The India Pastors Project has joined forces with Pastor KP — our liaison in India — to provide relief to Christians living in Vijayawada, which has been hit hard by a week of flooding.
Pastor KP got an urgent call from a Brother Ephraim, a longtime Christian friend of his and a Vijayawada resident, asking for help as he and his neighbors had been without food for several days.
KP organized a group of more than 20 men from his church and drove six hours to Vijayawada. The India Pastors Project provided the funding so that KP could buy food to feed the families of about 85 pastors and other Christians in the city.
India often struggles to provide relief for its people in emergencies like this. The government and NGOs have provided the people bottled water, but no food. Even though 85% of India is Hindu, their temples and communities provide little charity.
For $37 per family, we were able to provide each family with rice, fresh vegetables and milk to last three to four weeks. We also provided blankets to the families. KP bought 5,000 pounds of rice, 175 gallons of milk, and hundreds of blankets.
KP said what he saw in Vijayawada was horrible, with dead cows, goats, snakes and rats floating in the flood waters, which were still 3- to 5-feet deep when KP arrived with the supplies.
Many people have died in the flooding. We know of one Christian brother, Cornelius, who has died in Vijayawada, leaving behind a wife and three small children.
Below you can see videos and photos of the food being delivered to the city and of members of KP's church preparing the food.
"When we rode through the city, we preached the Gospel," KP told me on the phone. "We told them that we have food that will last you three or four weeks, but that Jesus offers the bread of life, which lasts forever. We then would ask, 'Would you like to taste the bread of life?'"
KP said that the police and other government officials were so impressed with the "substantial" kind of food that was delivered, that they begged KP to bring another truckload to help the starving populace.
"The police said that our charity was unique," KP said. "They said they have never seen anyone give away such substantial food for flood victims."
So, TIPP paid for another truck load of food, which will feed about 85 more families. That will be 170 families in all.
To pay for the life-saving relief, we canceled our two September conferences, plus we relied on special donations from a couple of our supporters.
The focus of our organization is educating pastors in India, but on rare occasions we have felt led to provide relief to suffering Indian Christians.
The only other time we did this was during the pandemic, when the government shut down the country for a month and provided no relief to its citizens. We provided bags of rice to pastors and their families during that emergency.
We plan to resume our teaching conferences in October.
If you would like to help us pay for this relief or for our conferences, please see the information below.
| 
