India Exciting To Missionary

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31321, 17 March 1967, Page 2

India Exciting To Missionary

Rising interest in Christianity in India, particularly among educated young persons, made working in the country exciting and stimulating for Mrs Pamela Truscott, a young mother of four, who has spent the last seven years in India with her evangelist husband.

Mr and Mrs Truscott will return in pine months to Poona, a university city 100 miles inland from Bombay, to continue their work.

Both think that students will form the church’s future leadership, and they plan to record tapes with an up-dated tempo for the Christian radio station in Manila. Mr Truscott was a music teacher and an adept jazz musician before going to India.

The couple plans to begin the half-hour tapes with modern music and lively interviews with well-known Christians. Brief sermons on topical themes will follow.

In this way they hope to reach the young Indians who walk the streets of the main cities, transistor radios pressed to their ears. Mr Truscott works with any Christian denomination which asks for bis services. His work is sponsored by individuals in churches of many denominations, and most support comes from New Zealand and Australis. Donations go into a trust, from which the Truscotts draw their income. “People are inclined to ask why missionaries continue going to India. They say the money should be spent elsewhere, as missionaries have been in India (or. a long time and it seems they have achieved very little,” she said. “But they have laid the groundwork and now we are seeing the results. “An important part of our task is to train young men to work and preach in the church. We believe the Indian people should run their own church.” Being a Christian in India was not easy. The people were very polite, interested and respectful, hut their attitude changed when a member of the family decided to become a Christian. If the

family was strongly Hindu er Moslem the Christian would often he east cut in disgrace. “Sn young men who enter the church usually know exactly what they are doing, and the pressures and prob* lems they face. But this is a family matter—l have found no anti-missionary feeling," said Mrs Truscott. Mrs Truscott believes that Christianity frees Indiana from bondage to idols which often makes their lot more difficult. In Bihar, where the failure of monsoons had made the food shortage even more acute, the people believed the gods were angry with them.-“ They take what little grain and money thpy have left and sacrifice it to the gods to appease them,” she said.

The Truscott family has been affected by food rationing in Poona. For the last year they have relied almost solely on food parcels sent from churches in New Zealand and elsewhere. Their youngest son, now a year old, has been reared on New Zealand milk powder. Mr and Mrs Truscott were born in Christchurch. Mrs Truscott is the daughter of the late Mr B. Williams, and Mrs Williams. Her husband’s parents are Mr and Mrs E. G. Truscott.