Protestant Beginnings
Dr. Wesley
Holiness
Orthodox Beginnings
Healings
Cathechesis
Churching Campaign
Opposition: Astonishment
Hindu "tolerance"
Baptism
Holy Liturgy
New Orthodox Christians
Care for the Church
We continue last year’s interview with Father Athanasius Kone from Hawaii, recounting his mission in India (Tuni, Andhra Pradesh) in the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019. Father Athanasius was assisted by Hieromonk Efraim (Poonen), who for 23 years was a cell attendant of Father Ephraim (Moraitis) in Arizona and is now the spiritual father of St. Nilus Sorsky’s Skete in Alaska. We supplement the interview with material from the journal kept by Father Efraim.
Protestant Beginnings
I was a Protestant in Alaska and, in November of 2000, I went to India to do a mission to help establish an orphanage and to do some preaching. One way they do evangelism in India as Protestants is that they do services like orphanages. This shows people that there’s something alive about Christ because it’s not something that’s been done before. We were helping them to purchase the land, so that they could build a building to house 300 orphans.
I went with a team and a pastor who was my very best friend. We went and preached to very large groups, 2000-3000 people at a time. We would preach and try to read the Gospel, in the morning and at night.
Back in the U.S. we would raise some money. I didn’t go back, but the person who was the main contact [Dr. Wesley] came a couple times to the United States to raise money. And so I spent time with him, and I stayed in contact with him over the years.
Dr. Wesley
Dr. Wesley grew up in a Hindu household. He converted when he was 17 years old. His conversion to Christ was so meaningful and real that he changed absolutely his life. He left and was almost disowned by his family. He became a Christian, he went to seminary and even got a doctorate in theology, somewhere in Indonesia. Then he went back to India, and he started doing ministry to establish churches. He is an astounding missionary. He’s a man of action and he’s a man of great faith and fervor. He and his brother, Joshi-Paul, helped establish a network of 500 pastors and 45,000 laypeople. He has five children.
Sunday, September 23, 2018. Dr. Wesley used to be well-off financially. But when the support from abroad for his 200 orphans dried up, he started selling everything he owned in order to support them out of his own pocket. Likewise, his wife, Divya, sold whatever gold jewelry she had (which would have been the dowry that would enable her daughters to get married). And now that he has spent all his money, he is in debt. Moreover, he doesn’t have his own house because his landlord evicted them with one hour’s notice after he started falling behind in his rent. The orphanage closed in 2010.
Holiness
When I became Orthodox, Dr. Wesley was kind of upset at me. He was like, "Brother, why are you leaving the faith, why are you going off this weird way?” And he kept asking, "Why don’t you come do something in India?” I said, "I can’t, I’m Orthodox and I won’t do anything with a Protestant ministry.” So in 2017—I had stayed in touch with him—I think I had a picture of me on Facebook, and Dr. Wesley emails me back and he goes, "What happened to you, brother, you look completely different, you have something that I don’t remember you having, you look like you have holiness now, how did you get this?” I said, "Oh, I’m not holy at all, but this is what I was trying to explain to you about Orthodoxy”, He goes, "What is this, Orthodoxy?” So I started doing catechism with him via Facebook Messenger. Early in the morning, I would answer questions and show him books and videos, and he became pretty astounded by Orthodoxy because he said, "You know, Protestants don’t have holiness—we think we do, but we have nothing that will actually make a person holy.” He said, "I’m so frustrated without being holy, and Orthodoxy has holiness.”
This is the thing that is so hard for Protestants to see in Orthodoxy; they don’t always get to the idea that holiness is at the very essence of what it means to be Orthodox. This is what a saint is: a saint is someone who is so deeply holy that they become like God. This is something they can’t even fathom, but when they actually understand what’s being said, it astounds them, and they become hungry for it because they’ve been longing for it their whole lives.
