Philip in Asia
Serving the Church

Dear praying friend

          Happy Easter! I wish you joy and confidence in Jesus' resurrection.

          Thank you for connecting and praying with me on my journey to reflect the victory of Jesus in India. In this letter I tell you a story about my experiences with a friend.

           Pritam is an artist who paints in Delhi. One day, he came to my apartment and taught me how to cook spicy lentils in his village style. I listened to Pritam passionately explain the meaning of his paintings.

           Over time I watched Pritam's interest grow in spiritual things. He knew and respected me as a follower of Jesus and our friendship grew through our shared interest in art.

          One day Pritam told me he was returning to his village to visit his home. I asked if I could join him and Pritam's eyes lit up.

          The train swayed through the night and the morning sun spilled warmth on fields. Our car bounced over dirt roads shaded by palm trees and bamboo and we arrived at Pritam's home in his village. There was a house with a thatched straw roof in which Pritam's father was born and next to it stood a home made of bricks that were baked from clay from a nearby field.

          Before entering his home Pritam poured water over my feet. "The water will cool your whole body from the heat," Pritam's father explained. We sat down in a room filled with books from Tolstoy to Tagore and walls covered with paintings by Pritam's father. I was handed a glass of lassi--a yogurt drink--and our conversation flowed from the meaning of the paintings to life in the village.

          Pritam's father's eyes filled with nostalgia as he recalled his Japanese classmate who visited his home in the village in 1972. "My Japanese friend couldn't eat rice with his hands so I made chop sticks from bamboo plants and the whole village came to watch him eat with sticks," Pritam's father recalled with a smile. And here I was, another esteemed foreign guest in the family home in the village.

          My visit to Pritam's village happened to be during the annual festival of their god. Village priests built an image in Pritam's house and the extended family travelled back to the ancestral home to join in the worship. Priests sat in front of the image and chanted sacred texts hour after hour. They performed with crashing cymbals a fire ceremony in which a lamp of fire is circulated in front of the image. A priest walked the lamp of fire through the home to extend the blessing of the god to each person. The family ate food offered to the deity.

          In a temple near Pritam's house priests sat cross-legged on the ground and sang before the image of the god from morning through the whole day and into the next morning. The youth of the village danced around the image with loud cymbals in their hands. The worship throbbed through the window next to my bed as I went to sleep with a prayer.

          On my last evening in the village Pritam's father expressed his ideals to me and challenged me to join him. We sat face to face in a small room with stacks of yellowed newspapers on cement shelves. "I keep the newspapers as an archive to analyze society," he said.  Turning back to me he grew more passionate. "We need a new world. A world that will be created by world citizens," Pritam's father told me with a gleam. "Will you join me?" he asked.

          Pritam's father turned out to be a Marxist materialist. Beneath his family's observance of religious tradition he was a humanist who believed in the ideals of the brotherhood of all of mankind and the ultimate triumph of science.

          "Will you join me?" Pritam's father asked me again. I looked at Pritam's father and said "Well," pausing in thought and then my convictions gushed. I told of the creator of the universe and his requirements to love him and each other, I told of a fallen society as evidenced in the newspaper and of the failure in my own life. I told of God's salvation and of the brotherhood of God's new community through his salvation that transcends all human distinctions.

          Pritam's father smiled. He liked everything I had to say. What I said about the greatness of Jesus was to him one more equal way to express the human march towards progress.

          Please pray for the unique hope in Jesus to touch my friends' lives in India. And please pray for me as I prepare to share God's Word in an Easter sunrise home meeting this Sunday and as my church reaches out to the community surrounding it with the news of Good Friday and Easter. Thank you for prayerfully participating with me in the victory of Jesus and all it means for the people of India.

          I wish you a meaningful remembrance of Jesus' death and great joy in his resurrection.

Serving Jesus with you,

Philip Baarendse

Pritam is an artist who paints in my Delhi neighborhood

We drive along a dirt road as a family passes on a bicycle

Pritam's neighbors re-thatch the roof of their home

village youth dance with loud clashing cymbals around the image of their deity

Pritam's father tells me about his ideals and I tell him about God's salvation

I float with members of my church on a river on the day of my 40th birthday

our church squeezes into one of our homes to pray a week before Easter

I am thankful for the prayer and support that enables me to serve in India