Thanksgiving at IBC for Growing Outreach to India's Women

Praise God this Thanksgiving for India Bible College’s growing ability to declare freedom in Christ to India’s subjugated women and girls.

In India, millions of women and girls are forced to endure frightening and unthinkable forms of bondage. Western feminists complain of oppression here at home, but they face nothing like millions of Indian women have endured for thousands of years, and continue to endure in spite of legal protections.

For example, if a poor family can afford to educate only one child in the family, they will almost always choose the boy over the girl. Unschooled and unskilled girls are too often forced into prostitution because they have no other means to survive. Too many doctors treat men and boys with more care than they treat women and girls. Illiteracy, illness and death rates are higher among women and girls.

Daughters of poor families are sold off to human traffickers to feed the rest of the family, never to be seen again, subjected to all manner of unspeakable abuse.

Routinely, women are paid less than men for doing the same work only because they are women. Women walking or traveling alone on the streets are most likely to be raped and killed in India than anywhere else in the world.

Girls are aborted more often than boys, causing drastic shortages of marriageable women for men in many parts of India. To deal with this worsening situation, criminal gangs kidnap attractive women off the streets to sell on the “marriage market,” really a form of slavery.

These kidnapped women are forced to marry men they do not know and are expected to produce children (especially males) after the men have bought and paid for them. They are horribly abused if they fail in this forced task.

Many times, older widows are forced from their homes after their husbands die, with their children refusing to care for them.

Women and girls of India face levels of violence and abuse that are unheard of in the West.

In Genesis, after Satan deceived our first parents into giving up their authority assigned to them by God, subjugation of women became a result of their fall. This is especially evident in India where large portions of India’s culture remains outside the scope of gospel influence. But...

The usurped authority by Satan was broken by Jesus Christ at the cross and by His resurrection. It is now up to the redeemed people of God, delegated with Jesus’ authority in heaven and on earth, to enforce what Jesus has already accomplished. In India, this is most effectively done through redeemed women of God, helping other women and girls to know that the prison doors are already open, and they are free to get up and walk out.

This brings us to how IGO and India Bible College and Seminary in Kerala are trying to obey Christ in freeing India’s women from their long imprisonment to the devil’s curse.

In 2000, India Bible College and Seminary opened up all courses to women students. Since that time, growing numbers of women have answered God’s call to ministry. When IBC dedicated the women’s dormitory in 2009, space was available for only 44 women.

That space rapidly was filled to overflowing as growing numbers of qualified women sought admission. Housing them all became a major problem, and some qualified women were housed under inferior conditions or turned away.

On July 23, 2025, India Bible College and Seminary dedicated a long-awaited expanded women’s dormitory to the service of God and to the women called into His ministry. That day, more than 80 women students moved in. There is now room for almost 200 women.

This long-awaited dormitory was named “Mary’s Court” in honor of Mrs. Mary Abraham, who led and taught IBC’s women students for many years, and also Mary Adair and Marie Briles, long-time friends of IBC and women’s ministry. It recognizes an important fact about Indian culture: Indian women, anointed by God, are imperative to introducing Jesus Christ to India’s women and girls still trapped by Satan’s lies that brought about the fall and their subjugation.

One of the woman students who will benefit from the new women’s dormitory facilities in the immediate future is Lidhiya Mathew from Kerala. She knows from experience what it means to grow up in a household where boys are favored over girls. Her own father expected her mother to give birth to a boy, but Lidhiya was born instead.

First-year student Lidhiya Mathew knows firsthand India’s preference for boys over girls. The gospel raised her self-respect, and now she is ready to take this Good News to others.

At first, this appeared to present no problem for Lidhiya, but her father said, “Next time, a boy.” That son came next, and after her brother entered the world, Lidhiya could do nothing right in her father’s eyes. He would even tell her, “You are not my daughter. Go away!” During her childhood, her mother, the only Christian in the family, was her only strength.

Her father’s hatred of her had bad repercussions. In her search for love, she became vulnerable to unhealthy relationships and poor school grades so that she could not complete her course work. All of this came to a head when she had a major and tragic confrontation with her father that left her in a state of deep depression and a sense of utter worthlessness.

A local pastor heard about Lidhiya’s depression, and he came to her. For the first time, she realized that God did not discriminate against women, that He loved her from all eternity and had deep purpose for her life even before creation. For the first time, this message rang deep in her spirit, and she began to attend church services where she committed her life to Christ.

In 2024, during a time of prayer and fasting at her church, she knew God was calling her to serve Him. This ultimately brought her admission to India Bible College and Seminary.

Although Lidhiya did not complete her secular education, she is still eligible for the Diploma in Theology degree. This will give her strong Bible foundations and equip her in important ways to give other women and girls what Jesus provided to cast off the chains of discrimination and live out God’s loving purpose for them.

Rita Suphia enters the newly expanded women’s dormitory as a first-year student from a hilly district in Odisha where she lived with her parents and four siblings. She was born into an idol-worshipping Hindu family, living in a Hindu village with several temples where few if any people knew anything about Jesus.

The gospel came to idol-worshipping Rita Suphia and her family in word and power, and brought her to God’s call to proclaim Christ to her people.

When Rita was still growing up, an evangelist came into her area preaching the gospel. During that time, many people gave up their idols and came to Christ, but Rita’s family was not among them. They saw no reason to change when their family had been Hindus longer than anyone could remember. No amount of reasoning could convince them otherwise. They did not want to offend the village gods by turning to a foreign god in their midst.

And then one of Rita’s younger brothers was stricken with a tropical and painful skin disease. No treatment worked for him, and no prayers or sacrifices to any of their traditional gods accomplished anything but more worry and expense. Rita’s brother grew worse and worse until it appeared the disease would destroy him.

At last, with every other avenue gone, Rita’s parents turned to the new church in their village. Putting aside all fears, they went there to pray to the God of the new Christians in their village. After refusing to have anything to do with Jesus before, they now begged Jesus to have mercy upon them and save the young boy from this disease that was slowly and relentlessly eating him alive.

To their amazement, Jesus had mercy upon them, and the boy was healed that day. From that day, they never worshipped an idol again and realized their gods were powerless in the presence of Jesus. That day, the whole family turned their lives over to Jesus. Not only did they recognize in Jesus the only authority and power to heal, but His grace and mercy upon them after they had haughtily rejected Him for the sake of their traditions.

As Rita grew up, she and her family never forgot this miracle. As Rita completed her secondary education, she knew that God was calling her into a deeper study of His Word and eventual ministry among the many others in her state of Odisha still with no idea of the merciful Jesus who could also heal them and free them from many bondages over which all other deities are powerless.

More than 80 other women students at IBC have experienced God’s call upon their lives and understand the chains of subjugation that bind millions of India’s women and girls. India Bible College and Seminary is becoming a witness to the surrounding community of the benefits of equal training for both men and women. This proclaims to the surrounding community Christ’s love for all, both male or female.

This is only the beginning as IGO and IBC, with your help, work together to provide training for every woman called of God to help free India’s women and girls from Satan’s systematic destruction of their lives and destinies.

May all of India’s women and girls come to know His love and fulfill His loving purpose for their lives.

We thank all of you who are giving and praying to make this a reality.

Pray that God will continue to raise up more women in India as His ambassadors.

Pray that IGO, IBC and all IGO-related training centers will grow in exercise of spiritual authority to free more of India’s women and girls from Satan’s bondage.

Pray that all of India will be filled with the knowledge of God that will free all peoples and all areas of India’s society from every form of discrimination against women and girls.

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