Month: March 2017

Source: World Watch Monitor, February 20, 2017

Ten white plastic chairs are arranged in a circle on the roof terrace of a four-story apartment block housing hundreds of Asian laborers. This is a part of Qatar where tourists never come—Doha’s Industrial Zone, where all the hard groundwork is done to maintain Qatar’s image as a modern state. The roads here in some areas are bad, there are no streetlights, and the air is filled with fumes.

Although it is officially illegal to meet outside of government-approved areas, tonight a group of Christians will meet here together to read the Bible and pray.

Most visitors will see only grand, extravagant palaces, brightly illuminated skyscrapers, and futuristically designed mosques in Doha, the capital. Within a few years, a dozen new architectural accomplishments are going to join those landmark buildings—state-of-the-art football stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which are said to be costing the country $500m a week.

But the FIFA PR show cannot hide the other side of Qatar—a profoundly intolerant country for non-Muslims. There is a deep division between the extremely rich Qatari nationals, who are now a tiny minority in their own country, and the hundreds of thousands of often exploited laborers, mostly from Asian countries. Reports from charities such as Open Doors suggest there are serious dangers for those not part of Qatar’s Muslim elite. Qatar is ranked 20th on Open Doors’ 2017 World Watch List of countries in which it is most difficult to be a Christian.

» Read full story. A related article describes Christianity in the Arabian Peninsula.

» Also check out Qatar Needs to Stop “Playing the Victim Card,” in which a Qatari author touches on domestic worker abuse (Doha News).

Source: Mission Network News, February 17, 2017

Last summer while in Pakistan, Bruce Allen [of FMI] had met a couple who had just gotten baptized.

These two new Christians were on fire for the Lord and wanted to grow in wisdom and encouragement and to share their faith with their family as well as others. In fact, this was their main prayer request.

“Habib did indeed have an opportunity to share his faith with his family—and they promptly tried to kill him, throwing him off the top of the building,” Allen shares.

Imagine that, having the very people who are closest to you, know you most intimately, violently turning on you for sharing the gospel. It’d be easy to understand if Habib had grown bitter and vowed to never return. But that’s not his story.

Just last month, Allen was back in the country, meeting with new believers and even was able to see some new believers get baptized.

“At the end of that day, having conversations with some of the people who were baptized, we discovered that it was Habib’s family who had gotten baptized.”

Habib and his wife’s steadfast testimony was impactful and influential, and God used it along with his Word to bring this family to him.

» Read full story and also another FMI report about ministry in Pakistan, It Begins with One Cup of Tea.

Source: Operation Mobilization, February 16, 2017

What if the Bible wasn’t in your language? What if you thought God didn’t speak your tongue? What if the Bible was in your dialect, but you had to rely on other people to share it with you because you couldn’t read it for yourself?

Such is the reality of many unreached people groups across the globe, including the Islamic Yao tribe in Malawi.

Up until 2015, the Bible was unavailable in the tribal language of chiYao, in written or audio format. Today, the whole Bible is ready to be heard through AudiBibles.

In the first seven months of 2016, the OM Malawi team handed out 297 solar-powered AudiBibles. Each recipient of a device is expected to start a weekly listening group, as the Word of God is meant to be shared.

“The AudiBible is a true preacher,” said Fredson Phiri, one of the AudiBible trainers. “It doesn’t add, it doesn’t subtract; it gives the whole truth to the person. It preaches itself.”

» Read full story and other OM articles about ministry in Malawi.