Orthodox Beginnings
Dr. Wesley started going through this process, and he had this group of churches that he had founded. So he began to share things about Orthodoxy with his group of leaders, and they became more and more interested in Orthodoxy. At first, there was a group of 12 pastors who were interested in Orthodoxy, and he invited me to go and talk with them because they were interested in becoming Orthodox. And so I said, "Well, yeah, sure, I will come to India, and I will speak with them and explain Orthodoxy and do public teaching, and we will take it from there.” Well, this group of 12 grew into a group of 50, and then into a group of 100, basically. This is why we were talking all the time, every day, via Facebook Messenger.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018. I found out from Fr. Athanasius that the whole purpose of this conference of 500 pastors was for him to speak to them about Orthodoxy. So he has prepared 12 catechetical homilies in order to bring them up to speed in their understanding of Orthodoxy. But even he doesn’t have a clear idea of what to expect. Part of the challenge will be the language barrier, since most of them don’t know English. We’ll see how God works through us and them.
When we got there, there were about 200 pastors who were interested in becoming Orthodox. I ended up having to do much of the preaching, and we preached every day, maybe two or three times a day sometimes. I had a blessing from my bishop to talk about the Orthodox Church. And so we would talk about what is the Orthodox Church, what is this holiness, how this Church that you might not have heard about is the original Church and how it’s the fullness of the expression of the Truth. People began to just respond, not in opposition but respond with, "Well, tell us more, how do we get more?”
Friday, September, 21. At noon, we headed out to the conference center for the first meeting with the pastors. Dr. Wesley explained to us that about 50 of them are from villages and have no idea that there is a such thing as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. All they know is the Bible (which they have in their native language, Telugu) and they believe in Christ with much simplicity. The other 200 or so pastors today are from cities, and they understand a little about Catholicism and Protestantism. But even they know what they know primarily from word of mouth, not from reading books about it. So there is a great deal of ignorance prevailing here. It will be quite a challenge for Fr. Athanasius to convey the deep message of Orthodox Christianity to such people when they are at such an elementary level. It is especially difficult because they don’t have any Orthodox books in Telugu, and very few of them know English well enough to read such books in English.
Saturday, September 22, 2018. Fr. Athanasius made another presentation to the people about the importance of continuous repentance. He felt that this would be an important message for them, since he as a former Protestant has a sense of what aspects of their spirituality are typically lacking.
Friday, September 28, 2018. I was explaining to Dr. Wesley that the Protestant kind of music they are using now is something that evokes an emotional excitement, whereas Orthodox music evokes spiritual feelings of humility, repentance, and love.
Saturday, September 29, 2018. It brings me great joy to participate in this tremendous work that God is doing with these wonderful people in India. I am especially filled with joy when I have the opportunity to interact one-on-one with the good people here. Unfortunately for me, though, the only people I can really interact with (due to their inability to speak English) are a couple of the educated pastors and a few college students.
Sunday, September 30, 2018. He is very pleased with the spiritual growth Dr. Wesley has made these past ten days. Fr. Athanasius said that he has grasped one of the hardest things for Protestants to internalize: the concept of humbly admitting our weaknesses and sins, and that we need continual repentance for this. He remarked that this is typically especially challenging for Protestant leaders because they usually try to present an image to others that they are strong and above temptations. So Fr. Athanasius is very hopeful that Dr. Wesley and his people will continue to learn and grow and mature in a genuinely Orthodox way.
Healings
Every time we would do the talk, we would take some of the holy myrrh [from the Hawaii Iveron Icon of the Mother of God] and we would anoint people. This is kind of astounding, but people kept getting healed. They said there were over 50 documented healings from us anointing people from that first trip. And, people asked me, "What did you pray?” I said that I would just pray and say: "Most Holy Theotokos, you know the problems here with this person, just please ask your Son to heal this person.” And we’d pray for hundreds of people, hundreds and hundreds, actually. And so much so, that people were stopping us in the street and they were asking us to pray for them.
Friday, September, 21. At the end of today’s sessions, Fr. Athanasius and I anointed with the myrrh of the Hawaiian myrrh-streaming icon any of the people who wished to be blessed by it. More than half of the people came up, and it was nice to have a brief one-on-one interaction with these very pious people.
After the conferences, we went back to our hotel. I sat around with Dr. Wesley’s family in his hotel room, while they asked me questions about my life. He asked me some tough, direct questions, such as: "Have you seen God?” "Have you healed anybody?” I told him truthfully that I am not at that level, although I was at least able to tell him a little about Elder Ephraim’s experiences of God and how there have been very many healings with the myrrh of the Hawaiian icon of the Theotokos.
