Category: News Briefs

Source: Far East Broadcasting Company, January 7, 2022

By January 10, Wiens was able to provide an update: “The situation has calmed down. Police checkpoints are everywhere. Nevertheless, people are afraid to go out. Many stores are still closed and other [stores] are out of most essential food, etc. We realize that it will be of some challenge for the immediate days ahead of us. But we hope, things will improve soon. Thanks for your prayers. We will keep on praying for better days.”

Read the full story and watch the 5.5-minute video.

For additional perspective, see Thousands Arrested After Deadly Unrest in Kazakhstan (INcontext International).

Want to keep up with news from Kazakhstan or neighboring countries? It can be hard to find. Try Eurasianet.

Source: Morning Star News, January 11, 2022

Having moved in with his parents after the birth of his son, Pawan said that in March 2020 they told him and his wife to either partake of Hindu rituals or leave their home in central Nepal’s Bhaktapur District.

“We tried hard to settle the matter, but they did not let us stay,” Pawan, 26, told Morning Star News. “They kept our newborn son and threw us out of our home.”

His parents had insisted that if they were going to attend Christian worship services, they must also participate in rituals such as eating food offered to Hinduism’s many gods, he said. Refusing to eat such food, his wife grew so weak she had trouble providing breast milk for their baby.

“Many days went by with just a meal a day, and my wife, who was breastfeeding our baby, grew weaker,” Pawan said. “She would silently suffer, fearing that complaining to me might lead to a heated argument with my parents.”

Working hard but earning little, Pawan remained true to his faith even though economically dependent on parents that were hostile to Christianity.

“When we refused to accept food offered to the deities,” he said, “my parents would insult us, asking, ‘What good has following Christ done for you? Your baby keeps falling sick. What is your Jesus doing? Why is he not protecting your baby?’”

Tensions grew after his younger brother put his faith in Christ, he said. “Both my mother and father falsely accused me of sorcery to draw my brother into my faith,” Pawan said. “I only shared the gospel with him; I never forced him and did not speak any alluring words to make him a Christian. It was his own decision.”

Read the full story. This family is no stranger to persecution.

Source: The Christian Post, January 15, 2022

Oscar Amaechina, the president of Afri-Mission and Evangelism Network in Abuja, Nigeria, will never forget the day he thought his life would end.

”I remember there was a particular mission field where we were ministering to people, and some people came to kill us,” Amaechina told The Christian Post. “They confessed that they were there to kill us. We saw them with their machetes, we saw them with their swords, and we believed that that was our last breath. We thought we were going to take our last breath and go.”

While staring death in the face, Amaechina and his fellow missionaries decided to offer one last act of kindness to their persecutors.

“We gave them rice, gave them spaghetti, gave them cream and soup … and they moved away from us,” he recalled. “They returned, and one of their leaders spoke to us through an interpreter and said, ‘We were here to kill you. Since we are poor, no one has ever given us gifts, but because of these gifts, we want to become Christians.’”

The assailants’ instant change of heart, Amaechina said, both shocked and amazed him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he shared. “And we led them to Christ. It was wonderful, it was awesome, and it was an eye-opener. Since that day, we have never resisted showing kindness. There’s power in kindness and love. And that is what we believe in ministry.”

The full story includes a 15-minute video interview with Amaechina talking about ministry in Nigeria.

Also read Redefining the Mission Field: Christians in Guinea-Bissau Take Charge of Ministry Work (World News Group).

Source: Mission Network News, January 17, 2022

According to Humanium.org, more than 100 Iranian children die from famine, street fights, and illness each month. These aren’t the only dangers threatening Iran’s next generation.

In an unexpected move, Iranian leaders recently acknowledged the exploitation of children. However, Heart4Iran’s Jennifer Shamoon says the data is vastly underestimated.

“Iranian officials reported about 4,600 children were living in poverty and collecting garbage on the streets of Tehran to sell,” Shamoon says. “When Iranian officials announce a number, you can double it because they’re not telling the truth. They’re trying to mask everything.”

[Recently] a state-run media outlet blamed poverty for increasing child marriages. Zahra Nejad Bahram, a women’s rights activist, told the outlet:

“We are witnessing the rise of child marriage in society. Some officials openly encourage child marriage. According to published statistics, the number of child marriages in 2020 and spring 2021 has increased sharply in different parts of the country.”

“When there isn’t a strong family, these people (children) are not being protected, and they are being abused in different ways,” Shamoon says.

The full story includes links to sources. Note that officials claim up to 95 percent of at-risk children are Afghan refugees.

