The Map stories

Amy was arranging the India map puzzle. Dad had one look at the colorful puzzle and he was puzzled! He said, you get things like this? I said yes.. He asked for the cost. Dad was shocked.  

He said, there was a time, when they had to take so much pain, to get a map.  Dad had made each state- the size of a door. They went to the Survey department, to get the total number of people, christians etc. Percentage of christians was 0.001 percent.. 1 in 1000 was a christian.  Dad collected these data dilgently.  This was, while preparing for the 10 year plan during the Emil Jebasingh Era. This data was used to find out where the need was, and send the missionary accordingly. 

Dad made 12 big size albums, for 12 leaders in FMPB. These albums had each districts, villages, and the number of churches in each villages. This data was collected by going to every district, streets, and data derived.  He said, those were the days, when we had such burden to painstakingly collect so much of data, to send people to the unreached villages. 

He then remembered an incident close to his heart. Dad was in one such district - Ramnad, collecting the number of church details. He had travelled to some interior village for collecting data and would be back in the Ramnad town after 5 days. He was invited by the CSI Church of Ramnad pastor to preach in the service in the following Sunday. This was in the 70s. Prabhu was 1 year old.  Mom has sent a telegram stating that the child is seriously ill.She had sent it to the CSI Church, Ramnad.  The pastor could not reach dad. Those were the days, when we had no cell phones.  Dad arrives 5 days later to the CSI Church Ramnad on Sunday morning service to preach. The moment he steps in, the pastor hands over the telegram from home. Dad reads it. Puts it in God's hand, and puts the telegram in the pocket. After the service, at 11 AM, he rushes back to catch the bus to Nazareth. He reaches around 11 PM that night. The whole village was sleeping. Dad looks inside the window, to find Prabhu sleeping in the thotil.  God takes care of his children.