![From the Tribal Villages of Maharashtra to the Bay of Bengal]()
by Jaron | Feb 4, 2016 | India, Travel
Over a month in India I’ve covered an insane amount of territory. In this, my last blog post of this adventure, I share images from villages dealing with the extremely urgent matter of child starvation. While utterly heartbreaking, it was a blessing to work alongside a feeding program who goes to all of these villages and gives the children a healthy meal each day. As a final excursion on my trip, I traveled to the Bay of Bengal and captured some shots of the hardworking fishermen bringing in their particular brand of harvest. 
![From the Tribal Villages of Maharashtra to the Bay of Bengal]()
by Jaron | Jan 25, 2016 | India, Travel
While there are many photos and stories from my time in Southern India that I cannot share here, there are lots of great moments and people that I can’t HELP but share. Just looking at these people and places makes me smile, makes me wonder at the beauty of life, and makes me long for more adventure. 
![From the Tribal Villages of Maharashtra to the Bay of Bengal]()
by Jaron | Jan 12, 2016 | India, Travel
Over the first several days of the newest journey into the depths of India, I was pleased to be taken to northern India. Life is a bit different than in the south, but still with incredible faces, locations, and incredible stories of what God is doing. So far, I’ve gotten to visit an incredible city on the mountains, got a peek at the himalayas, help give sewing machines to village women who have completed their training, and visited an after school program at a school in a village in the middle of the forest with some of the most beautiful children imaginable. All of this was in just the first 3 days of being in this country 🙂 Much more ahead! 
![From the Tribal Villages of Maharashtra to the Bay of Bengal]()
by Jaron | Aug 23, 2014 | India, Travel
Finally, I can share fully about the man I have been teasing about that God has allowed me to spend many days with in India. He preaches, laughs, baptises, plays, disciples, teaches, prays, dances, blesses, and generally lives one of the most full lives a human could possibly ask. He’s an inspiration to millions, and through him God has brought COUNTLESS lives to himself throughout all of India and even America. He is GhunaKumar Rathinam, or as most others and I know him lovingly, Ghuna. In my month in India I have been blessed to visit churches with him, play games with him, sit beside him as he falls asleep in the car, be his patient as foreign illnesses ravaged my body, witness baptisms by him, laugh with him, pray with him, and celebrate his birthday (Founders Day to those at the Campus of Living Hope) with him. I couldn’t possibly tell his entire story in this blog, but if you’d like to read more about him you can go to http://www.fishhook.org/ghuna/about.html. In short, he started Gospel Friends Ministry, which has started thousands of congregations across India, gives women the ability to earn a living through their sewing school, hosts huge vacation bible schools every year, has a primary school, paramedical college, bible college, orphanages, televised ministries, and much more. To hear about this you would think they have worldwide connections and people giving money left and right. Sadly this is not the case. Lately they have had to cut back in many areas, including funding pastors in villages around the country. On the plus side, Ghuna lives a life of faith, knowing that what God desires, he will provide for. I pray some of you checking this out will go to the fishhook link above and hit the Donate button. There is quite certainly very few things in the world that are more worthy a cause than this. Daily people are coming to Christ out of Hindu and Muslim lives through Gospel Friends. Despite the lack of these funds, Ghuna remains unphased and unwavering, serving Christ daily. Surprisingly even, having turned 64 years old on my trip, he outpaces everyone I know. You cannot spend time with him and not desire a deeper walk with Christ. You can’t watch him minister to others and not desire a life as eternally significant as his. You can’t look at his passionate, smiling, laughing, praying, crying out face and not see Christ in him. I want to look like that. 
by Jaron | Aug 20, 2014 | India, Travel
After spending some time training the Living Hope students in the Remix method of ministering to children, we took to the streets of a nearby village in the evening to share our craziness with the kids there! It’s been AMAZING to see how open and willing to listen to the Gospel the Hindu kids and even adults are when it’s shared with joy, passion, love, and FUN! They even, kids and adults, swarmed us afterwards with the desire to be prayed over. Mind. Blown.
![From the Tribal Villages of Maharashtra to the Bay of Bengal]()
by Jaron | Aug 18, 2014 | India, Travel
I’ve been teasing about a special man God has been doing amazing works through for over 20 years, but am still not quite ready to tell the whole story. Here is a piece however. One example of God’s grace being poured out to his children through this man’s obedience. Around 1996, him and couple others visited this entirely non-christian village for the first time. As they were walking down the street, they passed by two women carrying water home. The pastors stopped them and began to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ. Those women accepted the Lord as their savior that day.
The men also happened to be looking for some land in that area to plant a church. They figured, what better land than at the exact place God first blessed them with a harvest in that village? They began to look into who owned the land, only to find that the people who owned it didn’t even know they owned it! After a good bit of time working out legal matters, they purchased that land and built this tiny church building.
Flash forward about 18 years, as we arrived there, we were greeted by villagers, evangelists, and many blind people. God has now blessed them with a church building, a house of prayer, a way to aide and support these blind people who are cast aside in this culture of castes, and many others who go out on their own to minister to so many more people in other villages. On this day we worshipped, gave gifts, and even baptized 4 more men into the congregation of the Lord. It was a good day.
:Almost all in the photo below are blind:
