WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founded by Dr. K.P. Yohannan – Discussing Gospel for Asia’s ministry commitments during the past 40 years and how they have remained the same but have taken on new forms over the decades.
On July 3 of this past year, Gospel for Asia (GFA) celebrated the 40th anniversary of its founding on July 3, 1979. Throughout these years, the Lord has continually allowed us the privilege of seeing lives in Asia change for the better. He has proven Himself faithful in every way, and we rejoice in what He has done in and through this ministry.
We are thankful for our many faithful supporters, through whom the Lord has worked to touch the lives of countless millions in Asia. And we are grateful for the men and women serving on the field, giving of their time, energy, emotion and every part of their lives in order that more may experience the love of God.
Our vision for ministry during these 40 years has remained the same, but the working out of that vision has taken on new forms over the decades. Here are just a few of the ways Gospel for Asia (GFA) focuses on helping the people of Asia.
Transformation. The foundation of Gospel for Asia’s ministry is, and always has been, doing whatever possible to help transform families and communities with God’s love, especially among those who have little or no opportunity to hear of His grace. Tens of thousands have joyfully understood Christ’s offer of new life and have chosen to follow Jesus over the past 40 years.
Compassion. Every personal connection with the people of Asia springs from the same compassion that Jesus demonstrates for all the people of this world. Gospel for Asia (GFA) workers are devoted to not only telling others about Jesus but also to personifying His love in action. This is how we become the hands and feet of Jesus. Compassion takes on many forms, from treating the heartbreak and physical wounds of leprosy patients to giving women sources of income to prevent prostitution to providing aid to families suffering in the wake of natural disasters.GFA-supported Sisters of Compassion are committed to serving the Lord by doing some of the lowliest tasks associated with tending to the downcast.
Sanitation. Inadequate sanitation continues to be a common problem in emerging countries. Even in countries where economic growth is being driven to new heights, millions suffer from unsanitary waste removal. Hundreds of thousands of people in remote villages across Asia continue to practice open defecation, creating breeding grounds for vector-borne diseases. Gospel for Asia (GFA) is transforming the lives of families and entire villages through improved sanitation. In 2016 and 2018 combined, GFA installed more than 17,500 sanitary toilet facilities in needy communities.
Health & Healing. Health and hygiene are among the many concerns and issues today. Disease affects millions and kills just as many. Some of the hardest-hit communities are in South Asia, where poverty and destitution leave families vulnerable to many illnesses. Unable to afford medical care or proper food, many people are afflicted by preventable diseases that are ravaging their lives. GFA-supported health initiatives seek to minister to these people and bring them health and hope amidst their troubles. GFA-supported workers organize medical camps to curb disease rates and care for those already sick. Whether it be in remote villages or crowded cities, the sick and the hurt bring hope and comfort. When many are otherwise unable to afford treatment or lack access to medical care, these camps provide them with the care they need—free of charge. Gospel for Asia (GFA) conducted more than 1,100 medical camps in 2018. That is more than an average of three per day.
Practical Empowerment. It takes more than encouragement to empower people who have either no marketable skills or means to generate income. GFA-supported workers provide literacy training for tens of thousands of women each year. Through Gospel for Asia’s Women’s Literacy Program, the written world is opening up to thousands of women for the very first time. The foundational text for the classes is Scripture, so participants gain Biblical knowledge even before they’ve completed the course. Knowing how to read is one step. Having a marketable skill is another. GFA-supported workers organize vocational training that makes it possible to learn a new trade and succeed. For instance, through a six-month tailoring course, women learn how to sew blouses, trousers, undergarments, and many other practical items they can sell to provide a healthy income for their families. Nonetheless, those women could not generate income without the proper tools. GFA-supported workers provided nearly 9,000 sewing machines in 2019 to women trained in their use.
These ministries remain just a part of all that Gospel for Asia (GFA) is committed to doing to share God’s love with the people of South Asia. Whenever we see a need, we ask the Lord, “What can we do?”
Please pray with us that we will be able to continue sharing hope, practical help and God’s love throughout South Asia.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) – Discussing the Sisters of Compassion, women missionaries who choose to identify with the marginalized, and reflect God’s love to bring the hope of Jesus to their lives.
Prisha stepped out of the rickshaw only to be greeted by a crowd of dirty, half-naked children running around. One woman stood nearby barely clothed—much to Prisha’s embarrassment. Animal carcasses and burning waste littered the village, creating a stench so bad passersby would speed recklessly through the village to escape it.
Prisha had heard about this village before. Punya Basti’s residents lived in squalor with no electricity, running water or toilets. Most of the villagers left for months at a time to find low-paying work and beg in other areas, but they still couldn’t afford to feed their children three meals a day—much less provide for them to go to school. Alcohol and drug abuse ran rampant, even among children, and fights commonly broke out. On top of all this, outsiders despised the villagers for their low caste and lack of hygiene and education.