Monday September 24, 2018. On our drive back, we passed by this blue Roman Catholic Church, and stopped to take some photos. We were there only a minute before a young lady came up to us in tears, asking for prayers for her 2-year-old daughter with a fever. Our attire is especially striking to people in India, and they have great piety.
Sunday, September 23, 2018. We headed out to Dr. Wesley’s church in Tuni for the Sunday service. But it turned out that his "church” is just a bunch of chairs under a homemade tent set up in the middle of the small street that his brother lives on!
After we arrived, they stopped their music, and Fr. Athanasius began his sermon. He spoke for about an hour total, including the time for his sentences to be translated. He gave a sermon trying to emphasize points of Orthodox spirituality that Protestants typically overlook, such as the importance of humility and repentance.
After his sermon, both of us put on our stoles and anointed everyone with myrrh from the myrrh-streaming icon of Hawaii. We also placed our stoles over many of the people and said prayers for whatever they wanted. They were all very grateful. Several of them expressed their gratitude by bowing and touching our feet.
Thursday, September 27, 2018. Joshi-Paul informed us that over the past couple of days, 19 people were healed at one place we preached, 8 people at another, and 20 at another! After every sermon Fr. Athanasius gives, we both put on our stoles, anoint people with myrrh from the Hawaiian icon, and place our stoles over them while we say a few prayers for them in our own words silently. I think the reason why so many people are being healed is partly because of all the grace of the Hawaiian icon, and partly because of the strong faith of the people. It is very moving to witness their deep piety. They are treating us as if we are angels that have descended from Heaven.
Cathechesis
Wednesday, September 26, 2018. Dr. Wesley’s wife told him today that she is now certain that she wants to become Orthodox. Her decision is based partly on the things she has heard Fr. Athanasius preach and partly on the Orthodox books in English brought by Fr. Athanasius that she has been reading these days. She is a very pious woman of prayer. It is not unusual for her to spend five hours in prayer every day. And when she fasts, she goes 40 days without food and drinking only water.
Monday, September 30, 2018. As for Dr. Wesley and Joshi-Paul, the 500 pastors, and the 45,000 laypeople eager to become Orthodox, we will see what God has in store for them. They have so much to learn, but also so much potential. The harvest is ready but the workers are few. Fr. Athanasius has gotten the ball rolling, and now the future of these Indians will be in the hands of God and of the hierarchs of the Church.
The response when we were leaving was, "Please, we have to know more, please send another priest. Come back, we need to know more about catechism, we want to become baptized.” And I couldn’t go back because I’m a parish priest, so I had to find another priest. I knew another priest who had done missions, so I got him to come, and we set it up that there was going to be catechism for 30 pastors for five days, all day long. He was just going to catechize groups of 30. We thought that if we can catechize the pastors, then they can begin to teach the people in their little village churches everywhere and begin to do Orthodox formation. So this was done and people responded so much so—this was in November-December 2018—that they wanted to be baptized. We had to do something to take this fervor that was being built.
In November some professional translators in India were hired to translate into Telugu the book by Fr. Seraphim Bell entitled "Discovering the Rich Heritage of Orthodoxy.” This book answers the questions that Protestants typically have when exposed to Orthodoxy. And then in December, Fr. Seraphim himself went to India!
He stayed there for more than two weeks and did an intense seven-day, all-day catechism for two different groups of 30 pastors. Then those 60 pastors went back to their parishes and passed on to their parishioners what they had learned. As a result, there were hundreds of people who learned the basics of Orthodox Christianity and wanted to be baptized immediately!
Meanwhile, that professional group of translators continued translating more essential texts into Telugu. In particular they completed (or almost completed) the following: The Catechism of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich, The Typica Service, The Baptism Service, The Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, 5 small books of Fr. Daniel Sysoev, elements from the book The Truth of our Faith by Elder Cleopa.
Churching Campaign
I was blessed by Metropolitan Hilarion to go back and baptize people. So in February of 2019, we went and baptized.
Baptizing a thousand people is not so easy! Especially in a third-world country where widespread poverty makes everything difficult. Fr. Athanasius and Dr. Wesley and many others in India have been working hard for months now, trying to solve all the logistics of this huge task. In fact, Dr. Wesley was devoting so much time and energy to this that he even collapsed out of exhaustion before we arrived.
