I was very privileged to grow up in a Christian home. Growing up, my parents were always looking for Christian movies for my siblings and me to watch. When I was about 10 years old, they bought a movie called “Beyond the Next Mountain”.
The movie is about a young boy in India who was from a small village in the mountains. When his father was young, a Welsh missionary visited their village and the boy’s father was one of the missionary’s first converts. Since there was no Bible in the tribes language, the boy’s father decided to send his son to the nearest school to learn English, so that the boy would be able to translate the word of God into their language. The rest of the movie is about the rest of the boy’s life as he grows into a man, and eventually finished translating the Bible into his language.
As a kid, I loved this movie! (And if you haven’t watched it, you certainly should! 🙂 )
Skip forward 10 or so years. I had all but forgotten about the movie that I loved so much when I was a kid. I have always loved India, ever since reading a book about Amy Carmichael and her work here. This spring, I felt God calling me to India, so I applied and got accepted to a Passport trip through Adventures.
The first night in India, we are sitting down with our ministry host, who is telling us a little about the ministry and what we will be doing while our team is in India. He mentioned the man who founded the ministry, whose name is Rev. Dr. Rochunga Podiate (Uncle Ro). I thought, “Huh, that name sounds a little familiar!”, and the movie that I had watched as a little kid popped into my mind. But I thought, “Surely that isn’t the name of the guy in the movie!” The next moment the ministry host says, “And they actually made a movie about his life; it’s called Beyond the Next Mountain!”
I was meeting the people who were continuing the ministry of that little boy in the movie I had watched so many times, many years before! The name of the little boy (Rochunga’s) tribe is the Hmar (pronounced MAR) tribe, and this tribe is now largely Christian, due to work of Uncle Ro. The next night I watched the movie once again, this time sitting in a room in India, with two of Uncle Ro’s nephews sitting beside me.
I came to realize that God has been calling me to work amongst the Hmar tribe for much longer than I knew!
I don’t know what the future holds for me, but if it included returning to continue ministering to the people here, I know that I would be more than happy to!
This is a picture of me and one of Uncle Ro’s nephews, James.
