Missionary couple to set up Christian Learning Center for indigenous tribe in India

Ranchi – A Christian missionary couple is all geared to set up a Christian Learning Center in Ranchi that will help empower the Oraons, an indigenous community that has been suppressed for ages by the oppressive caste system in India.

The missionary couple, Revs. Neeraj and Nijhar Minz–Ekka recently completed their Doctorate studies in Minnesota, U.S.

Nijhar Minz, who holds dual citizenship in India and the U.S., came to Luther Seminary in 1994, graduating with a Masters of Theology in Christian Education in 1996. She returned to India in 1998 and married Rev. Neeraj Ekka. In June of 2000, Nijhar became the first woman pastor ordained in the Northwestern Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church of North India.

For years, the young couple had a dream of building a Christian Learning Center in order to reach some of the many thousands of indigenous people of the area, the Oraons. But, it was only in 2002 that Christ Lutheran Church in Blaine, Minnesota, took up the dream and started raising funds for the Center.

Later, St. John Lutheran, Sunset Harbor Road, and Hope Lutheran of The Villages, joined in the fund–raising, toward the Training Center and to support the Ekkas.

Last November, the Ekkas were commissioned as Missionaries to India representing St. John Lutheran Church. They returned to Ranchi, India on November 15 and have begun overseeing the construction of the Training Center on the land that has been purchased from funds given by the Lutheran churches in Minnesota and Florida.