Home in India
A Pilgrimage with People and Poverty in South India
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
The setting is Madurai District in Tamil Nadu, India. The author and his young family arrive just nine years after India's independence. He is assigned to do development work under the Church of South India in a poor village area during 1956-61. The memoir progresses from the excitement in adjusting to a new culture and learning the South Indian language Tamil to the author's application of his skills to help poor villagers, all of whom turn out to be Dalits, the outcasts of South Indian society. In the end, his devotion to his work with the villagers comes into a major conflict with the fact that he and his family have to go on furlough to the United States at the end of the term, and there is a strong likelihood that they would not return due to his wife's unhappiness with being in India. Much of the memoir is devoted to telling the stories of his friends and colleagues in India who inspired him. They are the primary reason why he is truly at home in India and why he wrote the book.
Endorsements (3)
Foreword
“In this book I encounter a man of strong faith, passionate commitment, and profound gratitude as I read through this memoir of his engagement with the people in the Madurai region of Tamil Nadu, India. These resonate with my own theological convictions about God’s ongoing mission at the margins of our unjust world.”
“Andrew Mills has produced a wonderful memoir. . . . With a love for India culture and his coworkers, dedication to the hard work of learning Tamil, and tireless commitment to his work in irrigation and well building, Mills retells and reflects on a range of experiences common to those who make the audacious decision of becoming a cross-cultural church worker. . . . Mills is honest about failed program initiatives, the economic and social privilege of the missionary, the blessings and tensions in expat family life, inevitable health issues, friendships with friends of other religious traditions, the difficulty of leaving for home, etc. This is a very valuable contribution to the genre of first-person missionary narrative.”
“Andy gives a unique perspective of South India following Gandhi’s freedom movement and Vinobaji’s Bhoodan (land) movement. He focuses on two extraordinary missionaries: Bishop Newbigin of the Church of South India and the lifelong Gramdan Sarvodayan, Rev. Keithahn.”
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