Women Growing in Faith and Strength

Rachel Chimits

World Challenge’s partners in India are working to help widows and their daughters discover the hope and purpose God has for their lives.

Amara* was crushed when her husband died from COVID-19 in April. She was left to support her two children as well as their grandmother alone. As if the grief and being the home’s sole source of income weren’t enough, she also had to contend with enormous medical bills from her husband’s hospitalization.

Fortunately, she met World Challenge’s partners who offer a tailoring program for older girls and single mothers. This training teaches young ladies how to sew clothes that they can sell and turn into cottage industries. The companionship and hearing the gospel often starts these women on the road to transformation. These courses can offer widows like Amara hope in what otherwise might be a very dark and desperate time in their lives.

Even being around other widows who are forging a new life can be an enormous source of encouragement and open doors to the gospel.

The Power of a Simple Gift

Another family that our partners have met and begun to help is Gulika* and her twin daughters. They were in deep poverty when the team met them in June. Gulika’s husband had contracted COVID earlier in 2020 and passed away; as she was attempting to make ends meet, there had been an accident where she was badly electrocuted. The injury and pain had sharply reduced how much work she was able to do while she recovered.

Their home was a collection of tin pieces draped with tarps and covered by a sheet metal roof. They found a door to prop up in front of their home, but since there were no real walls, it offered only the illusion of security.

The team offered to build Gulika and her daughters a more permanent house, one with brick walls and a solid roof that would not blow away or leak during the rainy season. In the meantime, they discovered that the twins had stopped going to school because they couldn’t afford any kind of transportation.

Through World Challenge’s donations, they were able to fix up two bicycles for Gulika’s daughters. It was the first time any of them had seen the girls smile. They were delighted to be able to start 11th grade with the rest of their friends. While it may seem like a small thing, education for girls in India makes them exponentially less likely to end up the victims of abuse, child labor and early marriage.

Trusting the Lord’s Provision

One of the greatest struggles in ministry is wanting to help everyone as much as possible but also needing to entrust people to God. Our Father is the only one who can truly transform people’s hearts and fuel ministry work.

Our partner wrote, “So many times, I have felt like the Lord must be supernaturally ‘multiplying’ the funds for ministry like the flour and the oil in Elijah’s day (see 1 Kings 17) or when Christ multiplied the loaves and fish. It sometimes seems like donations and funds are low, yet we’re regularly increasing the volume of ministry to the needy in India, and still about the same balance remains in the account. Only he knows for sure, but we are thankful!”

Please pray that all would be done for God’s glory and that Jesus’ perfect will be fulfilled in all that takes place through our ministries in India. Pray for Amara and Gulika and the many families like theirs that God is reaching through our partners. Pray that many would come to know Christ.

“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17, ESV).

 

*Not real name. For our ministry partners’ security, we don’t release names or locations in highly sensitive areas.