American Baptist Mission News

Taku and Katie Longkumer are newly endorsed International Ministries missionaries to North East India. Taku was born in North East India, and has seen God’s miraculous work in his family’s history. Taku’s grandfather was among the first Christian converts of his village in India in the early 1900’s. He and other new believers were persecuted and forced to settle elsewhere. Due to illness Taku’s grandfather, mother and elder brother died, and Taku’s father was sent to a school established by missionaries. After he received a basic education that included Bible training, he became an evangelist in 1953. He took his young family, including Taku, to the nearby village of another tribe that had not heard the gospel. In fact, its inhabitants still practiced headhunting.
Taku describes those early years. “The darkness I remember was not simply based on the absence of light in the jungle, but it came from the oppressive, spiritual darkness of evil.” Each evening Taku’s father would invite the villagers to sit by the fire in their small hut, where he would serve them tea while telling stories of Jesus. After many years, which included a series of miraculous events demonstrating the power of God over the power of the spirits, the villagers began to respond to the gospel message. They then became the evangelists until the entire village became Christian. Taku concludes, “The victory of Jesus’ love impacted every aspect of village life. Because of the gospel, fear and violence were replaced by joy and peace.”