US Mennonite Brethren

“Ah…you are going to India,” he said. “I can tell you,” he assured me, “you will see the three P’s.”  

 

What good fortune, I thought that October afternoon, and even providential to be talking with an Indian prior to my November visit to that country. Neilish had slipped in to the smallish seat next to me as we settled into the regional jet for the flight back to Bakersfield from Denver.

It turns out Neilish works for the largest ice cream production unit on the planet, and it’s located right in good old Bakersfield. He wondered if I had eaten any of the latest Dreyers ice cream products, and I was able to nod in to pretty much the full menu. I guess it’s good that he couldn’t tell just by looking at me—at least that’s what he said.

Neilish went on to tell me more about the three P’s. People, poverty and pollution are what you will see, he said. Everywhere! With 1.3 billion people on that piece of the earth’s pie, it seemed reasonable to imagine it. And I did try. We talked about the fact that about one-fifth of the global population lives on a not-so-large piece of land. And about how the big Indian cities are counted by millions and tens of millions. Neilish said he wished conditions were otherwise, both for the sake of his family who still lives there and more generally for his countrymen.

I asked him about the spiritual realities of his people and more particularly about his own. I asked whether he knew much about Jesus. Not really, he said, as only he could turn the words. He was interested enough to hear me out, so I filled him in. Of course he wasn’t going anywhere and we were sitting pretty close together. He offered that it was good that we were learning from each other. I agreed.

What he didn’t know was that my unspoken prayer was that my telling him the Jesus story would stick in his mind like a nagging broken record of truth. It would serve you well to check out the Bible and read the Jesus story for yourself, I suggested. He didn’t jump on it, but you never know.

And now, for the first time in my life, I have been to India. I went to India as part of the annual meeting of the International Community of Mennonite Brethren. I represented the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, one of 18 national Mennonite Brethren conferences in 15 countries.

Sitting in the airport waiting for my 15-hour flight from Bangkok, Thailand, I could call on most any one of my senses to awaken memories of my week in and around Hyderabad, located more or less in the center of India. Neilish was right of course, and I had not doubted him. But the experience of tasting, hearing, seeing and feeling the realities he described to me has been unbelievably more powerful than I imagined.

One of the things that intrigue me is how our Indian brothers and sisters shake their heads side to side to mean, “Yes, yes, of course, surely, good enough.” I’m going to keep working at that.

I did experience a couple of P’s that Neilish hadn’t alerted me to. We spent the better part of a day with about 1,500 men and women representing some 300,000 Jesus-loving Indian Mennonite Brethren Christians. The occasion was the 50th anniversary celebration of the formation of the Governing Council of the India MB Church.

After 60 years of effective evangelism inspired by a few faithful MB missionaries, there is much more to tell, but know this—they prayed. They prayed loud and long—all together and at once, in small groups and before and after anything and everything. And there were lots of things. For me, a sometimes-lightweight prayer warrior, there was a lesson in this.

If the fourth “P” was prayer, the next one was passion. The Indians have an abounding passion. It appears they have taken a spiritual stand against proverbial ignorance and apathy. Hunger for intimacy with the Lord and a desire to be faithful to him were not in short supply.

 

I’ll probably remember the three P’s Neilish briefed on but the other two are unforgettable. And they are more important. If you have a “p’s and q’s” list of any kind, it would be smart to check whether it includes the stuff the lasts.