single pages. - International Pentecostal Holiness Church

From
Physiology
to Theology
Missionary Vijay Balla shares
his journey from the laboratory
to the mission field.
by Sara Ray
Vijay Balla has been exposed
to IPHC missions his entire
life. Veteran IPHC missionaries
Hobert and Marguerite
Howard brought Sunday
school and stories about Jesus
to Vijay’s village in South India
the year he was born, and his
parents became some of the
first people in the region to be
converted.
“My parents were the first
ones who joined hands with
the International Pentecostal
Holiness Church missionaries,”
says Vijay. “They were the
pioneers of the IPHC in South
India.”
Family ministry: The Balla family serves the people in
Bangladesh.
As a child, Vijay watched his parents minister alongside the Howards.
He was also sponsored by People to People. Although he was impressed
by the lifestyle of these missionaries, who gave up the comforts of the
U.S. to minister in remote villages with no electricity and only minimum
basic facilities, Vijay felt no desire to work in the mission field himself.
Instead, Vijay’s heart was in science. Sponsored by the Indian
government, he earned a doctorate in reproductive physiology. He
was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in New York City by the U.S.
government, but God had other plans. In 1994, Vijay and his family
accepted God’s call to devote their lives to full-time ministry in their
home country of India.
The transition from the comfort and security of a full-time job to the
uncertainty of full-time ministry was not an easy one. Vijay and his wife,
Aparanjani, a teacher with a master’s degree in English, compare giving
up their high-level educations to Abraham laying his son on the altar.
Although such a sacrifice was certainly a challenge, Vijay says God
has consistently rewarded their faith, just as he rewarded Abraham.
“The Lord was faithful in providing at every step what was needed,”
says Vijay. “He did not give us more. He did not give us less. He did not
give before. He did not give after. He gave when it was needed.”
In 2002, God again tested the faith of the Ballas when he called them
to leave India and become the first IPHC missionaries in the neighboring
country of Bangladesh.
“We did not know anyone in the nation of Bangladesh before going
there, except Jesus,” Vijay recalls fondly.
God gave Vijay a vision to see church-planting movements
established throughout the Indian subcontinent. He founded the
Bangladesh Theological Institute in the capital city of Dhaka to train
church planters and leaders. In the past decade, 32 IPHC churches have
been established in Bangladesh thanks to the ministry of the Ballas,
which Vijay describes as being “grassroots.”
“We are not legally cleared to hold crusades and big events, so we
grow through relationships,” says Vijay. “When they see us as the people
20 August 2012 | iphc.org/experience