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During 24/7’s 2025 Global Week of Prayer (September 1-7), we hopped on a video call with Ashish and Kalpana, friends based in Himachal Pradesh. Their focus is prayer, evangelism, discipleship, and church planting across the Himalayan regions of North India and Nepal.
On our call, they shared incredible testimonies, helpful insights into the region God has placed them in, and prophetic prayer requests for their family, state, and country. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.
Who is the Head of Himachal Pradesh?
Ashish: The area we live in is very Hindu, with mostly high-caste people — many from the Brahmin and warrior castes. If you are born into a poor family, it’s like a curse. You have no reputation in society. People treat you like an animal. I was born into a very poor Scheduled Caste family. If Brahmins are the head and warriors are the ‘shoulders’, we, the “Dalits”, are the feet.
Kalpana: My family is from the Chhetri caste, the warrior caste. When we were planning to get married, so many people told my parents we should not marry because of our caste. But my mom liked Ashish, and so did my dad. For love, we can do anything! And I love him very much.
I didn’t care about anything else — just him. I knew he was a man of God and that he would take care of me. He already cared for my parents and brothers well; that’s why they loved him. They said, “We don’t care about his caste. He is very pure-hearted and caring. Go and get married.”
Supernatural Healings & Household Salvations
Ashish: In 1998, when I was a child, my elder brother was bitten by a snake. We didn’t have enough money, so we could not get him treated. He was going to die. My family prayed, and Jesus saved his life for free. My mother and elder sister started to follow Jesus from that miracle. Before that, we had a strong Hindu faith, stretching back many generations.
Kalpana: My elder sister died when she was a little girl, because my grandfather was a priest in a Hindu temple — the spirit he worshipped transferred into her. Before she died, she was very sick, so we offered many sacrifices to Hindu gods and goddesses. They did not work.
Just when they came to take her away, my uncle came to our house. He said, “Don’t cry. I know my Jesus can raise the dead. If nothing happens, you can do anything to me. You can take me to prison. But I know my God has raised other dead people — and he can raise your sister also.”
After my uncle prayed to Jesus and said “amen”, my sister sat up and asked for a glass of water. She came back to life. My whole family was there. We couldn’t understand how this happened. It was a big miracle.
Prayer Meetings + God’s Presence = Repentance
Ashish: Two years before my brother was healed, my father died. From then until 2010, my family faced many challenges — especially my mother. After she and my elder sister accepted Jesus as God, all our relatives and the people in our village came against her with a lot of persecution.
I wanted to choose my own path. I had a very short temper, and I fell into bad company. I started gambling, fighting, and beating people regularly. I had a job as a taxi driver; I would drive every day and night, then gamble on the weekends. I always wanted to earn money quickly. My mother and elder sister kept interceding for me during that time. There was continuous prayer and worship in our home.
One day in 2008, I went with them to a prayer meeting and God touched my heart. I felt the Holy Spirit put a spirit of repentance in me, and I realized that what I was doing was wrong. In God’s presence, I accepted all my mistakes, and then He filled me with an amazing peace, like I had never felt before. I prayed, “Lord, help me come out of all my bad habits.”
Kalpana: When I was younger and unmarried, my life was very messy. I was very good at stealing. If we were talking in the same room, I could steal your wallet and watch, and you would not know. Many people told my parents, “Your daughter is very bad. Keep her away from my children.” Nobody wanted to sit with me.
One day, I went with my family to a prayer meeting at church. God touched me very deeply. The pastor said, “Right now, even if you are bad, God still accepts you. No matter what you are doing, God still loves you.” I felt the love of God. The more I felt the love of God, the more my life changed, little by little. I started to fall in love with Jesus. I knew that Jesus was good news.
Where is Jesus in the Depths of Debt?
Ashish: After God touched my heart in 2008, I started feeling bad about the things I used to do in my old life. The Lord forgave my sin and cleansed me with His blood. I accepted Him as my personal Saviour, and He became my Good Father. I started growing in the Lord…
But it was still very difficult. In 2010, we went through a very bad time. An employment agent lured me with the promise of a good job in a foreign country. He said I needed to pay him 10 lakh rupees first (over US$11,000). I got greedy. I thought that if I earned money from this job, I could support my family, so I pressured my mother to agree.
We did not have much money, so she borrowed what I needed at 15% interest — a very high amount — to give to the agent. He cheated us and ran away. It was very stressful. We went to the police and filed a complaint against the agent, but they would not help us unless we bribed them.
It was a very bad situation. I tried to commit suicide three times. The monthly interest was around 45,000 rupees (US$500) — but we only earned 1,000 rupees per month (US$11). My mother had to go to other people to borrow even more money to pay back the interest, so our debt got worse and worse and worse.
