors to be envisioned and equipped to serve the Lord effectively. Or you can sponsor a meal for the participants which costs $800/- or you can sponsor travel cost of ten church planters on an average of $400. If you are unable to release the resources immediately but will make a commitment to send it to us, it will help us move forward in making effective decisions towards the conference.

Please consider the opportunity you have to invest in the kingdom by equipping these simple grass root church planters whom God is using to build His church but desperately need training. Know that every dollar you invest will multiply in seeing people reached with the Gospel, churches planted, and unreached people discipled and equipped for Christ.

Please send in your gifts designating to "Pastors conference 2008" and mail it to "HBI Global Partners, P.O. Box 584, Forest, VA 24551". You can also visit our website www.globalpartners.org and donate online.

We want to thank you for allowing us to share the opportunity of joining our Lord who is at work in India and seeing India discipled for Christ.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Praying for you and may the Lord bless you.

Your servant in the mission,

Dr. Paul (Bobby) Gupta
President
HBI Global Partners
P.O. Box 584
Forest, VA 24551
www.globalpartners.org