Nagaland is an Indian state in the North East of India bordering Myanmar. For many years the Nagas, who are divided into many different tribes and sub-tribes have been animists and headhunters. Only about 120 years ago American missionaries arrived in the area successfully leading the Nagas to Jesus. Because of their own cultural background and the customs of the time they introduced Southern Baptist Christianity to the Nagas often telling them, that their old ways of life had been sinful and needed to change.
Most all of the tribes turned to Christianity but a lot of their old tribal believes and the fear of spirits is still present. After a revival in the 70s and 80s many people are only nominal Christians and there are many problems in the families. Many of the young people are disappointed by the traditional ways of the church, leave it and get into troubles such as drugs and multiple relationships. There is a high rate of unemployment among the young Nagas.
As King's Kids South Asia we would like to reach out to the children in Nagaland, at a time before they are leaving the church and are involving in drugs and other harmful activities.
Following is a short description on Nagaland from the present exhibition in Basel:
Children’s Conference, a report
We are back and everything is over!
The beginning was a real fight, several of the children and some adults were sick. January 6th we met for the first time as a team. There were people from 9 different nations present and among them some children who later were highly involved in the conference and helped to run it. On this day we also met with some of the helpers and the Sunday school teachers who would later come together with the children. We talked about practical details of organization but also about the background of the conference and the vision we had to run it. More and more applications came this day. Till date we had only about 4 – 500 of the 5 – 6000 we had hoped for. And we realized that we needed quite some money to pay all the bills at the end.
The next day we went to the stadium to pray for the conference and to do a Jericho March around the whole area. The organizing team was still busy, running around, making phone calles and get things done.
But on Friday monring the children started to come, more and more … The tent filled up and at lunch time the 1200 ordered snacks were not enough to feed everybody. Till Sunday we had to order 1600 snacks and it was hardly enough. But we did realize that it was Gods grace to us that we did not have the expected 5000 children but “only” 1200. We would never have made it!
After an opening prayer by the YWAM regional leader Britta told the children about the vision she had to have such a childrens conference. After her we had the mayor of Dimapur speak to the children. He was the one who gave as the stadium for free and a wonderful Christian men. He challenged the children to become Missionaries and to let God use them.
Every day children in traditionel costumes brought gifts and flowers to the speakers. The children took their job very seriously.
Different groups were leading our daily worship times. It was wonderful to see how the children participated.
Two times every day there were workshops and the children were able to chose from many of them. Those times were not easy for the leaders as the children are very shy and hardly participate and are not answering questions. For most of the leaders, especially those who have never been to Nagaland before it was very unusual.
Often during worship times I just stood in the middst of the children and was rejoicing that a dream had become true.
The second day of the conference, an older pastor whom we had invited fort he opening prayer of the day said to me: We never had anything similar in Nagaland, a meetingin a stadium for children where all the tribes and different churches and ministries come together. He was very happy that this conference had become reality.
We did write history during this days!
The conference past too quickly and suddenly the last day, the last hour had come and it was time to say thankyou to the organizers and helpers. Ther certainly will be an other conference, we already have an invitation into another city in Nagaland.
Working together with the different people and ministries in Dimapur had been a real highlight, but it was also great to have the differnet YWAM teams with us who came to help .
Thank you all for praying for us and for helping with finances to be able to run the conference.
