The small red-brick house looked like any of the other buildings scattered for kilometres along a dusty rural road in North Central Province, Sri Lanka. With exposed timber beams protruding from beneath its corrugated iron roof, the house was surrounded by a bare, hard-packed dirt yard in the dappled shade of a few palm trees. The pleasant exterior was complemented by a sparsely furnished but tidy interior.
Yet many locals avoided both the house and its inhabitants. Villagers called it the Ghost House.
Dinesh and Chandra were day labourers when they started their family life in the little house. Their first child, Tenusha, was followed by a second daughter, who died of unknown causes when she was 18 months old. Their son, Rinujen, was born a few years later.
By then, Chandra was experiencing inexplicable pain, weakness and heart palpitations. After she suffered what seemed to be a heart attack, doctors told her there was nothing wrong with her heart or any other part of her body. She visited different hospitals but always got the same answer.
As members of a majority-Hindu Tamil community, Chandra and her family turned to the Hindu gods to identify the cause of her illness, viewed by local Hindus and Buddhists as bad karma, which needed to be cured. They went to 35 priests and swamis, paying for multiple rituals, but nothing helped. When their desperation became widely known, some healers even sought them out, promising cures in exchange for cash.
In addition to her physical pain, which eventually prevented her from walking, Chandra was plagued by nightmarish visions. Once, she tried to end her own life, suggesting that her family should do likewise. Convinced that the family and their home were cursed, the neighbours kept their distance.
“Our [relatives] and our neighbours had abandoned us,” Dinesh said. “We were in a very tough situation, and many people took advantage of us or never responded to us.” Heartbroken, Dinesh moved his family out of the house and into a hut close to the village so he could more easily take Chandra to the Hindu temple or to doctors.
“All my trust and faith was in my idols and the priests,” Dinesh said. Chandra often became unresponsive and rigid for minutes or hours at a time, and Dinesh grew desperate. “My sister told me about a church in another village,” he said. “She was not a Christian, but she heard that people were getting healed when they went to church.”
His daughter, Tenusha, urged him to visit the church. “We have tried everything,” she reminded him.
A Radiant Vision
On 23 July 2021, the family visited the church and explained their situation. When church members prayed for Chandra, she sensed a battle taking place inside her. “I felt like I wanted to run away from the church,” she recalled. “I started crying out to God, saying, ‘I have bowed before every god that I know, but none of those gods could help me. So please help me. Please heal me!’ I was crying out … because of so much pain, and I lost all my strength and fainted.”
Chandra said that while she was unconscious, she saw a vision in which demons tried to strangle her until Jesus Christ stamped on them. She said she could feel the pain and sickness leave her body as the demons were defeated.
Then, she said, the Jesus in her vision recited Psalm 34:5, “They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed.” She heard Him tell her that she would become radiant in this life if she would look at Him and trust Him.
Meanwhile, Dinesh and his children knew only that Chandra was unconscious and struggling. So they cried out in prayer, too.
“We had never heard the name [of Jesus] before,” Dinesh said. “We just called out to the God of the universe.” Accustomed to offering sacrifices to the Hindu gods, Dinesh thought he should probably try negotiating with this new, unknown God. “I said, ‘God, if you will heal my wife, I will dedicate my daughter for your service’.”
When Chandra revived, she realised she had been released from a great oppression. The church members who had been praying for her rejoiced, and her family was overawed. “We could only acknowledge the fact that Jesus is Lord,” Dinesh said.
A week later, they moved back into the house they had abandoned. Then they returned to the church to publicly confess their faith in Jesus Christ.
Dedication to Service
Dinesh knew from the beginning of their new life in Christ that Tenusha wasn’t the only family member who would be dedicated to the Lord’s service. “We said that, as a family, we are going to serve people who have gone through things like [Chandra] did,” Dinesh said.
When sharing her testimony with others, Chandra emphasises the spiritual nature of her illness and how she overcame the sin of idolatry through faith in Christ. “We go to people who are sick and in difficult situations,” she said. “We tell them, ‘Jesus is everything! Just believe in Him and He can do anything for you. Don’t look at people, don’t look at the world, don’t worry about what the world thinks. Just look at Jesus!’”
