When He Calls Me, I Will Answer - Benjamin Varghese - Testimony

This is a story of God's loving humor of how when He calls a person, He never gives up on them!

Benjamin Varghese, (Kerela), now Bangalore, India

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Growing to Know Him More

I grew up in Kerala in Kottayam, India, a place famous for its beautiful backwaters and houseboats, where also over the centuries, several brave missionaries crossed raging seas and lived among the simple-hearted people of Kottayam, building schools, colleges, and hospitals, and spreading the Word.

My father was an honest God-fearing prayerful and kind-hearted pastor and my mother a hardworking homemaker.  I had a happy, simple childhood, growing up with two other brothers.  It was a home enriched with family devotions and prayers, which made the Word and God's own presence very personal and real in our home.  In one of the family devotions, I surrendered my heart to Christ and experienced Christ in my own life in a marvelous way.

I would felt strongly that parenting is all about making your child connect to God, giving them an opportunity to experience God in their early childhood, so that they are actually communicating with God directly, not through their parents and this is what I experienced as a child.

At a young age, I became aware of how much God loved me and actually listened to my prayers.  I had a number of such experiences in my early childhood.  One of them was a very clear incident where I experienced God's answer to my prayer personally.  It was a busy evening as my mother and father were preparing and packing to go to a far-away wedding, which was an overnight's journey.  I was excited, as I loved travel, the joy of travel was even more exciting than the though of attending the wedding. As my parents were preparing to go, I noticed my clothes were not being packed.  "You did not pack my clothes, mummy" I said in dismay.  My mother looked at me and said gently, "Benjamin, we cannot take you, we cannot take everyone.  You will have to stay behind, someone will come to take care of you."

I felt a pain stab my heart.  I felt deeply disappointed I was being left behind.  I also had lost that wonderful adventure of travel I was looking forward to.  Being an obedient child, I did not pout or sulk or throw a tantrum.  I watched my parents leave and sat on my bed, my heart heavy.  Then I decided to pray.  I got down on his knees and prayed the impossible prayer, "Father, I too want to go for the wedding, I want to travel, please let them take me."  After praying, I felt peace, but I still continued praying that prayer.

In the meantime, not known to me, a trail of events were taking place before the wedding.  To the horrific discovery of the bridal party, it was discovered that the wedding clothes were not ready.  It appeared that the wedding was going to be delayed.  Then in the midst of all the business, the bride's father suddenly came up to my father and asked, "Where is Benjamin?"  My father replied, "At home," to which the bride's father replied, "I want him to come."  He then turned and instructed two people to go back, all the way and bring me.  My parent watched in amazement as the two people were instructed to fetch me for the wedding.  They left and boarded the night bus and traveled all night in the rickety bus.  The next morning, they reached my house and knocked on the door and asked for me.  They then told me they had come to bring me for the wedding.  I was beside myself in joy.  I had the happiest time of my life, just knowing God heard my prayer and God cared for me so personally.

This miracle lifted me to a deeper relationship with God.  I knew God cared for His people.  God is personally interested in the little desires of people who love Him and look to Him.  He will never want to disappoint them.  I began to understand the nature of God as kind and compassionate and abundant.

Another incident happened with in the 12th standard.  I had lost 5 difficult papers.  I had to go through them again the next year. The next year, I passed all 10 papers, something I never expected I would do.  Again, the love of God astounded me.  Little incidents like this kept occurring in my life, increasing my faith and love for God.

Later, it was time for me to go to college.  The year that I joined there was a big celebration going on.  I found out, it was for Benjamin Bailey, Bible Translator, who translated the Bible to Malayalam. It was his 150th birthday celebration, a lot of celebrations going on and I felt a sense of connection to him because both of us shared the name, Benjamin.  I was in awe of Benjamin Bailey and felt privileged to be in a college that acknowledged his big contribution to the Malayalees.

