Expectingrevolution's Blog

India – Day 11

So that’s a picture of Sean, Joey, Levi, and me after rafting down the Beas River. I’ll catch you up to how we ended up there.

- We woke up in Madan’s village and decided to go on with our plans to go to Kulu. Joey wanted to meet a pastor there who he had heard about, so we planned to meet him at a coffee shop he helped run. Also to meet us there were Michael and the Sadhu. “Sadhu” is a term referring to a person who has renounced worldliness in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, and is so designated by their bright orange robes. However, this particular Sadhu is a Christian and is using the cultural mechanism of being a Sadu to share the gospel. When we met them at Kulu, I was overwhelmed by the evident presence of the Holy Spirit with the Sadhu and Michael. They travelled together, doing a very similar thing to what Sean and I do. We were greatly encouraged by meeting them, and they were able to get us a show that night in the town of Manali.

- After praying for Sean’s strength, we headed to Manali to play at a place called Dylan’s, named after Bob. Indeed, there was a mural on the wall of a young Bob Dylan with a harmonica. It was in a section of town frequented by white people. In the mountains surrounding Manali grows, supposedly, the best marijuana in the world. So people from all over the world come here to find out for themselves. This was the crowd we played for that night. They had no PA, so Sean had to just grab his guitar and project his voice. As it turns out, there were quite a few Israelis there. After Sean played his normal set, he ended up jamming with some Israelis to cover the Back Street Boys, Rihanna, and other pop hits. Several of these Israelis noticed the Hebrew tattooed on my arm. One guy, who looked exactly like Josh Groves, finally asked me what it meant. He seemed excited at first, but when I told him it was a messianic prophecy about Jesus he instantly was turned off. In fact, a hush seemed to cover the room when I said that. They did not like the insinuation that the Hebrew Prophecies pointed to Jesus Christ. They didn’t like it at all. So basically, that ended the show.

- We stayed that night in Manali with a friend named Anil. Anil is a believer who came from a high caste Brahman background. At a young age, he was set aside to be a hindu priest. When he came to know Christ, his family took out a full page ad in the paper to publicly renounce him as their son. He lived under a tarp for a long time, but we actually got to stay in his apartment. It was tiny and crammed, but it was a huge step up from sleeping under a tarp. Anil is a church planter in the region of Manali, and having lost everything he has nothing holding him back from preaching the gospel – and that’s exactly what he does. We were able to encourage Anil, but I think his testimony encouraged us even more.

- So we began to make our way back to Shimla from Manali. The Beas River runs along that road for a ways, and is mostly melted snow runoff from the surrounding Himalayan peaks. Levi and Joey had always wanted to go rafting, and they have places set up along the way to do so. I really was kind of against it, because I didn’t have extra clothes and I just really hate getting wet when fully clothed and mostly I guess I’m just a stick in the mud. But I wasn’t going to be the only one dissenting, so we decided to take a brief ride. We found a place and put in where the rapids were rated probably around class 2 and 3. We got suited up, and our guide, Yogi, told us his basic rowing commands. Of course, as soon as we got going we got turned backwards and Joey almost fell out. But we righted the raft, and for a while I managed to stay dry. But then we hit one rapid that seemed aimed right at me and – bam – drenched in Himalayan ice water. At that moment I was ready to be done. Fortunately, the ride didn’t last much longer. So as we’re waiting for the truck to come pick us up, I was over standing by myself trying to get as much sun as possible to warm up/ dry off. Yogi came over to me, and in his broken English told me he liked my tattoo. He asked if it was a dragon on my forearm, and I told him it wasn’t. I proceeded to explain the significance of my tattoo, how it represented the work of Christ that was growing inside me and bursting out of me. He said he believed this. So I shared with him the gospel, and he said that he believed that Christ was resurrected from the dead. But then he told me he was Hindu (and i noticed a pendant dedicated to a guru around his neck). I told him that if he actually believed that Christ rose from the dead, then none of the superstitions of Hinduism mattered. I told him he could have only one guru – Jesus Christ. He said he wanted to believe. I drilled him a little more, and he seemed determined. But I figured it couldn’t be so easy, and that the language barrier must be getting in the way. So I took him over to Joey, and told him what Yogi had told me. So Joey drilled him a while in Hindu, and he seemed to think that Yogi was serious. Yogi even said that all of Hinduisms gods fight each other, but Christ died for us. So Yogi prayed right there to receive Christ. We called Anil and told him the good news, and Anil made plans to meet with Yogi to help disciple him. And then Joey began to tell Yogi the need to make a public commitment through baptism, and the significance of it. And so Yogi looked at the Beas River, and said “here’s some water, why not now?”. And so, this happened next:

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