Hard day but a harder life for some

Yesterday was a hard day, sorry I was too exhausted to post then.
We spent another day with the pastors from the Deep Forest (Pictured at left in front of the new church. The man on the far right is Isaiah, director of the boys home and mentor for the pastors. The man on far left is his brother Ananth, our translator and administrator for the ministry)and one of team members did a session on persecution of the early church. After the lesson we spent a couple hours listening to the pastors tell of their encounters with persecution. Several of the men experience persecution in the form of being shunned by their families and are kicked out of their homes. Others are shunned by their villages due to a political party here called the BJP. Just recently, there were some people caught converting others to Christianity in the bordering state (nearly 5 hours away) and they were killed by some extremist from this group. Some members of this party will travel to these villages and threaten its people that anyone who is caught trying to convert others to Christianity will be hanged. They also tell them that they must force any of the Christians in the village to live on the outskirts of the village.
One pastor told a very compelling story. He said that some men in his village found out that he was a Christian and decided to test the power of the Christian God. So, they took the pastor, tied him to a chair and told him they were going to get a coconut that was used as an offering in one of the Hindu temples and bring it back to the pastor to eat. They told the pastor that if his God were real he would not allow the pastor to eat any offerings made to false gods. When the men left, the pastor began to pray that God would show himself to be the one true God. After hours of waiting the men with the coconut returned. To the pastors surprise, the men told him that they were on their way back to the village with the coconut when all of a sudden it began to smell horrible and turn black in color. The coconut had spoiled so it was no longer edible. The pastor told the men that it was God who had done this and as a result these men came to believe in Jesus.

After our day with the pastors we headed back into the city and went into the market, otherwise known as "let's see how many thousands of people we can squeeze into a two lane roadway." There we bought all 11 pastors umbrellas, tamburines, and three bibles for their congregations. These were just a few of the items they had expressed a need for earlier in the day.

I find it puzzling that in the midst of the difficulties these men face (ridicule, doubt, physical suffering, extreme poverty, etc.) that they would request such seemingly insignificant items as a way to bring them great satisfaction.