India (MNN) — A special group of students in India are about to celebrate the completion of their first-ever school year.
Regan Miller with Mission India tells us, “In India, one in four adults is illiterate. If you’ve never had an education, there’s so much you don’t know: your rights in society, or why you should maintain a clean home, how to feed your kids nutritious food, when to take your kids to the doctor.”
She explains, “It’s really difficult especially [for] parents in India to maintain a clean home or to have consistent income. Some are so desperate for income that they even send their kids to work instead of school. So then the cycle just continues and poverty becomes a generational issue.”
For these men and women, Mission India’s adult literacy classes are the start of a new life.
An Adult Literacy Class with Mission India. (Photo courtesy of Mission India via Facebook)
“When they [are] done, they’ll have a fifth grade level education in reading, writing and math,” Miller says. “They’ll be able to count money, they’ll be able to open a bank account, they’ll be able to read the bus signs so that they can take transportation around town.”
Mission India believes that this holistic lifting up of a person’s life is part of what Jesus meant when He said in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
“He came to change our lives not just for eternity, but for today,” Miller says.
Every literacy class is led by Christian teachers, who keep the gospel at the core of the class. The Bible is one of the first texts that students read.
“As students start to see that everything they’re learning is a gift from God, they also are learning Scripture in the process. They come to put it together that Jesus is who is blessing them,” Miller says.
“They’re learning these new skills, they’re being spiritually changed. So many of them end up receiving Christ as Savior as a result.”
Please pray! Miller says, “We would love prayers over these students as they finish out their year, that they will be persevering to the finish line and be excited about what they’re learning and eager to pass it on — especially [what] they’re learning about Christ.”
Connect with Mission India here to read about students like Bisma and Kishu whose lives were transformed through literacy classes.
Header photo courtesy of Mission India.
