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SALT LAKE CITY — When Michael Pitcher's National Geographic arrives he usually glances through it, but last March an image caught his eye and wouldn't escape his mind.
"You could look into his eye and see that he had gone through a great deal of persecution based on his Christian religion," Pitcher said.
Anil Kuldeep is the young man in the picture. He was 15 when a group of extremists attacked his village in 2008. They burned homes and churches, and forced people to run for their lives with only the shirts on their backs.
Anil was captured and beaten for eight hours because he refused to renounce his faith.
"The moment that changed everything is when he said, ‘I realized I was going to die and I said to the Lord, "You can take me or allow me to live, either way my life is yours,"'" said National Geographic photographer Lynn Johnson, recounting the conversation she had with Anil as she took his picture.
Anil's conviction inspired her to do more than just take a picture.
"Traveling around with the magazine, I've seen a lot of desperate people and violence and sadness and joy. But there was something about the courage of this young man and how he held that promise in his body," Johnson said.
With the help of Jen Saffron, a journalist from Pennsylvania, Johnson began a survivors fund to help Anil and others from his village. A few months later, their efforts received a huge boost thanks to an email they received from a man in Idaho asking about the picture.
"We talked about lenses, we talked about the way she lights her pictures, those kinds of things. And then I said, ‘How are those people you mentioned in the article?'" Pitcher said.
Once prosperous farmers and shop keepers, the group of Christians now barely had enough food to eat. Pitcher offered some money for an education fund and made another suggestion.
"I asked if they would be interested in having a medical team visit India with their survivors, knowing that my sister and brother-in-law have done that before ... I just kind of threw them under the bus before even telling them," Pitcher said.
Pitcher's sister, Christy Benedict, lives in Hyde Park, Utah, and has done numerous humanitarian trips, most in South America. When Pitcher called her, she firmly explained she and her husband were not interested in going to India because they didn't know the language. But Pitcher told her she would be receiving a call from a photographer with National Geographic.
"Lynn was really convincing, and she told me the whole story," Christy Benedict said. "The more I thought about it, I thought: I am supposed to go. It was this bolt of lightning and it said, ‘Christy, you are supposed to take a team and go to India.'"
Her husband, the doctor, was a tougher sell, but he was eventually persuaded by the stories that reminded him of the persecutions faced by ancestors who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its early days.
The more I thought about it, I thought: I am supposed to go. It was this bolt of lightning and it said, 'Christy, you are supposed to take a team and go to India.'
–Christy Benedict, volunteer
"The story resonates," Jim Benedict said. "I've got stories about a great-great-grandmother who was forced out of Nauvoo."
With help from a local nonprofit called the Charity Anywhere Foundation, the Benedicts started putting a team together to travel to India. They now have more than a dozen people committed to go, including their next-door neighbor Martin Petersen.
"In this instance it has been interesting to see the right people come together to do the right thing," Petersen said.
Johnson and Saffron made a trip to Utah earlier this year to meet some of the volunteers and explain what their journey would involve.
"I'm nervous about this trip more than most of them. I've been to many third-world countries, but from my understanding where we are going now is going to be a fourth-world area," said Christy Benedict.
"These people are below the untouchable. The untouchables are treated like dirt by the upper caste system, and these people don't even register as being human almost," Jim Benedict said.
But the volunteers say looking at Johnson's pictures, all they see is the people's humanity and need.
"It's just been kind of interesting thing to watch all of these people come together," said Pitcher, who had no idea a simple email would create this kind of volunteer operation.
"I think the spirit of service here is an extraordinary one," Johnson said.
The group from Utah plans to travel to India with Johnson later this year. KSL News has chosen not to disclose the exact location or dates of travel in order to protect the village and volunteers.
The group plans to build shelter, wells and latrines in addition to offering medical help. The education fund they started has already helped some of the children pass their school board exams.
As for Anil, he is working on getting the equivalent of a high school diploma and hopes to attend college.
Contributing: Carole Mikita