Going Where Others Wouldn’t
Prisha had come to Punya Basti to serve as a Sister of Compassion, a woman missionary committed to sharing Christ’s love in practical ways, specifically among poor and marginalized people groups.
Pastor Hoob’s (pictured) ministry was strengthened even more when the Sisters of Compassion came to Punya Basti and start to serve the women in the community.
Gospel for Asia (GFA) pastor Hoob Kumar, who served in the village, was having difficulty ministering to the women.
“The ladies didn’t know how to wear clothes properly,” Pastor Hoob recalls, “and the mothers weren’t bothered that the vessels they cooked with and ate food from were not clean.”
Moreover, the women couldn’t open up to Pastor Hoob because he was a man. He knew they needed someone to come alongside them, educate them and listen to their struggles, so he asked his leaders to send Sisters of Compassion to Punya Basti.
Knowing she was called to go where others wouldn’t, Prisha agreed to go. Out of consideration for her safety, her leader said she could commute there each day from a nearby village that would have safer, more comfortable accommodations, but Prisha wanted to live with the villagers.
“I don’t want to stay in a different place,” she told him. “I want to stay in the midst of them, in the village, so I can understand their feelings . . . and they can understand the love that we want to show them.”
Immediate Challenges Require Unswerving Faith
But living among the villagers wasn’t easy. They rarely bathed or washed their clothes. Drunken fights broke out frequently, with men and women shouting vulgar words.
When the landlord of the house Prisha stayed in offered her and her fellow Sister of Compassion water, Prisha looked at the glass in shock.
“The glass that she gave [us] really smelled very bad. We were not able to drink from that,” Prisha remembers. “Seeing this glass, we were really broken, and we didn’t have anything in our hand to give them. All we could do for them was just pray to God Almighty.”
Prisha and her co-worker knew adjusting to this culture would require more than one prayer, though. They dedicated their first week to fasting and praying; then they began finding ways to help the villagers. They started by sweeping out the village’s filthy drains.
An Uncomfortable Yet Fruitful Lifestyle
At first, Punya Basti’s dirtiness made Prisha wonder if she would ever feel comfortable eating in the villagers’ homes. But she, and the seven Sisters of Compassion who eventually joined her, made a decision to embrace the villagers and share in their lives.
“Slowly we understood that if we don’t get to know them closely, we won’t be able to have relationships with them,” Prisha explains.
The Sisters of Compassion helped the local women with their chores, took care of their babies and ate the food they cooked—food most outsiders would have refused because it consisted of game like tortoise and mongoose.
The Sister of Compassion taught the villagers proper hygiene practices.
By identifying with the villagers, the Sisters of Compassion eventually earned their trust, and the villagers began listening to their advice. People stopped drinking and fighting. Women started dressing modestly and cooking in a healthier, cleaner way. Children started going to school, and the Sisters of Compassion taught them how to bathe, brush their teeth, comb their hair and dress neatly. The villagers even began seeing the missionaries as their own family.
“These eight sisters are like our daughters,” explains one villager. “We love them because they love us. They brought lots of changes in our family, in our home, in our society and in our children.”
Once Scorned, Village Shines
As the Sisters of Compassion reflected God’s love, many people decided to follow Him. Now Christ is transforming Punya Basti from the inside out.
Even when half of the village is away traveling for work, many people gather to worship Jesus each week, ready to learn more about the God who cared enough to send His daughters to live among them.
You can help another community in Asia experience Christ’s love by sponsoring women missionaries like Prisha!
Watch the video to learn more about Sisters of Compassion’s training, dress code and ministry.
Sisters of Compassion choose to wear a uniform that has a special and easily recognized meaning in South Asia: servanthood. It’s a humble sari worn by the poorest women and the street sweepers of Asia.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report Part 2– Discussing the global water crisis and the quest for access to clean water.
A mother cares for her son who is being treated for cholera at a UNICEF-supported cholera treatment center in Baidoa, Somalia Photo by Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, UNICEF
Waterborne Diseases Caused by the Global Water Crisis
Children are most vulnerable because their metabolisms use more water than adults’, and their body weight consists of more water proportionally than an adult’s. Their kidneys are also less able to conserve water.[2]
Diseases that are so deadly can be prevented
with changes that are simple.
In some documented cases, improving the quality of water at the source, combined with treatment of household water and safe water-storage systems, has reduced the incidence of diarrhea by 47 percent. And studies show that simply handwashing with soap can reduce the incidence by 40 percent.[4] These figures underscore a tragic truth: Diseases that are so deadly can be prevented with changes that are simple.
Trace Element Contamination Adds to Global Water Crisis
Sometimes it isn’t living organisms that make people sick, but it’s the naturally occurring elements in the water. Heavy metals and other trace elements are usually present in our diets, and in fact, many of them are essential—but only in tiny quantities. When we ingest more than the safe levels, we can experience illness and even death.