Fr. Athanasius invited me and Fr. George Maximov from Russia to help out. Fr. George has experience doing missionary work in the Philippines. He is bringing with him two other people from Russia: Sister Ioanna and Anastasia.
The other person joining us on this mission trip is Sister Paraskevi. She is one of the nuns at my monastery in Alaska, St. Nilus Skete. She will be teaching the Indians how to make prosphora and will also be speaking to the women about prayer. We would like to give Holy Communion to all the newly illumined people we baptize, so we are going to have to bake prosphora in India!
Opposition: Astonishment
Friday, February 1, 2019. Today is the big day we start baptizing! We arrived to the baptism place, which was in the middle of a rice field.
In all, 97 people signed up for baptism.
Fr. George and Fr. Athanasius got vested, but I stayed at the names table to try to keep some sense of order there. They began to do the exorcism part of the baptism service, and then Fr. Athanasius asked me to get vested too and join them because there were too many people and he needed help. Meanwhile, some trouble was stirring. The place where we were gathered was owned by some Hindu guy who gave us his permission to use his field and tanks. But when his Hindu neighbors saw all the commotion and the Christian people gathering there, they approached that Hindu guy and started threatening him. There were more and more Hindus gathering and starting to shout and get all riled up. Thirty of our pastors approached Dr. Wesley and said to him that they would defend us in order to enable us to proceed with the baptisms. Many of the women who were being baptized were quite upset with the interruption and told the protesting Hindus that they had a right to be baptized, since they have the right to choose their religion. The police also showed up, but this was not necessarily a good thing, because they are very corrupt. Dr. Wesley didn’t want to proceed in a spirit of commotion and strife, so he decided that it would be most prudent to call off the baptisms for today. Joshi-Paul was worried that things might get violent, and so he told Sr. Paraskevi: "You need to get into the car because the Hindus are calling reinforcements to attack us!”
We had only managed to baptize about 43 of the 97 people.
We were doing the baptisms and, all of a sudden, this troop of people came, and they were militant, and they were going to crush the meeting and they were threatening to do violence. The women who were there to be baptized actually went out to talk to the militant Hindus and told them, "You can’t tell us what to do, we will fight for our right to be baptized.” And there was going to be a big conflict there, so the pastor who was in charge and had invited us there, he just fell apart with fear, "We have to shut this down immediately; this is going to end up in a bloodshed.”
It was an astounding thing, we’re doing this baptism out in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden, it was just like all hell broke loose, and nothing could work. And this show shook the Protestant pastors; they didn’t even know what to do for a couple days. They were just terrified that they were going to be hurt by these militant Hindus, who were extremely belligerent and trying to do everything they could to intimidate and harm.
And this was the first day that we did baptisms. From that moment, everything went wrong: [there were] drivers who got sick, people who were in the hospital because their wives almost died. Everything that could go wrong was just going wrong.
Saturday, February 2, 2019. Dr. Wesley was dumbfounded at the tumult caused by our baptizing, especially when he put it in perspective of his past experiences preaching. He said that in his 30 years of preaching, not once had he ever had this kind of protest. This is especially noteworthy, considering that he has converted Hindus and publicly preached to groups as large as 40,000 people in a stadium without incident, whereas this small gathering of 100 people out in the boondocks in a rice field got a whole write-up in the paper, 36 photos in social media, and reporters asking for bribes! It was clear to Dr. Wesley and to everyone that the demons are aware of the magnitude of what is going on here.
Tuesday, February 5. Almost everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. All our translators except for Dr. Wesley got sick. Joshi-Paul (our best translator) had to be with his wife in the hospital. And our drivers either got sick or decided not to show up. Again and again, we would make a plan in the evening for the following day, but by morning something would prevent us from following our plan.
Hindu "tolerance"
[In some states of India] it’s not forbidden to preach; it’s forbidden to convert Hindus. But we weren’t, we were simply baptizing people who were already Christians.
I don’t think they tell people outside of India, but Hinduism is completely fractured. There are such theological fights inside of India right now about doctrinal things, about how to express Hinduism themselves. There are three major camps. They can’t agree on hardly anything. There’s no cohesive thing of what does it mean to be Hindu.
It’s very dangerous to be a Christian in India, people are persecuted. They have to be very careful; they have difficulties at times, but they said that they were tolerated, and they had never had persecution like what happened the day we started doing baptisms.
