Faith for a billion souls

Dean Poling
The Valdosta Daily Times

VALDOSTA May 13, 2008 11:48 pm

— Optimistic faith is required in being Christian in nations whose populations are primarily practicing Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims. Stephen Chitti-Babu is a man of deep faith and buoyant optimism.
“People of other faiths, we don’t call them non-Christians,” Chitti-Babu says with a smile. “We call them pre-Christians.”
Chitti-Babu is the South Asian coordinator for the Mailbox Club, a Valdosta-based organization that publishes Christian correspondence courses in 70-80 languages for an estimated 2.2 million children worldwide each year.
Chitti-Babu is key in reaching at least half that number, reaching 850,000 children annually in his native India, as well as thousands more in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and assisting with Mailbox Club operations in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Though optimistic, Chitti-Babu understands the daunting aspects of his mission. Bringing the Mailbox Club annually to 850,000 children is a massive task, but it is a mere drop in the bucket compared to India’s size.
At a population of 1.2 billion people, India is the second most-populated country on Earth, with the potential in the span of a generation to surpass China as the world’s most populated nation. At least 400 million of that number represents India’s children, with a birth rate estimated at 9,000 babies born each day.
Among this population, there are 18 recognized languages in India, and hundreds of additional languages. The Mailbox Club publishes in 11 Indian languages as well as in English. Then, there are the languages of the other nations in Chitti-Babu’s jurisdiction.
Chitti-Babu has been in America, and, more specifically, visiting the Mailbox Club’s Valdosta headquarters since late last month. Throughout May, he is meeting with many area churches, as well as with groups throughout the state and the Southeast, to explain India’s and his Asian territory’s needs. There are many challenges, but Chitti-Babu is a man who has faced many challenges through his faith.
He was born into a Hindu family. Through neighbors, he discovered Christ when he was 8 years old. Though he attended Christian services throughout his teens, he accepted Christ at the age of 21. His mother supported his devotion to Christianity. His father was reluctant for many years until finally realizing the difference the faith could make in people’s lives.
So, in challenges, Chitti-Babu sees possibilities. He remains optimistic because he has seen what faith can accomplish.
Marvin White, the Mailbox Club’s regional director of Asia, shares how the organization wanted to enter the region in slow increments, then grow. They were thinking a few thousand, but India organizers, such as Chitti-Babu, insisted the Mailbox Club could do no less than start with a few hundred thousand given the nation’s size. And it worked.
“I have seen some of the biggest Christian organizations think they understand India but fail,” Chitti-Babu says. The Mailbox Club did not fail partly because of its strategy of finding people such as Chitti-Babu in various regions across the world, then listening to them. White explains that the Mailbox Club has learned that a person from the targeted region understands it far better than someone from the States.
Throughout India, Chitti-Babu has supervised the organization of 1,917 churches, 16,280 teachers, 10,045 volunteers, and 800 schools to distribute the Mailbox Club’s materials to the 850,000 recipients in India.
And again these numbers don’t include the other nations in Chitti-Babu’s jurisdiction: a region of the world which presents its own set of challenges.
Chitti-Babu works closely with Mailbox associates from other nations. Though there may be political differences between nations, such as the long-running animosity between India and Pakistan, these differences do not exist between Mailbox Club representatives from these nations.
Chitti-Babu smiles, stating the source of his optimism and faith: “We are one in Christ.”

More information on Stephen Chitti-Babu’s visit or the Mailbox Club, call 244-6812.

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