David became a representative/mobilizer for Gospel Recordings (now Global Recordings Network USA, GRN-USA) in 1999. In 2003, through his GRN connections, he was invited to serve as an adjunct professor with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and lead a team to the “outermost parts” of India. On that trip David met the senior GRN missionary field recordist. It was exciting to watch people hear recordings about Jesus in their own languages and dialects! The group also shared with Christian pastors and missionaries how to obtain recordings in the languages of the people they served. Colleen and David returned to India in 2008. By then David had written a training manual titled “Overcoming Dinosaur Thinking to Receive God’s Blessings.”

The title was later changed to “Overcoming Sinful Old Bad Habits” because people with little education did not know what dinosaurs were. The manual was translated into Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, and Tamil. David invited the senior field recordist to accompany them because he expected grassroots church planters from several rural areas—speaking a variety of ethnic languages—to attend the meetings. During these gatherings, the GRN recordist recruited language helpers. After David returned home, the recordist continued working with those helpers to produce Bible stories recorded for the first time in their mother tongues.

The senior recordist told David he had contacts throughout India in remote places that urgently needed the type of training David had developed. He offered to arrange everything if David returned. This conversation is when the idea of Disciples for the Harvest (DFH) was born.

David returned four more times after that. In 2011, however, Indian immigration authorities placed David on a permanent blacklist. The senior field recordist continued the work until GRN India dissolved in 2015. He then became the DFH India Coordinator that he and David had envisioned. He and DFH friends are willing to go to remote—and often dangerous—areas where it is difficult, if not impossible, for foreign missionaries to go.

Since 2011, DFH-India has trained more than 50,000 people, including about 15,000 Christian leaders, pastors, or grassroots church planters. Many trainees have less than a fourth-grade education and live on less than $1.25 a day. Before the pandemic, average attendance at our workshops in remote areas of Northern India was about 50 people, and the cost to conduct a training was around $300. This included travel for our trainers (by train, bus, car, auto rickshaw, and motorbike), food and lodging while traveling, and simple meals and snacks for attendees. (That was the cost in 2003; with inflation, the cost today would be considerably higher.)

The GRN-India center shut down in 2015. Our DFH Coordinator, who was also the GRN senior recordist, had been making recordings in new languages as we connected with language helpers through DFH workshops. He could no longer make recordings after the GRN equipment was taken by the international office when the India center closed. However, he continues to serve as the DFH India Coordinator.

Because of COVID-19, India entered a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 to contain the spread of the virus. The hardships of the lockdown contributed to many malnutrition-related deaths. With work unavailable, many people had no money for food, and the cost of food and other necessities nearly doubled due to supply and demand. Our Coordinator was unable to travel for training, so he used funds that would normally have been spent on training to help families he knew were suffering. He also sent money to pastor friends throughout India so they could do the same. Each week, our Coordinator provided provisions such as rice, flour, cooking oil, lentils, sugar, biscuits, salt, potatoes, onions, spices, and tea to poor pastors and believers.

From the beginning of the pandemic through June 2021, Disciples for the Harvest provided food packages to nearly 1,000 families. Praise God for answering our prayers during that difficult time in India!

On May 6, 2021, CNBC reported a spike in India’s COVID-19 cases, noting that at the time, about half of the world’s confirmed new cases were coming from India, and that totals were likely underreported due to poverty and limited medical care in many regions. Praise God that the pandemic is now over! Since summer 2021, our Coordinator has been able to travel and conduct training again. Persecution from anti-Christian groups has increased over the last few years.

In 2012, Carl Gordon, one of the founders of Advancing Native Missions (ANM), contacted David and offered to publish the American edition of the workbook he had used in India. This led to a strong relationship with ANM. ANM published David’s book The Secret of Right Relationships, which has sold more than 1,000 copies, and it also processes donations received for DFH. In addition to DFH, ANM partners with about 80 other native missions in India. ANM’s Indian leadership also connects with our Coordinator when they travel to India.

Carl Gordon and Kishor Pandagade (the Indian director) were our primary contacts with ANM. They later left to start 24:14 World Mission, and David now connects primarily with them through that ministry. David also continues to serve as a Global Recordings Network volunteer/mobilizer, a role he has held since 1999.