Bless Ministries for Social Service
Tilheri, Jabalpur, India
I am Pastor Jai Sidney. My family and I are the pastoral family for the Bless Ministries Church of Tilheri, India. God has given me chance to spread the gospel in both the Andhra and Madhya Pradesh for the past ten years. By God's grace, we minister and serve seven hundred families in the backward rural areas of the Pradesh. Additionally, for the last six years we have been caring for fifty orphaned children, training them up in both spiritual and educational ways using the Word of God.
I was born in a Christian family with three brothers and two sisters. My father worked in the Indian Railway Department as a locomotive driver. My mother was a house wife that cared for our home and raised our family in the ways of the Lord. In 1984 my father took a voluntary retirement from his job in order that I could enroll in the Engineering college in Mumbai. This was still not enough for the college, so I lived as a paying guest while continuing my education.
I continued to face many financial difficulties but I believed and trusted Jesus Christ to help me. The Holy Spirit showed me a part time job that was available in the college. I applied for the job and worked for the college until I graduated. After graduation I was able to obtain a good paying job that took care of me and allowed me to help my family also. Now that I had a good job, my parents decided to find me a young woman to marry. In 1996 I was married to Madhavi, a young woman who had finished her Bachelor of Science degree. Madhavi is a God fearing woman, and together, we prayed every day for the Lord to bless us with a good life. In that same year my mother passed away and is in the peace and rest of God's kingdom.
Shortly after this, I was reading in the Bible, and when I stopped to pray I felt Jesus say, "Follow me". The entire day this same voice stuck in my mind and spirit. One evening I talked with my wife about what I heard. She felt I saw a dream, but I felt Jesus had chosen me for a specific purpose. The next day I met a missionary group and I asked them how to start preaching? They told me if you really want the serve the Lord, you much enroll in a theological college. I continued to prayed about this matter until we had been married for six months. I resigned from my engineering job so that I would have time to attend bible college. My family and my wife opposed the decision to resign from my job because my salary was essential for our family to survive. That year, 1997, I enrolled in the Theological Pastoral Center in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh and we remained there until my graduation in 2003.
This time was difficult because our work only provided 1800 rupees per month and it was hard to do my theological studies and work at the same time. During this time my wife had three miscarriages and her family encouraged her to come back home. God's plan was different. My wife conceived again and in the third month some missionaries left her with ten orphaned children to care for. By the time she shared the Word of God and hymns with the children each day, she found her responsibilities too important to return to her mother's home. She has been care for the children for years as part of our ministry work.
We have two children of our own now, Dennis our son, and Anna our daughter.
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In 2001 my wife and I started receiving support from a prayer group in our area that allowed us to rent a room in Tilheri, Jabalpur for starting a new prayer group. On our first Sunday we had fifteen people, which grew so we started calling ourselves the Calvary Evangelical Church of Tilheri, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. We now have 210 members that are made up from 7 bible workers, 5 elders, and 45 children. The ministry has grown to where we now minister in the urbans areas where we teach the bible, conduct women prayer meetings, Sunday Schools, youth meetings, bible studies, and regular fasting and prayer meetings. We began using calling our ministry outreach the Christian Organization for Social Service.
In 2006 we connected with an organization called Compassion East India People who helped us with feeding our orphaned children. Their support allowed us to grow until we were feeding 300 orphans a day. This support continued until 2016 when they stop their support. Though our church ministry is being able to support the work of ministry, we are having difficulty feed all the children even two day a week.
In 2016 , we opened a Primary school with my wife teaching the classes. The extra income helps our family to survive.
We started searching for ministries that we could turn to for assistance, but most many of them do not believe in the Bible as their rule of faith and practice or they are not offering help for the huge challenges we face. Pastor Kondal Rao, from Rajahmundry, told us of a ministry that has a vision to assist ministries and that God has chosen them to spread the Word of God in India. I made contact with Bless Ministries Mobile USA and we began growing a partnership with them. Because we had never officially establish our church we chose to change our name to Bless Ministries Church of Tilheri, India and our outreach is Bless Ministries for Social Services.
The Lord has given us a good congregation that wants to make a difference in people's lives by doing much more than just share a lot of facts. The church offerings maintains our ministry work as we continue to be involved in small group bible studies and volunteer work that supports our local communities. We believe a mission field is best determined by the needs of lost and the hurting in that community.
Through Bless Ministries Mobile USA God has given us opportunity to spread the truth of God’s word and protect many souls as they help us plan and build a sustainable program in our ministry.
COSS Fundraisers
We have joined with Give India to develop two fundraisers for helping those among us who have become victims of the Covid1-19 virus and for people who have lost their sources of income due to the governmental shutdowns. If you would please view our fundraisers and help us click the following link: COSS Funderaisers.
Thank you so much for view our ministry page. Pray for our work, and pray for what you can do to help us reach the many people who have not heard about Jesus yet. Click on the donate button to make a donation. If you donate, please put my name in the notes of the donations form.
Thank you for your generosity and kindness.