In 2024, Maranatha Volunteers International built 30 Adventist churches across four Indian states and drilled 104 water wells, in a single year of work. The figures come from a report released in February 2025 by the Adventist Review and the Adventist World, official publications of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The result is part of a long-term effort. According to the report, in about 25 years in the region the organization has already raised approximately 2,000 churches — more than 40% of the roughly 4,588 current churches in the Southern Asia Division — and drilled 1,052 water wells that benefited around 3,000 communities in the country.
What Maranatha did in India in 2024
According to the Adventist Review, the year 2024 closed with 30 new Adventist churches built by Maranatha across four Indian states, plus 104 water wells drilled for communities without reliable access to a potable source.
The publication describes the two types of work as complementary. The churches give local congregations a fixed place to gather and worship; the wells address a basic public-health need, bringing treated water to villages where supply was precarious. It is that combination — evangelistic and humanitarian — that the report presents as the hallmark of the organization's work in the country.
Maranatha Volunteers International is a supporting ministry linked to the Adventist Church: a nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers and donations to build structures in needy regions, working alongside the denomination's official structures but without being merged with them.
Two and a half decades of work
The 2024 figures gain scale when added to the track record. According to the report, Southern Asia Division leaders estimate that, over about 25 years, Maranatha built approximately 2,000 church buildings in the region.
That is equivalent to more than 40% of the roughly 4,588 churches now listed in the Division's directory. In other words: close to two out of every five active Adventist churches in the territory would have been raised with the participation of the supporting ministry.
In the area of water, the report points to 1,052 wells drilled over that period, with an estimated impact on about 3,000 communities. The report also mentions the organization's work in the educational field, with classrooms built for Adventist schools in the country.
Read alsoVoice of Youth closes 2024 with more than 19,000 baptismsWhere the Southern Asia Division is
For the reader, it is worth locating it on the map. The Adventist Church organizes its worldwide administration into divisions — large regions that bring together countries and group the local unions and conferences. Brazil, for example, is part of the South American Division (SAD).
The Southern Asia Division (known by the acronym SUD, from Southern Asia Division) covers mainly India and neighboring countries. It is one of the most populous and diverse territories of the denomination, and much of the Adventist growth there runs through infrastructure challenges that help explain why building churches and wells carries so much weight.
It is in this context that the report positions Maranatha's work: less as a one-off project and more as a long-term cog within the church's expansion in the region.
Beyond the churches: the Binjipali renovation
The report also highlights a concrete educational project: the renovation of the campus of the Binjipali Adventist School, in eastern India, completed after three years of work. According to the publication, students gained better classrooms, larger dormitories, renovated bathrooms, landscaping, and a modernized kitchen and dining hall.
Maranatha's director in India, Vinnish Wilson, summed up the reach of the work in a statement quoted by the report. According to him, some of the students "slept on a bed for the first time in their lives" after the dormitory renovation — a detail that helps translate, on a human scale, what the figures of meters and wells mean in daily life.
What this says to the Pathfinder
For those who live the Pathfinder Club, the news touches a familiar point: service to others is part of the curriculum, not an appendix. The regular classes and the honors include community projects, and the Pathfinder ideal itself speaks of helping others.
Maranatha's work in India offers a large-scale example of the same principle: organized volunteering that results in clean water, schools, and gathering spaces. It is the kind of story that tends to appear in club programs, devotionals, and mission projects, linking the local routine to a global mission.
A note on method is warranted: the figures gathered here come from the report released by the Adventist Review and the Adventist World. They are estimates and totals provided by the organization itself and by Division leaders, and should be read as such — a portrait released by the official sources, not an independent audit.