Vineet Sasane, pastor of Jeevant Asha Church (Living Hope Church) in Pune, India, provided a ministry update. Omaha Bible Church has had the privilege to support Pastor Sasane for many years now as his gospel ministry is impacting both the Marathi and English-speaking communities in Pune and beyond in India.

Vineet and his wife Sayia and family have visited OBC, and Vineet has filled our pulpit in the past. While Vineet speaks fluent English, his native language is Marathi, and with over 83 million Marathi speakers in India, it ranks tenth among the spoken languages of the world.

There is a real lack of gospel preaching ministries among the Marathi-speaking people and Pastor Vineet is working hard to fill that need and also provide leadership to Marathi-speaking pastors. As I did, I hope you enjoy reading about the ongoing impact of the gospel ministry we support in India from Pastor Vineet.

-Pastor Mike H

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I hope you all are doing well, along with your families. We wish you a Happy, Gospel-saturated New Year in Christ. 

Our family has been doing well. We are so glad to have the permission to meet again as a church after many months of COVID lockdowns here in India. We have been meeting in an open-air setting in a Bible center.

God helped me to complete "The Great Doctrines of the Bible” series in December. We have been able to set up our website in 2020, too. It is a great joy for us that such important doctrinal truths were recorded and are available for people to download and listen to here.

The Lord wonderfully took care of our family and also the church family through the year. Some young people lost their jobs, but God answered our prayers and helped them get other jobs. Our church could also help some of the families financially through this difficult year. 

The lockdown proved to be a blessing in disguise even though there were many challenges and worries. We were able to start a Marathi Podcast and have begun introducing each book of the Bible.

We were also able to connect with Marathi Pastors and have a weekly exposition of the pastoral epistles with them. We have been able to reach out through social media and many people from remote parts of India have been able to login and listen to God's word. 

This year, we want to continue to look to the Lord for making us a more faithful church for His glory. We want to continue to train future elders and deacons. One of our young men who is studying in seminary preached during our Christmas service. The gospel was clearly proclaimed, and the church is very encouraged to continue to support him.

Sunday afternoons are busy again as we have 10-15 young people participating in equipping class, which is held at my home. We have been studying Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, and using Derek Thomas' excellent series on Ligonier as a guide has been a blessing to us.

In our mid-week Bible studies, different teachers are getting opportunities to teach through 1 Peter. It is encouraging to see men making the effort to teach well. 

During this Christmas season we made gift packages for needy children. It was really moving to visit poor children living in rough neighborhoods. We were able to share the gospel with them, too. I was able to bring my children along to bring some cakes to the staff working in our apartment complex. I was also able to distribute some New Testaments and gospel tracts, too. 

Please continue to pray for this coming year, that we will stand in the purity and power of the gospel. I will be preaching through the book of Daniel and I am overwhelmed at the task. Please pray that the gospel will ooze out naturally even through the Book of Daniel verse by verse. 

We recently got to know a man named Bobboy from the region of Manipur in northeast India, and he has recently begun a church plant. The Lord wonderfully led him into our lives and he has been greatly encouraged by our church. God saved him and he is a Reformed Baptist now. 

We are continually giving thanks to the Lord for our wonderful gospel partnership with Omaha Bible Church. 

Please give our love to the saints at OBC. Hoping that you all will be encouraged there. 

In Christ,

Vineet