CDI is excited to announce that in October 2023, we will be visiting India to meet our partners there and see the projects we've been supporting.
In December 2021, CDI began supporting Pastor Giri Ghandi and Pastor David Karatapu in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Andhra Pradesh (AP) is a very rural, agricultural state on the eastern Indian coastline, and CDI had connections with these pastors going back several years.
In working with the pastors, we have followed a model of supporting locally identified projects that empower and equip the local pastors and churches to meet needs and show the love of Christ to their communities.
The first project CDI supported was to provide lunch for a one-day Christmas pastors' gathering in December 2021 that included a Christmas gift of groceries and clothing to the pastors' families. Sixty-seven pastors from throughout AP attended the meeting in Pastor Giri's church. They were filled and refreshed physically and spiritually before heading home with the groceries and clothes for their families. Coming during a time when the effects of the Covid-19 public health crisis were still being felt, this gathering and gifts were desperately needed for this group of front-line pastors.
In 2022, CDI began funding a seamstress school for young women living in extreme poverty. Since 2013, Pastor David has been ministering to a village outside his town known locally as the "Beggar Village." Pastor David has visited the village weekly, preaching, bringing groceries and clothes, celebrating the birth of Christ at Christmas by providing dinner, and simply showing the love of Christ to an outcast people scorned by others.
In 2015-16, that ministry included Pastor David and his wife setting up a seamstress school for the village's young women, teaching them sewing skills, business skills, and basic banking skills to enable them to have a means of income. More importantly, the daily interactions with the students provided opportunities to share the Gospel and love of Christ.
In 2022, Pastor David prayed for a way to resurrect the seamstress school, as a new generation of young women had grown up and needed the skills earned through the six-month curriculum.
CDI was honored the Lord used us to meet that need, and the class of 2022 graduated in December 2022.
2023 has brought even more opportunities to support projects in AP. CDI has supported a ministry to children living in the slums of a large city in AP, allowing Pastor Giri to feed the children while sharing the Gospel.
Also, CDI has funded a new seamstress school in a different region of AP, reaching a new group of young women striving to escape poverty and providing opportunities to share the Word with young women who may have never been reached.
As we announced at the top, we are excited to have the opportunity to visit these pastors, people, and places in October 2023.
We look forward to spending a week with Pastor Giri, Pastor David, and other local pastors as we visit the people impacted by these projects and look at future project ideas to partner with. We will also have the opportunity to speak the Word to Believers and Hindus.
None of this would be possible without the Lord opening these doors and entrusting us with His work. And none of this would be possible without you, our supporters.
Your generous donation to CDI. Your donated items and your shopping at Treasures are making a difference. Thank you.
Please pray for the October trip; for safety for all involved, that the Lord will go before us to pave the way and to soften hearts, and that we would never speak or act outside of His will and purpose for the trip.
We look forward to updating you after our visit in October.
Working for HIS kingdom,
CDI