Saturday Morning -
After two very long days all of us have finally been able to get one full nights rest.
We arrived in Delhi, Thursday night at 11.30pm. Went straight to the hotel, got to bed by 2am and woke up at 5am to catch an early flight to Hyderabad.
We spent Friday in Hyderabad meeting with two seperate networks.

The first was with Dr. Samuel, and his two sons Joel & Noel, who is the leader of GIM. Dr. Samuel was the state leader of Andrea Pradesh for CONS (Congress on National Strategy the Indian SCP vision) from 1999 through 2005. During that time he helped train leaders from all 22 districts of his state in the 5 modules of SCP.
His own network has grown from 1 church in 1988 when he was first introduced to SCP to 182 churches today. Their vision is to plant 1,000 churches by 2020.
For the past three years Dr. Samuel has been training 400-500 church planters each year, from his network and others around the state. Dr. Samuel says there is a great need right now for training existing church planters. There is a very real lack of leadership development.

Hyderabad:
7 Million people
Ten years ago, 4-5 million
26,000 villages in the state
9 languages
20+ ethnic groups
1000+- churches in Hyderabad
400-500 denominations in the state.

The second meeting was with, Dr. Moses and the Howard's who have been missionaries here in India for the last 59 years!
In 1950 when the Howard's came to India there were only 5 IPH churches, today they have more than 500 organized churches and 100's of house churches.
IPH is focused on planting on churches where there are no churches, and especially in unreached ethnic groups.
Both Dr. Moses and the Howards said that one of the greatest difficulties they have right now is opposition to Christianity. Many of IPH pastors have been persecuted and killed for their faith.

This morning we are flying to Bangalore where we will have two meetings and then catch a late flight to Chennai.

More later...

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Location:Flight from Hyderabad - Bangalore