Undoubtedly Kumoan, the eastern most portion of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, is one of the most beautiful places in the entire country. In the foothills of the Himalayas, there are both lush green and snowcapped mountains interspersed with many cold lakes. Everywhere you turn there is another beautiful scenic view better than the one before it. In contrast to the natural beauty, however, is the spiritual darkness, which is both prevalent and powerful. We experienced both the incredible natural beauty and the stifling spiritual darkness during our recent production in this area.

Entering into a place of spiritual strongholds is never easy for our teams, and this particular project proved to be one of the more difficult ones. The local Hindus gripped by fear make frequent offerings at local temples and high places to appease their many gods and spirits. Even the Christians we encountered live in fear and didn’t want to associate with us, lest they incur the wrath of their Hindu neighbors. This fear made it very difficult for us to secure our locations, actors and local helpers for the film in a timely fashion. Those delays ended up generating a production schedule that was jammed back from the moment we started, and we were still shooting scenes right up until our cast party on the night before we were to depart. Rest was not an option. We were sent to this place to make a movie, after all.

Nevertheless, we prevailed. A godly pastor stepped out in faith to assist us and helped to provide most of our locations and actors through his local network. We ended up with a lovely couple to play our lead actors, a Hindu man and his Christian wife, who mirrored the characters in our film. The story was about a young Hindu man who experiences Christ through his encounters with a young Christian woman and her faithful brother. This is not the first time one of our stories echoed a real life situation that we were not aware of until after the fact! God is the Executive Producer of our films and often surprises us with his amazing provision.

Editing of our film will begin soon. Please pray that this process will go well and that we will complete a film that gives glory to God, honors the culture of the Kumoani people and appeals to them, imploring them to consider the God who made them, loves them still, and died for their sins to set them free forever.

– Steve Baldwin (Leader of Create International 20/20 Vision Team)