Dimapur (India) TERM seminar, Jan. 31- Feb. 3

Teaching in Dimapur was a real adventure!

Dimapur is in Nagaland, a renegade state of northeast India bodering Myanmar. Because there is a separatist war going on in that province, we had to obtain special permits issued by the government to enter the region. A ceasefire agreement expired -- and was renewed(!) -- while we were there.

The Naga people are made up of a variety of small tribal groups ethnically distinct from the Indians. They look Tibetan or southeast Asian, and even their food is closer to Chinese than Indian.

Nagas lack a common language and speak 60 different dialects belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Their trade language is Nagamese (a mixture of tribal languages) and their official state language is English. We found our Naga friends to be warm and friendly!

The climate was significantly cooler and drier than south India. It was pretty dusty all over the place.

Because the culture was different, the dress was different up here too. You didn't see as many colorful saris on the streets.

Nagaland was evangelized by missionaries many years ago, but there is a high percentage of nominal Christians and much of the Christianity is mixed with tribal animism. The purpose of our TERM seminar was to help the Naga people gain a clear understanding of the Gospel and be able to teach it clearly and effectively.

We taught a group of more than 70 pastors, missionaries, youth workers, Bible college teachers and students. They came from 35 different tribal groups!

These 4th-year Bible school students were hand picked by their professors to attend our TERM seminar. They expressed their gratitude for coming so far to teach them these precious truths. One student said:

"As students, we always have doubts and confusions like, 'Why Jesus have to die on the cross?' or 'How can the Trinity be God the Father and Son and Holy Spirit at the same time?' These are so confusing and we always talked about them in our classroom and with our teachers, asking why and how, but we never got clear answers that satisfied us. But after coming to this seminar, starting from the beginning of Genesis and studying till the end, this has been a very good for us. We are very clear now, and I assure you that all of our friends here attending this seminar we will be able to go and teach what we have learned here."