See also Hunger Crisis Forces Afghan Parents to Sell Children for Food (World Vision) and read another Mission Network News story about children at risk, which reports Uganda has reopened schools after nearly two years.

Source: Open Doors, January 11, 2022

Each morning, Bae wakes up and starts her day in a rustic shack in a rural village somewhere in the mountains of North Korea. Her husband is groggy from the short night of sleep, and she can hear the rustling of the other people in her house getting ready for another day in the fields.

She hopes she’ll meet her work quota picking crops. She doesn’t want to risk additional punishment or the loss of her brief moments during the day when she can forage food. The government provides food for people like her—but just enough to keep them alive to work.

Finally, at dusk, she finishes her day. She gets another meal—some watery soup and, if she’s lucky, some rice—and returns to her home. And then Bae gets to her real work.

She waits for the moon to go behind the clouds, then silently pulls on her cloak. She slips out of the front door, careful to close it quietly so the neighbors don’t hear. As she makes her way through the village, she sticks to the shadows and steals back to the forest.

But this time, she isn’t foraging for food—what she’s after is even more important. She finds the tree with the gnarled roots and scrapes away a thin layer of dirt. She pulls out the plastic bag and tucks it under her cloak, returning to her cabin as quietly as she left.

When she gets home, her housemates are waiting—they’ve already covered the windows with blankets and lit a small candle. From the bag she dug up, she pulls out a book. She opens it and begins to read, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It’s another day in a North Korean church.

Read the full story and watch a 3.5-minute video, also below.

Source: Christian Aid Ministries, December 20, 2021

Watch the December 20 CAM press conference and give God the glory for preserving and delivering this group of missionaries, pictured below shortly after they were reunited in Florida.

Also see Abducted Haiti Missionaries Describe Daring Escape (BBC).

Source: Article18, November 25, 2021

Iran’s Supreme Court has ruled that nine Christian converts serving five-year prison sentences for their involvement in house churches should not have been charged with “acting against national security,” in what has the potential to become a landmark ruling.

While the ruling is not enough on its own to set an official “precedent,” nevertheless it has the potential to influence all current and future cases involving Persian-speaking Christians.

The ruling, handed down on November 3 but only communicated to the Christians’ lawyers [November 24], states explicitly that their involvement in house churches and even the propagation of what is referred to as the “Evangelical Zionist sect” should not be deemed against national security. 

This is significant, because in each of the cases involving the more than 20 Christians currently incarcerated in Iran for their involvement in house churches, the charges amounted to “actions against national security.”

See the full story with pictures and read other stories about persecution in Iran from Article18. They report the men were released January 1.

Another encouraging story comes from Africa, where more than 500 Muslims attended a Christmas service to promote religious tolerance in Nigeria (International Christian Concern).

Source: Back to Jerusalem, December 2021

Musfar (not his real name), was recently arrested after the police conducted a surprise raid on his home. Musfar has been handing out Bibles throughout his nation to secret believers and the police have been waiting to arrest him for months.

When the police raided his home, they searched everywhere for his secret stash of Bibles. Musfar’s apartment is small and he had over a thousand Bibles stacked in one of the most obvious locations. Surprisingly, the police found the location of the Bibles, looked directly at them, but never made any motion to touch them, pick them up, or examine them. It was almost as if the Bibles were invisible to the eyes of the police.

Is it possible that the police never saw the Bibles? Could their eyes have been blinded?

Musfar was taken to jail and accused of distributing Bibles, but the police could not provide any evidence, because they were unable to find the Bibles.

Our BTJ partners living in this closed country were able to get access to the apartment in the middle of the night after Musfar’s arrest and retrieve the Bibles. We now have several hundred Bibles to hand out in this country that desperately needs the Word of God.

As the Bibles are delivered, the people are being told about the amazing miracle of the invisible Bibles.

Read the full story.

Source: Mission Network News, December 13, 2021

Last year, believers worldwide stayed connected with their home groups and church fellowships by going online, even though COVID-19 restrictions kept them physically apart.

The online church provides more than convenience in the Middle East and North Africa. Sometimes, it saves lives. “I think about the moms who’ve come to faith, and they’re married to someone who is a non-Christian,” MENA Leadership Center CEO Jennifer Murff says. “It’s very dangerous for them and their children to just step into a local church.”

“In many countries in MENA, it’s illegal to change your religion. The digital church provides an outlet [where] they (new believers) can continue to grow in their faith and get discipled until they can step into a physical location,” Murff says.

Read the full story.

Also related to technology and the church, read how Brazilian Christians are ministering to Afghan refugees or consider The Changing Face of Missions in the Digital Age (Phil Cooke/Outreach Magazine).