Our daughter in Redmond just shared this amazing story with us: > In India they decided this year to have a number of youth gatherings in India, building on the youth conferences. Across the country, after analysis, they decided on having 100 youth gatherings. In one cluster, Itanja, in Udar Pradesh, 100 youth (74 not Baha’i and 26 Baha’is) came to a gathering in one village. A 12 member committee in the village simply met twice to organize the gathering. Villagers offered food and assistance to put it on. A day before the conference the committee home visited and invited many of the villagers to come clean the location, prepare food, bring mattresses, etc. In addition, 17 youth from other areas came to learn how to do a local youth gathering. They studied the youth materials, and on the second day one of the youth said “What is the Bahai Faith?” The committee decided that the next day they would take a break from the workshops and group people into small groups and teach them the Faith directly. Doing this 66 youth accepted the Faith, (leaving only 8 youth who remained not Baha’i) The last day of the conference they talked about all the core activities and decided to take an extended lunch to break into groups and practice the core activities people committed to doing. 21 committed to doing devotional meetings, so 21 teams went out to 21 local villager homes to practice doing a devotional meeting. They also went ready to teach the Faith if it arose, and during those 21 devotional meetings 36 more accepted the Faith (and those 21 devotional meetings will continue after the conference in the villager’s homes). Also at the conference they analyzed the local village. It has 155 families and 1400 people, with 330 involved in a core activities. The youth committed to have 11 more devotions (in addition to the 21), 4 children’s classes, 10 study circles, and 10 junior youth groups. Before leaving a girl couldn’t find her notebook and weeped and weeped because it had everything she learned. Everyone stayed to help her look for her notebook until they found it. The village headman came and asked if they could hold a study circle in his home so his family could be exposed to the same spirit. The point is that this round of youth gatherings is different. They are close to the grassroots and putting theory and action together. This seems to be the nature of the over 100 youth gatherings this year in India.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 01:26:55 +0000
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