I thought to myself, “I am not educated. I have nothing. I am poor. I was born into a low caste. There is no respect. Everyone looks down on us. We have no reputation. My life is worthless. There is no hope.” That was when I encountered Jesus again. He told me, “I have a plan for you. If you follow me, I will turn your life around.”
I told my mother, “I heard God’s voice. I want to follow Jesus completely.” She replied, “That is good news! Don’t worry about the debt. Don’t worry about anything. Just listen to God.” She asked me, “What does God want you to do now?” I told her the Lord asked me to go to a different city, in a different district, and spend time there. She agreed.
Seven Years of Testing: Learning to Live by Faith
Ashish: When I left, I thought it would be simple: just become a pastor, start a church with 40 or 50 people, and everything would be fine. In our area, if you have a church with 50 to 100 people, it’s like a megachurch! That is not what happened. In seven years, from 2010 to 2017, I didn’t save a single soul.
But I did meet Kalpana and her family in 2013. The Lord showed me she would be my wife. When I proposed to her, I told her I had nothing: no house, no job, no money. “Will you marry me?” She said, “Yes, because you have God.”
For two years, she kept encouraging me and helping me to stay strong in the Lord. We became very good friends and came to understand each other very deeply. She knew all my struggles; I was homeless and jobless, but she still encouraged me.
On October 12th, 2015, with our families’ agreement, we were married. In 2016, Kalpana became pregnant with our daughter, Sophia. But that whole time, we had nowhere to live and no proper food to eat. It was a great test of our faith. Ultimately, we told the Lord, “We don’t want anything in this world. No house, no money — we just want you.”
When our daughter was born, I heard the Lord say, “I have tested you and seen that you are faithful.” And shortly after, we heard the Lord say, “Now you can go back to your city.” I thank the Lord for those seven years. God taught us about His Kingdom, showed us how to live by faith, and how to be thankful in every situation.
Forgive Us Our Debts
Ashish: In 2017, after we moved back home, everything changed for us. I started serving in ministry with the man who is now our senior pastor, and I also started a part-time job as a tour guide. Amazingly, the agent who cheated us returned and gave all the money he had stolen back to our family.
At the same time, my family was able to sell some land we did not have documents for. Even though it was our land, we had been blocked from selling it for a very long time. The Lord did a great miracle and made a way for the sale. We gave all the proceeds, and everything the agent gave back, towards our debt — including all the interest. We were finally 100% debt-free.
Prayers for Our Country
Ashish: The government’s agenda is to make India a Hindu country, bring back the official caste system, and discriminate against minority groups — people from the Scheduled Castes, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. Under their proposed constitution, if a Brahmin man rapes a Scheduled Caste girl, there is no problem, and their gods are happy. Their constitution also forbids people from the Scheduled Castes from studying.
So right now, this is our prayer: for the people in our community to receive good educations, so they can get good jobs in society — as doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. That is how we teach our youths: “You have to get an education to be self-sustaining in this society. If you follow the same path our ancestors did, and you are a street sweeper or a garbage collector, nothing will change. Our mentality has to change.”
Like Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 — “…we urge you, brothers and sisters […] to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” That is our deepest prayer.
That is also what Dr. Ambedkar, the principal architect of the existing Indian Constitution, wanted. He was a Dalit, but he had many university degrees. In the Constitution, he gave rights to everyone and encouraged people in the lower castes to be educated like he was. That is why we do our best to give our daughter a good education. We want her to understand her rights and get a good job, to learn how to live well in our society. We want every parent in our church community to understand this.
What Does the Gospel Look Like?
Kalpana: Sharing the love of God. If someone is hungry and we do not give them food, and just say, “God bless you…”, They will not listen to us. But if we feed them and say, “This food is from God. He loves you. He doesn’t want to see you hungry. He wants you to be filled and well-clothed.” That is Good News for them.
Ashish: Yes, real evangelism is Good News. If someone is hungry, food is good news. If someone is sick, medicine is good news. If someone is depressed, liberation and freedom are good news. If someone has sinned, salvation is good news. We have to think about it like that: how can we connect with people?
The Kingdom of God is inside of us. We have to extend the Kingdom through our lives. We are His Kingdom. We know this because the Lord has worked in us. He has given us His authority — authority to declare His Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the love of Jesus. He loves us unconditionally. In the same way, we have to love others — to spread His Kingdom through love.
We are peacemakers: because I have received peace from God, and joy in my heart, I must now share that with others. What we have, we give to others. It is meaningless if God has blessed me and I keep it to myself. That is not the Kingdom. We have to pass it on. That is how we have seen multiplication: “Freely you have received, freely give.”
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”