Barnabas Ministries partners with an Indian orphanage called Misbahs Orphan Home. We have worked with this fine ministry since 2006, and rejoice at how God has favored it from very small beginnings until today.
My good friend and colleague, Pastor Samuel Katikala, started this faith ministry in 2003 with the purchase of a two-room house in the city of Bapatla, Andhra Pradesh, S. India. He titled the property to Liberty Gospel Ministries (a charity he founded and registered with the Indian government) and placed it under the governance of the LGM Board of Directors.
In his goings about to preach and minister throughout his region, Samuel had often seen ill-clad and under nourished boys and girls. He recognized the hunger in their faces and felt their pain because he himself knew hunger as a child.
Samuel could not leave them with a, “God bless you. Be thou warmed and filled.” He felt compelled to do something! Sometimes he brought them into his own house and fed them with his own children, though they themselves had barely enough.
Once he had a place to begin, he soon gathered a dozen or more children from the coastal fishing camps, farming villages among the rice paddies, city streets, and a leper colony. These children either had no parents (some orphaned in the 2004 Tsunami), or a widowed parent unable to provide, or parents who were reduced to begging because of leprosy. The tiny house he brought them into didn’t look like much, but in it these little ones were fed, loved, and kept safe from the elements – a new experience to most of them.
Since 2007, Barnabas Ministries has aided with steady improvements to the orphans’ house, and with special needs such as medicine, and school supplies. clothing. At Christmas we provide new clothes.
Step by step, under Samuel’s leadership, the two-room house was enlarged, improved, and eventually transformed into an attractive two-story building with indoor plumbing. There was room for about 30 children there with boys and girls segregated on separate floors.
In 2009 we partnered with Pastor Samuel to add 3 rooms on the side of the original house,effectively doubling their floor space.
In 2011 Barnabas helped them add a 2nd floor, doubling their space again.
In 2014, construction of new buildings was begun on a new campus site just outside of Bapatla. The initial phase is now completed with two dormitories, a dining hall, administration building and a chapel. Future plans call for a Christian grade school and high school.
God has continually grown this ministry until today more than 60 children live at Misbahs Home. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of those who help Barnabas Ministries, we continue helping Samuel to carry on and enlarge this worthy ministry. We provide funds for their Back-to-School needs (school clothes, books & supplies, backpacks, etc.) in June. At Christmas we provide gifts of clothing for the orphans, and for local widows and pastors.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these… ye did it unto Me.”