India Evangelical Mission holding fellowship dinner
Students at the Bible college campus of India Evangelical Mission in South India come from multiple states of India. They get trained in the gospel work and then return to their villages to share the gospel message.
For more than 30 years, Dr. GV Mathai has been visiting friends in the larger Holmes County area and has served as the connector between believers in Ohio and in India. He was first invited to the Holmes County area by Pastor Homer Kandel, founder of the German Village Shopping Center in Berlin.
India Evangelical Mission will hold its annual fellowship dinner on Sept. 13 at Heritage Community Center, 3 miles north of Berlin on U.S. 62. Music will begin at 6:15 p.m., and dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
This year marks 52 years since the inception of India Evangelical Mission. Many locals have become friends of Mathai and the ministry over the years, and many from the area have visited the work in India.
The most recent visitors were a group who visited earlier this year from the Holmes County area, led by Eric Kuhns and Mike Kline, both of Berlin.
Kuhns’ late father Pete was a close friend of Mathai and a faithful supporter of the ministry for many years, and Kuhns and his wife Keri were able to see the work for themselves.
“They have a good thing going with the Bible college students and the orphanage,” Kuhns said. “We had a blast just sitting down and spending evenings singing with the students. We noticed how happy the children were. They were obviously well cared for. I was very impressed with the mission. Our highlights were interacting with the college students and getting to know them, hearing where they come from and what their goal in life is.”
For Kline it was his second visit to South India, where the ministry is located. “It is exciting to be part of the work, where there is a great need,” he said, “and IEM is the vehicle to fill that need. The opportunity to make an impact is great, and the desire for knowledge is genuine. We can’t help but be inspired by the sincerity and fervency of the students at the Bible college.”
Many have visited India and seen Mathai’s ministry from the Holmes County area: Bill Mullet, Roy A. Mast, Melvin Mullet, Eddie Hochstetler, Gerald and Ada Hershberger, Mary Chupp, Marvin and Katie Raber, Eddie Kline, Lamar Hershberger, Melvin and Dena Yoder, Eli, Jr. and Arie Mast, Richard and Jane Graven, Mark and Dorothy Rohrer, Arlen Miller, Michael and Charity Kline, Eric and Keri Kuhns, Javin Mast, Lori Coblentz, Wes Kuhns, and Kari Kuhns.
India Evangelical Mission was founded in 1966 with reading rooms, public rooms that were opened in the city where the local newspaper, periodicals, gospel literature and the Holy Bible were placed as free reading for the locals. These rooms were patterned after the reading rooms the Communists had established to further propaganda in the mid-20th century. In many of these places where reading rooms had been started by IEM, churches were later established. Today there are IEM churches in the capital city of Mumbai (formerly called Bombay), in the southern state of Kerala, and other states including Orissa and Manipur in the northeast.
In the southernmost state of Kerala, IEM has a Bible college where 70 nationals are currently enrolled in a three-year B.Th. college program with a goal of sending them back to their villages with the saving message of Jesus Christ.
The same location in the south also is home to a children’s home for 55 children. Plus around 50 children are supported in their homes.
Most of the children who stay at the mission children’s home have parents; however, they have limited resources to care for their own children adequately at their homes and to be able to send them to school. The campus becomes “home,” where love flows freely to the children during the school year while IEM shares the message of Jesus Christ with each of them.
For over 50 years IEM has reached out with the gospel message to the people of India through outdoor evangelical crusades, tract distribution, disaster-relief work, Christian reading rooms and Bible correspondence courses. IEM periodically sets up temporary medical clinics and also ministers in slums.
The Sept. 13 dinner will feature singing by New Sound from the Berlin area. Dayan Mathai (Mathai’s son) of Los Angeles is set to speak about India and the vision of IEM.
The cost of the dinner is by donation, and people also may financially contribute to the work of IEM and purchase Mathai’s new biography.
For reservations RSVP no later than Sept. 6 to Sam and Mary Hershberger at 330-231-5092, Joe and Ina Mullet at 330-204-1096, or Jane Graven at 330-763-1342.