Missions Catalyst

In  This Issue:

1. EUROPE: Iranian Musician Finds a New Song
2. LEBANON: One Million Syrian Refugees
3. INDIA: Hindu Radicals Storm Prayer Meeting
4. PHILIPPINES: Deaf Disciple Deaf
5. NEPAL: Between the Dragon and the Elephant

Image: World Watch Monitor; Syrian refugee children in a makeshift tent. More than a million Syrian refugees are registered with the UN in Lebanon.

Greetings,

In a 2014 article for the International Journal of Frontier Missiology, L.D. Waterman explored eight dimensions of life in Christ, three of them dealing with aspects of identity: core identity, social identity, and collective identity. This week’s news deals with all three. An Iranian musician finds a new core identity, refugees must adapt to a new social identity, and Nepal is battling for its own collective identity. For most of my life I thought only of core (or personal) identity, which may be understandable for someone from individualistic America. Yet identity can be much more complex.

A look at how we spend our time might suggest where we find our identity (Flowing Data).

For insights into how an individual embraces an identity as a terrorist, see the 55-minute documentary My Brother the Terrorist (LINK TV), or, for a Christian perspective, please read Four Islamic Voices (INContext).

In Christ,
Pat

Source: SAT-7, November 6, 2015

As a drummer, Sadegh loved to watch Arab music on TV. He first came across SAT-7 by watching its Arabic music programs such as We Will Sing [featuring] popular Egyptian musician Maher Fayez.

“Sometimes I found myself watching several hours of SAT-7 although I didn’t understand what they were saying,” he remembers. “Then I found the Farsi channel and started watching that.”

Around this time, Sadegh [then living in Iran] received an email message from a friend in England that included a Gospel of John. As he read this, a flood of questions came: surely Jesus was more than a prophet if he raised the dead and healed people? But, when he raised this with his mother, she asked “Who are you listening to now, what TV are you watching?”

Sadegh realized he would have to continue his spiritual search in secret. As he carried on reading the Gospel he had hidden beneath his carpet, his belief that God was aloof and distant was blown apart.

“It was when I came to this point in John 3:16. It said God so loved the world, I thought ‘I am part of this world so God loves me. He loved me so much that He sent His Son.’

“I found myself on my knees,” Sadegh says, “I cried out to God: I want to live for eternity, I don’t want to die.” He describes how he felt “covered with love” as he “spent hours on the floor crying with joy. It was like something very deep coming out of my heart—this root of selfishness, pride, hatred,” he recalls.

The old Sadegh was gone: The new one became a secret believer, constantly reading John’s Gospel, but afraid to ask others about Jesus or try to obtain a full Bible because of Iran’s secret police.

» Read full story.

» Interested in Persian culture? See 11 Persian Sayings that Make No Sense in English (Chai and Conversation) and read about Amsterdam’s Persian storyteller (Global Voices). We also just picked up on a story that 450 new believers have recently been baptized in Iran (GodReports).

Source: Open Doors, November 26, 2015

World Watch Monitor recently received a diary from a church leader living in Aleppo, a Syrian city at the heart of the battle between rebels and President Assad’s forces. Not long ago, “Pastor Samuel” visited Beirut in neighboring Lebanon, which is now home to one million Syrian refugees.

“Beirut is one of the most expensive cities in the world; whenever I visit, I make it one of my duties to meet with Syrian refugees, especially families who left Aleppo. It is not easy meeting them when I know they’ve had to leave behind a decent life where they had jobs, owned their own apartments, and were serving in the church and their communities.”

He hears stories of Syrian refugees being treated as second-class citizens and being taken advantage of: working long hours at manual labor for half the salary of locals, paying almost double the usual rent for tiny one- or two-bedroom apartments, and risking trips back to war-torn Syria for medical care because they cannot afford to pay for it in Lebanon where health care is subsidized for citizens.

“When I met refugees in Lebanon some years ago, most of them said that they were expecting the war to end within a couple of weeks or months, and that they would be able to return to their homes and jobs. But the war has continued for four and a half years now, and there’s still no end in sight,” Pastor Samuel continued.

» Read full story with prayer points. See also the longer World Watch Monitor story on which it is based, and read about Syrian “lost generation” of children unable to go to school because of the war (BBC).

Source: Barnabas Fund, November 24, 2015

Around 40 Christians had met together to pray in the home of another Christian in the Mahabubnagar District of India’s Telangana state on October 12, according to International Christian Concern. At around 7:30pm, a mob of Hindu radicals, led by the previous village surpanch (council president), broke into the house shouting insults at the Christians.

They beat the Christians harshly, including the women and the children. One of the believers in the group, 25-year-old Swapna, was four months pregnant at the time and begged the attackers to leave her alone because of her pregnant condition. They beat her anyway and she was later discovered to have lost her baby.

The authorities arrested seven people in connection with the attack after the believers registered the incident with local police. However, they were released on bail later the same day.

» Read full story.

» See also an interesting (if inflammatory) piece from The Guardian alleging that India Is Being Ruled by a Hindu Taliban. Learn more about ministry in India by watching The Letters, a new documentary about Mother Teresa which is opening in theaters December 4.

Source: IMB Commission Stories, November 8, 2015

From a distance it was hard to tell why Felicity was off by herself while other Filipino students played outside. A closer look, however, revealed she wasn’t just standing and moving her hands about—the 7-year-old was practicing sign language.

This eager-to-please, playful child [is] only one in her family who is Deaf, and sometimes it’s just a little easier being herself around other Deaf.

“She’s in her element and can really relate and open up,” said IMB missionary Dave Daggett, who has served 15 years with his wife Ivette in the Philippines.

Because God worked in the hearts of these church planters, Felicity will grow up with opportunities for Deaf community beyond her school. The Daggetts helped start a Deaf church right in her home.

Dave and Ivette [who have a Deaf daughter] met Deaf people within two weeks of arriving in the Philippines. Although they came with church planting among the hearing population as their focus, God has used them to also start numerous Deaf churches throughout their province. [Their] approach to church planting [is] the same as with hearing churches—[to see people] disciple other people.

» Read full story and watch a brief video about this ministry. See also the IMB’s Deaf Peoples website.

Source: Mission Network News, November 9, 2015

Nepal is caught between the dragon and the elephant. Sounds like the beginning of a folktale, but the reality is that the country is being squeezed by the politics of China and India. Nepal is the second poorest [country] in Asia after war-torn Afghanistan.

[Now] Nepal is facing a humanitarian crisis due to the blockade of its border posts with India over the new secular constitution. The blockade, which is now into its second month, has severely restricted the amount of fuel and essential supplies reaching the country from India.

Greg Kelley with World Mission explains how the politics trickles down to impact everyday gospel work. “The biggest resource that is crippling the ministry outlets is the gasoline [shortage], so it makes it very difficult to get from Point A to Point B.”

Kelley says the gospel is still going forward. “Just this past week, we got an amazing report of a listening group of people gathering around and listening to the Word of God: 72 people gave their lives to Christ in this one village.”

» Read full story and a previous MNN story, Blockade of Supplies into Nepal Continues; both go further into the geopolitics than what we’ve shared here. UNICEF warns that millions of Nepali children are at risk this winter.