The team toured through the southern part of India and went to the Karattampatty village, led by Pastor Selvaraj. It was the fourth visit for the church and Kiama Reverend Steve Stanis has been on each trip.

"Indian Gospel League is the organisation we connect with, and having seen what they do, in 2012 our church decided to build a partnership and adopt a village," he said. "The church is two-and-a-half years into our five-year relationship with the village which has a population of 2500 people.

"The Indian Gospel League is an indigenous, bible-centred ministry which has started more than 60,000 churches in the past 25 years and have provided different types of support for poverty stricken areas. The ministry provides education for people including children, health care programs, women's transformation groups, building infrastructure and micro finance, which allows people to start a small business."

It was Margaret Clough's second trip to the village, where she expanded on the women's empowerment program.

"The women are empowered with money management, so they are given training on the basic skills of money and we teach them how to make a business plan," Mrs Clough said.

"They start with sewing and we opened a training system back in 2013. Now we can go back and it is now called the women's empowerment centre.

"They are trained at a TAFE equivalent level.

"They have graduated and now they are contracted to make school uniforms, and they have really advanced in their training."

Before arriving at the village the team visited Kochi, then toured southern India.

They visited tea plantations, hill stations and orphanages.

It was Bronte Illingworth's first trip and she shared her experiences at the orphanages.

"We visited half a dozen orphanages, we played games with them and we really connected with these kids," Miss Illingworth said.

"One of the bigger orphanages had 600 kids and on one day we would sing songs, share a story and we would play ball games with them.

"We had a lot of fun interacting with these kids and they were so happy that we were there. For them it is important to have that one-on-one interaction."

Reverend Stanis feels that each time they go back they become more accepted and see a great deal of change.

"The welcome at the village was dramatically different the first time, but we really have been accepted now that we have been back a few times and if you show care and love for people they're going to start to ask questions," he said.

"We provide financial support and keep turning up, showing what we can do in partnership together."

So far 50 members of the church have visited the village and Reverend Stanis plans to go back again in June 2016.

"We plan to keep going back and we hope that they're going to open up a life centre, which is a multi-functional building and it will become a centre for health programs, child ministries and Sunday services."

The Kiama Anglican Church has Sunday morning services at 8am and 10am and an evening service at 6pm.

For more information go to iglworld.org/about/