The Challenge

One cool December, during the Christmas holiday, I attended a youth camp. It was an exiting fun time with a lot of songs, prayers, activities and loads of fun and laughter.  Toward the end of a camp, an old missionary sharing a stirring message about missions.  At the end, he gave all a missionary challenge, to pray and ask God to show them a state they could adopt and prayer for and perhaps go to as a missionary.  As he was speaking, he mentioned all the states, as he mentioned Assam, I felt a stirring in my heart for Assam.  After the conference, I had a strange flurry of thoughts flying through my mind.  "This was all an emotional hype" I thought, "the conference was geared at reaching an emotional peak, and once we got to that emotional high, the missionary made us make this decision for missions.  It is a no no for me, I cannot do it."

In the following days, I felt I made an escape through the backdoor, but I kept trying to ease my discomfort.

In 1994, I got a good job in Kottayam.  I had peace at work and had regular good hours and all the whole, I was doing well and contented with life.

Then in 2002, an uncle visited me from the US.  During that visit, the uncle asked me to do BCM.  I never knew why, he did not know if it was to go to the US, but I quickly cut the conversation short by saying, "I cannot, because I want to be a Bible translator.  Those words shot out of my mouth and I did not know where they came from.  I was not planning on missions.  In the following days, especially in June, uneasiness began to gnaw my soul.  Thoughts of "what is the meaning of my life?"  "Is this what life is all about?" began to sail through my mind.

I had a neighbor who had a 3-year-old son, who loved watching cartoons, since I had a computer, I would let the little boy come over to my house to watch cartoons.  One October in 2002, the little boy, came over to watch cartoons who was a beautiful singer, was singing a song with a catchy tune.  I liked the tune and tried to catch the words, but though the child had a wonderful voice the words were inaudible.  I decided to ask the mother about the song.  She had no idea but suggested her son may have learned it in Sunday School.  I brightened up.  My friend was the Sunday School teacher.  I finally met the teacher and asked him about the song.  The Sunday School teacher said he did teach them that song, and he went on to give me the words, which were as follows:

When He calls me
I will answer
When He calls for me I will hear
When the Savior calls I will answer

Ill be somewhere working for my Lord

Over the next month, I kept singing that song because I liked the tune so much, not really understanding the implications of the song.

Then, again, another winter's conference came up.  Conference is an exciting time with a panorama of songs, messages, performances, and testimonies.  I and my friend decided to attend, just for the enjoyment of the entertainment.  There was a fiery speaker, an old missionary whose eyes flashed and voice  thundered as he spoke with zeal.  As we all listened, his message was leading to mission, and again I felt a twinge of discomfort.  "Oh no, why always!" I thought in dismay.  I felt like running out of the conference but managed to hold myself together.  The old missionary  started to give a mission challenge, asking people to make a commitment towards missions if they felt God speaking to them.  After he spoke, he started singing a song and I felt electricity run through me as I heard the song.

When He calls me
I will answer
When He calls for me I will hear
When the Savior calls I will answer

I'll be somewhere working for my Lord

This was a Malayam (Kerela) conference and in such conferences, they never sing English songs.  I found it strange and chilling.  I could not think clearly at that moment, but found myself along with my friend going sheepishly forward to the alter with a commitment for the Lord.  However, once again, I was confused.  I could not come to terms with such a commitment.  A commitment as a missionary is a difficult one.  It is a commitment of an unknown future, lack of funds at times, a walk purely by faith, with dangers and perils along the way with no constancy, rocky narrow roads, away from riches with a life of ease and comfort to a life that could be scanty and even lonely and even life-threatening at times.  It all scared me and I  wanted to run away again.  A restlessness stirred me and I was not at peace. I knew I had to do something, only then the peace would return.  But I was not ready to make any decisions.

Some time later, a youth camp was held, where my pastor was the president of the youth.  I went.  A team of Bible translators was also attending the youth conference, the NLCS.  I was glad to see them as my cousin was part of the team.  During one of the conference days, I found the NLC looking a little concerned and speaking among themselves quietly.  I managed to find out that that the NLC had wanted to do a presentation for the conference but had missed their slot.  I spoke to my pastor, and they managed to squeeze in a slot for them.  During this time, I got well acquainted with the team, though I was not sure what they did but appreciated them much, knowing they were Bible translators.

