Kulpahar Kids' Home and Christian School - Kulpahar, India Kulpahar Kids' Home and Christian School - Kulpahar, India
April 3, 2007
This information was received from Ralph and Phyllis Bradley, the contact/prayer partner from the CCC Missions team
We, as is true everywhere, are preparing for Resurrection Sunday...also we'll be having Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. This year will be quite different as to location!
You probably heard about our terrible hail/rain storm we had 11 February. Our church roof looked like a bomb hit it! We had / have damage to every building on all 3 compounds (35 acres). The children's hostels had no damage but they have flat cement roofs and only one family dwelling had no damage! One family home had 150 holes in the roof, another 140 and another 115. Those roofs will also have to be replaced.
But we are currently replacing the church roof. Our heat is already in the 100s. Our roof are mostly made of asbestos sheets. Of course we are in the rural village so the scaffolding is made of bamboo and ropes, strong ropes, with the men pulling, lift the sheets to the roof. Since the heat is so bad, our men start about 7am and can only work until about 11am. Then they start again after 3pm and sometimes it can only be after 4pm. No lights because of the danger with electricity, so we had our electricians disconnect all the electricity.
Our Easter/Sunrise, Good Friday/Maundy Thursday will be under our tent that we will set up on the hospital compound.
We appreciate your love, prayers and support! I especially apprecite your love, prayers and support of me personally! Lord willing, I will be coming home the early part of 2008!
Take care, may God continue blessing you and yours!
Grateful and Joyful in Jesus' love -
Sharon A Cunningham
Kulpahar Kids' Home and Christian School, Kulpahar, India
 |
|
The size and complexity of India make a brief overview of its background difficult. Roughly one billion people inhabit the Indian sub-continent which covers an area of 3,288,000 sq km (1,269,000 sq miles) making it the world’s second most populous country. Seven hundred languages are spoken in India with several different religious and ethnic groups claiming large segments of the population. North to south the country can be divided into three geographic regions: the Himalayas and their foothills; the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Deccan Plateau.
The earliest of India’s various civilizations developed in the Indus Valley by 2600 B.C. and in the Ganges Valley by about 1500 B.C. At this time the subcontinent was mainly populated with ethnic Dravidians. It is believed that the Indus Valley civilization succumbed to an invasion of Sanskrit-speaking Aryan peoples who introduced the caste system, a scheme of social division that has been fundamental to Indian life and culture to this day. Subsequent centuries brought about a complexity of different empires and dynasties under various powerful leaders, including Greek, Arab, Turkish, and Mongol influences. In 1600 the East India Company was founded which opened up trade between Britain, Europe, China and India. Beginning in 1805 the British began control of India introducing a civil service and code of law which have shaped modern India in the last two centuries. Britain’s Queen Victoria was made Empress of India in 1876. Independence from Britain was granted in 1947 but the division between Hindus and Muslims led to a violent partitioning of India and Pakistan. Today India is a Federal Republic with two legislative bodies, known as the Council of States and People’s Assembly. India is the world’s largest democracy and the oldest and most successful democracy in Asia.
The Indian economy staggers under the sheer volume of the population exceeding one billion people. The Gross National Product per capita is less than US$350. Agriculture is the largest sector of the economy claiming more than two-thirds of the economic base. Services and industry make up the remaining third of the economy. India has a growing middle-class now numbering almost 200 million and the work force includes many highly skilled people including those trained in high-tech areas and computer programming. Textiles are an important part of the industrial sector and in recent years there have been massive investments made in India by foreign interests. Huge defense budgets, particularly devoted to the long standing conflict with Pakistan, have been a detriment as is the lack of modern infrastructure.
The dominant religious force in India is Hindu which accounts for 80% of the population. In the 8th century Muslims began to move into the northern part of India and began to flourish. With the partitioning of Pakistan in the 20th century most of the Muslim population of India was located in that area. Millions more relocated. Today about 14% of the Indian population are Muslim. Buddhism flourished between 500 and 200 B.C. but today less than 1 percent of Indians are Buddhists. Christianity was said to have been brought to India by the Apostle Thomas in the first century. Presently less than 3% of Indians espouse any form of Christianity. Sikhism and Jainism are also prevalent among small minorities.
Reflecting the overall history and culture of India the story of the Stone-Campbell Movement in India is long, complex and difficult to quantify in present day numbers. India has long been the destination for missionaries of the Stone-Campbell Movement from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. The first Stone-Campbell Movement missionaries sent to India were four single women in November of 1882. There was no established mission station and no friends to greet them and aid their initial efforts. The difficulties before them in this great new land were enormous, not the least of which was the mastery of the Hindi language.
After the Second World War Americans Leah Moshier, Dolly Chitwood, and Tom and Leota Rash sailed to India and began language study at a school in the Himalayas. The group, soon joined by the Frank Rempels, made plans to open a Bible college in Kulpahar on more than twenty-eight acres land that had originally been purchased in about 1906 by the Christian Woman’s Board of Mission and used as a mission station. Though their initial plans had been to establish a Bible college, along with the property the young missionaries inherited a group of widows, their children, and others of unfortunate circumstances. With ten children already in-house the missionaries soon began the Kulpahar Kid’s Home. Before the year was out Kulpahar Christian School was begun to see to the children’s education. The Bible College operated until 1958 until it had to be closed due to lack of funds. Several other missionaries made Kulpahar their home in successive decades but the constant force in the life of the children for five decades has been Dolly Chitwood and Leah Moshier. Dolly Chitwood died on the field in 1995 and Leah Moshier, together with Linda Stanton and Sharon Cunningham, continue the work of the Stone-Campbell Movement begun in Kulpahar nearly one hundred years ago.