Dinesh and Chandra know how the world views their faith in Christ. When Chandra was ill, their neighbours avoided them, considering them cursed. Now that they have become Christians, they are shunned and opposed for a different reason. “As soon as we became believers, that is when the opposition started,” Chandra said.
No one would hire them for a job, and local vendors either refused to do business with them or charged them higher prices. Some people have even chased them off for praying in Jesus’ name. “You can take everything away from us,” Chandra has told them, “but you cannot take Jesus from us. We believe that Jesus will touch you one day.”
The opposition hasn’t stopped them from travelling throughout the area to share the gospel and pray for people in need. “Every week, we spend time in prayer for the salvation of the village,” Dinesh said. “Before we go to preach at a new village, we spend a day in fasting and prayer.” He said that seeking the Lord’s guidance gives them the strength to endure rejection.
“When we go to preach the gospel, some people will give us water to drink,” Chandra said. Offering water is a sign of hospitality that Chandra and Dinesh see as an opening to share about Jesus Christ. “Some people will reject us, so we move on to the next house.”
Dinesh and his family have seen people healed and have helped lead many to Christ. Their church includes people who have been freed from addiction, people who have been released from demonic oppression, and people who have been excluded from their families or communities for various reasons. Even a former officer with the Tamil Tigers, a minority insurgent group that fought a 25-year civil war with the Sri Lankan government, is part of their congregation.
A Faith of Their Own
Dinesh and Chandra’s children have made their own serious commitment to following Christ. Seven-year-old Rinujen has refused to join his second grade class on its weekly visit to a Hindu temple for religious instruction. “I don’t want to go to the temple, because I belong to Jesus,” he explained. Moved by Rinujen’s courage and the knowledge of his mother’s miraculous healing, some of the teachers asked him to pray for them, even kneeling so he could place his hands on their heads.
Likewise, Tenusha refused to complete her Hindu religious studies even though it was required for high school graduation. When she petitioned for an alternative course of study, a teacher asked why she didn’t want to take the class. Tenusha then took the opportunity to tell her whole class how her mother had been healed of demonic oppression, explaining that Jesus Christ can forgive sinners and give them new life. “I believe that one day that teacher will truly come to know the Lord,” she said. “I am the only Christian in my school, so they would not talk to me. But I am so confident that Jesus is with me, so I am not afraid.”
Sharing the gospel in front of her class was just the first step on a path of bold faith. Tenusha began to read the Bible aloud to her parents, who cannot read. As she read and studied Scripture, she also began to exhort and encourage her family from God’s Word. Now, at age 19, she routinely teaches from the Bible when they meet for Sunday worship, and she dreams of pursuing formal studies in Christian ministry. “When I think about the way that Jesus loves me, … I need to live for Him,” Tenusha said. “Because He gave His life for me, the least that I can do is to serve Him.”
Tenusha shared her favourite worship song to describe the family’s experience of walking by faith. “The Lord who never leaves me, the Lord who walks with me, the Lord who protects me — You are my Lord,” she sang. “Even before I say my needs, You provide for me. And even beyond my imagination, You have blessed me.”
A House of Hope
With help from the global body of Christ, Dinesh and Chandra acquired 11 dairy cows, a number that has almost doubled in a little over a year. They sell the milk to a dairy, and part of the profit is reinvested in the cattle while part is used to support their ministry.
“We go everywhere and talk about Jesus,” Chandra said. “By His grace, He has given people to our church. We believe that the whole village is going to follow Jesus.”
A house church that started with just the four of them has grown to 46 members. In 2022, they decided to build a chapel onto the house to accommodate the growing congregation. When a local mason refused to build a ‘Jesus place’, they built the chapel themselves.
Tenusha said she views the transformation of their house in light of a favourite Bible passage from Isaiah: “Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord … them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:6–7).
“This house was known as the Ghost House,” Chandra said, “because I was filled with demons so that I didn’t know who I was. But now I know who I am as God’s child, and my neighbours know who I am, because God has changed my identity.”
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