Sunday, February 3, 2019. We found out that 5 cars full of fundamentalist Hindus came to the local pastor (who was later baptized) who had hosted our baptism service the other day.
They had seen the newspaper article (which incorrectly stated that we were baptizing Hindus), and they threatened him. They didn’t do anything bad to him, but he was rather shaken up by the event.
Wednesday, February 13. During our trip, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, announced: "India can deal with the militant Pakistan groups. India can deal with the Maoist terrorist groups. But India is going to have a real problem with Christians!” He has such a strong anti-Christian stance because he is a fundamentalist Hindu. His political party, the BJP, is making life difficult for Christians throughout India, including those whom we were dealing with. May God strengthen them to deal with the direct and indirect forms of persecution they are facing and will face.
Baptism
We were supposed to baptize 1000 people, but because of the chaos that happened we baptized about 360 people. It was astonishing. If you baptize about 25 people a day, there’s so much grace, it’s an astounding thing. I can’t express how otherworldly you are left even though you’re so exhausted and tired and your body is sore and you’re hot and you’re sunburned. We were able to baptize people for about 10 days.
Saturday, February 2, 2019. After breakfast we arrived at the orphanage center, ready to baptize 150 people. But some government event took place in order to help people start their own business. As a result, only 20 people came for baptism today. An even bigger reason why so few people came is that yesterday’s heated incident with Hindus yelling at us and the 5 cars of fundamentalists threatening that pastor really scared many of the other pastors. They were so afraid that they decided against sending their people to come and be baptized.
Overall, it was a very joyful service with a lot of grace, and the people were delighted.
Wednesday, February 6. Fr. Athanasius went very early in the morning to baptize Dr. Wesley with the name Demetri! Afterwards, he said that he felt transformed.
Holy Liturgy
Sunday, February 10. The rest of us stayed back in Srikakulam to serve our first liturgy in India! The plan was for us to leave the hotel at 9:30 a.m. and set things up for the Divine Liturgy at the street church of Joshua (Joshi-Paul’s new name now that he’s been baptized). The very thought of having a liturgy in a street in India scares me!
The liturgy itself went quite smoothly, despite being in such a primitive place. There were about 250 people there, and almost 100 of them had been baptized this week by us. Fr. George counted that 77 people received communion. It was terribly hot and humid, though, and Fr. George was so hot in his vestments that the sweat was pouring down his face.
Right after liturgy, a troublemaker came with a Hindu person, and they were very angry and shouting. Joshua told us all to get into the car quickly, where two other people unknown to us were waiting to whisk us away. Those troublemakers were right there waiting for us in their own car, and they followed our car!
Every time we try to do a Mystery of the Church (such as a baptism or a liturgy) in a public area in India, its spiritual power seems to bother the demons and makes them rouse up some people against us. And I suppose in a place like India where idolatrous Hinduism is the dominant religion, it’s no surprise that there are even more demons.
New Orthodox Christians
Sunday, February 10. All in all, we baptized 350 people on this trip. This is only a third of the 1,000 people who had requested baptism.
There was a beautiful transformation happening with the people here. One case that stood out remarkably was a young girl who had an eating disorder and looked like a living skeleton. She hadn’t eaten for four months, and her mother was in tears, despairing. But after Fr. Athanasius went to their house and blessed this girl, she began to recover. And then a few days later after she was baptized, she acquired a very peaceful and angelic appearance. Her spiritual and physical state were completely changed.
Care for the Church
Wednesday, February 13. I worry about this group of newly baptized Orthodox Christians. It will take a lot of work and quite some time for them to mature in Orthodoxy. I have heard that one problem the Orthodox Church in Japan has faced is that for the most part, people there haven’t been able to acquire fully the Orthodox mindset. A big part of the problem is that the average Orthodox Christian there does not have access to the lives and writings of the holy Fathers. Maybe the same fate awaits these Orthodox Christians of India. But even if this does happen, not all is lost. After all, God is their judge, and what really matters in the end is whether or not these people will be saved. They have not been given "five talents” or even two. But if they can do the best they can with whatever little they have been given, then God will tell them: "Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Master.”
Please join me in my prayers for the good people of India, that God will help them grow and reach "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”