Kolkata Bible Week

Wow, our first week in India is already over and the bible week went amazingly well. There were 15 children and approximately 60 baptised brothers and sisters in attendance.
The foreign visitors included bre Wesley Butler, David Caudery, Milton, Brian Winter, Kate Barr and my family.
During the week the bre spoke on the theme of building up the ecclesia's and building our relationship with God and Christ. I think we had a really helpful format this year as the class first thing in the morning was followed up by a discussion group, and we split the bre/sis for 2 of them. One of the topics was about our individual roles in ecclesial life, and the other one for the women concentrated on teaching their children about having a healthy respect and helping them show their love for him by their actions. (some of the classes had been a bit distracting!!) I'd have to check with Dad what the men discussed.

During the week the sunday school classes were on Moses, and us sisters shared the classes and activities around, and Cals ran the drama with support from Kate and Bappy & Mithun (Bangladesh brothers). It was really cool to relook at the lessons from Moses again after studying the topic for Manitoulin.

Previously all contacts had been invited to the bible week, and we would spend every spare minute in the afternoons giving baptism interviews and have the exciting time at the end of the week with an evening full of baptising and exhortation.
This year we decided that the bible week should be designed specifically for encouraging and upbuilding the bre and sisters, and so we are planning a separate truth camp in December for the contacts who are ready for baptism, and it is our job in the next month or so to visit the villages and check on the contacts and give some studies.

One of the things we found out during the week is that because there hasn't been an consistant mission presence in Kolkata, some of our doctrines especially on the Kingdom / heaven and hell haven't been properly understood. So we'll be spending a lot of time working on these topics.

There was a funny moment during our goodbye meeting. Bro Milton was in the middle of his exhort and we were interrupted by the hosts who told us that if we didn't finish in 15mins we wouldn't get any lunch. Milton shuffled through many more pages, and then brought the meeting to an end, with promise to resume later, and everyone filed out for lunch!!! Everyone ate lunch, and then some time later we all headed back in for the emblems. It kept us in fits of laughter all day! Could it happen anywhere else but in India??

During the week we had free time every afternoon which has been a change to the last few years which was refreshing. We did spend one afternoon bringing all the sisters together who teach sunday school and we had a bit of a session asking them questions as to how it is going, and we gave them some suggestions on activities, and ways to keep the children engaged. It's going to be mum's job with my support to get out to all the ecclesia's and follow up with a visit to each sunday school and provide the necessary books and equipment for the children. The sister's are all really excited to have us visit their sunday school.

It was just such a change having time to sit and try and communicate with the brothers and sisters and get to know them and the children as opposed to other years where we've tried to fit in at least 4 baptism interviews during that time.

We had a really lovely week of fellowship and since then we've had a couple of calls from people letting us know they really loved the bible week. So it was an encouraging beginning for 2 months in the area.