The next morning, as the youth camp continued, I, one evening looked up and gave a gasp of dismay. The same missionary who had given a missionary challenge in the previous conference was there!  He would be giving a mission challenge from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. the next morning.  I purposely decided to go late, at 10 a.m. the next morning to miss the missionary's message.  As I was entering the hall at 10 a.m. after the mission message, the missionary preacher started to sing a song that stopped me on my tracks and I felt a chill go down my spine.  The preacher was singing in English:

When He calls me
I will answer
When He calls for me I will hear
When the Savior calls I will answer

i'll be somewhere working for my Lord!

Commitment Calls Again

I had it! I ran into the youth conference, crying, and ran to the front where the alter call was being given, totally surrendering my will to God.  I felt tremendous peace and release with a sense of joy.  It was an awesome life-changing moment.

I wasted no time after this.  I spoke to the NLC team telling them I wanted to serve God in whatever capacity, and wanted to join NLC, the words flew out of me with no struggle telling them I did not know what I could do as I had no idea about Bible translating.  I was a computer guy.   The NLC team said they would speak to the head office, which was in Bangalore.

Some days later, I got a phone call.  It was from NLC.  The person on the phone was speaking in English.  At that time, I barely knew English, I was able to understand a few words like "interview", "Bangalore" "come."  With that, I resigned from my job in my company and the company gave me a farewell

I finally arrived in the great glamorous city of Bangalore and found my way to the NLC office.  As I was called into the office, it slowly became apparent that this was an interview for candidacy.  As the manager spoke to me, he visibly paled to find out that I had resigned from my job.  They had wanted a software person for the computer, I was a hardware person.  They were in a dilemma as there was no vacancy for me.  The manager looked down, thinking quickly.  Seeing my desperation, they decided to hire me.  Though I wanted to be a Bible translator, they kept me on asking me to work in the computer department for 3 months.  I said, "okay."  After that, I went for a linguistic course.  And as I was finishing, they asked me to continue in the computer department for 3 years.  I agreed.  That was ten years ago.  I am still in the computer department, but am blessed in the capacity of work in the ministry.

I married Nissy in 1994. Nissy, a gentle girl who was strong in her faith in God.  She was working in engineering college and our families were close.  Since we liked each other, we both said "yes", got married.  We have 2 wonderful sons.

Mission Calls

I now helps to train teams for Bible translation for different parts of India.

An incident occurred in Himachal, where a man translated the Bible in his mother's local language and presented it to her and when she read, she started crying.  Puzzled, he asked her why she was crying.  She replied, "The 15 years I have been saved, I read the Bible in Hindi, I could not really understand it, but now, in my own dialect, I understand finally, I never really knew what Jesus did for me, now I finally understand, how great is my Savior!"  This translator personally shared this with me, which encouraged me greatly to take new steps. 

Last October, I went with a team from NLCL went to Adimali near Munnar, a chilly hilly town, in Kerala during Diwali.  I was teaching the translation team how to make dictionaries.  It was a week's course.  At the end, people attended from 5 different languages and 2 outsiders. We all compiled a 100 words dictionary, and just for fun, we decided to print it out and give it as a small dedication to the people of the area.  The NLC team expected the people to be simply happy about it, but we got an unexpected emotional response.  The people were touched and crying, saying that finally something had started in their language.  At this overwhelming response, we decided to make a dictionary, with 5000 words, for them and are still in the process of it, and one of us wants to publish an encyclopedia for 1 or 2 subjects in this language.  At the same time, a Bible is already in the process of translation in that area.

I am personally excited because I have seen lives change because of the Bible, as it changed my life.  It has the power to change lives for generations.  When we translate the Word into their own language, we have given the Word forever for their generations.

The Word is all about engagement, living life according to the Bible as a powerful tool to make right choices and those choices make a person truly spiritual. That is the very promise of God, I will write my Word in your heart that no one can erase.  The Bible is not really written on paper, but on the heart of the people, so when they live, they live out the Bible.  Truly, if 100 spiritual people in a village can do marvelous things, what changes they will bring around them, and these are real strong believers, really tested by the Word of God, these people will impact change all around them.

Matthew 16:24:  Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me."

 Benjamin Varghese 

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