Missions Catalyst

Most evangelical Christian women in Eritrea have to pray together in secret. Photo: World Watch Monitor. Related story below.

1. INDIA: Challenges and Advances in North India
2. IRAN: Church Believed to Have Nearly 1 Million Members
3. BANGLADESH: A Different View of Rohingya Refugees
4. ERITREA: Evangelical Christians Freed on Bail
5. ZAMBIA: Prepared in Season and out of Season

Source: Beyond, September 23, 2020

About one year ago, some house church leaders in North India had their homes burned to the ground. They are facing difficulties again.

A few months after their homes were burned, all the families moved back and rebuilt their huts. Last week, a local Hindu extremist group joined forces with the police, damaged their rebuilt homes, and arrested 14 people. Two are still in jail. The police are demanding extortion to release them.

However, in the midst of very real persecution, the church continues to advance. Sanjay, a leader in the movement, recently read through old diary entries from the first movement meetings in 2012. He had written, “God, give us North India.”

We praise the Lord for the big vision of these committed disciples. Today, the work has spread to nine states and over 200 caste groups. Thousands and thousands of families have become strong disciples of Jesus, working to make more disciples of Jesus.

Pray for our brothers and sisters to remain attached to the Vine, and for their joy to increase even in the midst of their persecution. Pray our Father will bring forth much fruit that the devil cannot snatch away.

» Read full story.

» See also Christians in Northern India Forced to Stop Worship, Pastor Says (Morning Star News) and this photo essay: Ganges River Flows with History and Prophecy for India (Associated Press).

» Colleagues in mobilization at Pioneers are hosting a virtual prayer time for the Hindu world on September 23. You’re welcome to join in.

Source: Christian Headlines, September 4, 2020

If you open up your doors to a house church in Iran, then your home could be frequently raided and monitored. And if you do happen to go to prison, the prison situation there is appalling.

Despite these issues, Christianity Today reports the Iranian church has grown to around 1 million members. This is according to a survey by GAMAAN, a research group based out of the Netherlands. The survey asked 50,000 Iranians what their belief was. 90% of those surveyed live in Iran.

According to the survey, 1.5% of Iranians are Christians. Extrapolating that out yields a minimum of 750,000 Iranian Christians, but there are also 117,500 Armenian and Assyrian Christians living in the country, putting the actual baseline closer to 867,500 Christians at minimum.

However, Christianity Today reports the survey itself states there are “without doubt in the order of magnitude of several hundreds of thousands and growing beyond a million” Christians in the country.

» Read full story or see the piece it’s based on in Christianity Today.

Source: Mission Network News, September 14, 2020

In a newly released video, two ex-soldiers from Myanmar confess to the mass killing and rape of Rohingya Muslims. It’s the first time anyone from Myanmar’s military acknowledged a campaign of violence targeting this people group, CNN reports.

Since 2012, armed attacks have forced between 800,000 and one million Rohingya refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. Vincent Michael of Forgotten Missionaries International (FMI) says they’re helping local pastors reach these refugees for Christ.

“A big part of working with Bangladeshis is to encourage them to be visionary, to go into places where we can’t go, and to take those opportunities instead of being scared of them,” Michael says.

Poverty presents a challenge to this mission. More people live below the global poverty line in Bangladesh than anywhere else in South Asia. Instead of seeing Rohingya refugees as people who need Christ and compassion, some Bangladeshis view them as competition for scarce resources. FMI offered Bangladeshi pastors a different outlook during a recent training session.

“We made a slideshow of pictures that painted the Rohingya in a more ‘accurate’ light. We showed pictures of Rohingya children crying because they were starving [and] of the bread lines. We showed some of the UN efforts to help in the area,” Michael describes.

“I started seeing a change [during] the conference. When we did that vision casting session, and we showed some of the needs that are in those camps, a large majority of the pastors would say, ‘we’d like to see if we could help; or, at the very least, bring these prayer concerns back to our people.’”

» Read full story.

Source: World Watch Monitor, September 10,  2020

The Eritrean government has released on bail more than 20 prisoners who’d been in detention for years because of their faith, the BBC reports.

A regional spokesperson for charity Open Doors International said that, for some time, it had heard discussion that prisoners might be freed on bail due to the coronavirus pandemic (as has happened in several other countries) but could not independently confirm the reports: “If true, this could be quite significant.”

In May 2019, a monitoring group for the UN said “thousands” of Christians are facing detention as “religious freedom continue[s] to be denied in Eritrea” and questioned why the UN was not monitoring the situation more closely.

In June 2019, Reuters reported that more than 500,000 refugees worldwide have left Eritrea, up from 486,200 a year earlier.

» Read full story includes details on additional incidents related to religious liberty and persecution.

» See also 27 Christians Released from Prison in Eritrea (Christian Today), which includes an estimate that the number of incarcerated Christians is a little over 300, including 39 children. The BBC report cites a US State Department estimate that there are 1,200 to 3,000 prisoners of faith in Eritrea. Not sure why the numbers vary so widely.

» The recent peace deal in neighboring Sudan included an agreement by the transitional government to remove Islam as the state religion and abolish the death penalty for leaving Islam (Open Doors).

Source: Operation Mobilization, September 8, 2020

“When the virus spread to Africa, I had the choice to leave for Canada, but I am thankful that I chose to remain in Zambia,” explained Larissa [a Canadian serving with OM]. “God has used my team in a really special way to continue reaching out to ladies in Zambia and other locations across Africa.”

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, almost everything in Zambia, where Larissa works to empower and equip women, came to standstill as lockdowns restricted movement and wearing a face mask became mandatory while interacting with people. Instead of Larissa and her team being restricted, however, they found an opportunity to express love to others by sewing affordable face masks. “Our vision didn’t change—we still wanted to empower women—but our focus for this time had to change,” commented Larissa.

Sewing as many as 7,000 masks within a few weeks, the effort provided not only a reprieve for people who faced the stark choice of whether to spend their meager earnings on expensive masks or face a jail term for not wearing one but also an income stream for the women training as tailors who are often the breadwinners of their family.

“As often in developing countries, the life of a woman is not easy,” observed Larissa. “Women are often uneducated and illiterate and therefore struggle to generate any form of income.

“Our vision is to see women empowered, freed from physical and spiritual oppression and become vibrant followers of Jesus.”

» Read full story.

» Want more stories about showing effective compassion in challenging times? Read about the ministries in the US (mostly) that won the annual Hope Awards from World Magazine.