In 2014, four Jesus Wells were dug by Gospel for Asia-supported workers in one drought stricken region—now approximately 5,300 people benefit from these wells. Read the story »
Some of these elements are in the ground and leach naturally into the water we use, while others are introduced into the water supply through industry, mining and agriculture.
This was the problem facing four Asian villages when Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported workers came to the scene in 2014. This area typically experienced several months of drought, followed by heavy monsoon rains. But the water left by the rains was contaminated with chemicals. Villagers with enough money could buy their own water, but the poor had to walk long distances every day to ask for water from local landlords. Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastors in the area arranged for wells to be installed in all four villages, bringing clean water at last to approximately 5,300 people.
Water is a fragile resource, and its problems
are not limited to the developing world.
Since lead paint was identified as a major problem in the United States during the 1970s, a concerted national campaign reduced its impact over time. But Americans received a wake-up call in 2014 when the water supply in Flint, Michigan, came under scrutiny—as described by Karen Burton Mains in GFA’s special report “The Global Water Crisis: Finding Solutions to Humanity’s Need for Pure, Safe Water.”[5]
Residents complained about the color, taste and smell of their water. It turned out that the service lines from water mains to individual homes in Flint were made of lead and were not treated with corrosion inhibitors, which keep the contamination at acceptable levels. Eighty-seven cases of Legionnaire’s disease were associated with the contaminated water, leading to 12 deaths. Overall, more than 100,000 people had been exposed to a dangerous poison.
The Flint saga reminded everyone that water is a fragile resource, and its problems are not limited to the developing world.
The National Guard delivers bottled water to residents of Flint, MI.
In 2017, the Reuters news agency conducted an investigation that revealed how widespread such issues really are even in the United States. Their reporters discovered 3,810 areas in the U.S with childhood lead poisoning rates twice as high as those found in Flint. And 1,300 areas showed lead levels four times greater than those found in Flint.[6] The affected locations included 34 states and Washington D.C. In the best of outcomes, such a national scandal should at least inspire compassion for others around the world who struggle to find clean water.
Arsenic is well known as a poison, but it’s actually an element that occurs naturally throughout the world. When it enters a water supply, however, it can cause unimaginable suffering.
In 1983, scientists discovered arsenic in the water of 33 villages in West Bengal, India. Subsequent investigations revealed similar contamination in 2,417 villages along the flood plains of the Ganges River.[7]
Arsenic poisoning can cause severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Other symptoms include abnormal heart rhythm, muscle cramps and tingling extremities. Some victims first notice unusual lesions and growths on their skin, and many then discover they have cancer. Victims of arsenic poisoning can recover if the source of their illness is removed in time.
Several other disease-causing trace elements—most of them heavy metals—contaminate water supplies today. Cadmium accumulates in the kidneys and hepatic system and can cause cancer. Chromium, likewise, can cause liver and skin cancer when it reaches high levels. Zinc and copper can also be dangerous to health.
A simple family solution to the global water crisis are biosand water filters.
A Simple Solution to the Global Water Crisis
People in the developed world rely on their water providers to protect them from such threats. For those who can afford it, a home filtration system offers added security. But people living in poorer areas have no such protection. They often collect their water from fetid ponds or polluted streams. They’re exposed to all the worst dangers that may be hidden in their water.
Aanjay, a farmer in Asia, saw firsthand the effects of contaminated water on his family and his entire village.
“We were forced to use dirty and filthy water for cooking and drinking,” he recalls. “Thus, we suffered stomachache, jaundice, typhoid and diarrhea.”
The villagers also had to use the tainted water for bathing, which caused skin infections.
That changed when some Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastors provided BioSand water filters for Aanjay’s family and several others.
“Along with receiving a filter, families also received health and hygiene training that works to significantly lower the incidence of waterborne illness,” Aanjay says. “Now the villagers are getting purely filtered water for drinking. Since [the Biosand water filters] were installed, all water-caused and waterborne diseases have ceased.”
Two young boys towing a can of water in the slums of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in order to distribute water to the inhabitants.
Burkina Faso: Africa’s Anguish
Recurring drought, contamination and lack of funds have all contributed to Africa’s severe water problems. A vivid example of all three can be found in the little landlocked country of Burkina Faso.
Located in the vast savanna region south of the Sahara Desert, Burkina Faso endures up to eight months of dry weather each year.[8] When drought makes conditions even worse, as it did in 2016, a true crisis occurs. That year, the capital, Ougadougou, was able to provide only intermittent water service for its 2 million residents. People were forced to travel far into the countryside to find usable water.[9] Water shortages like this, and the power outages that accompany them, have become a normal part of life for city residents.
Nearly half the residents of Burkina Faso live without clean water.
For people in rural areas, the hardships are even worse. Eighty percent of Burkina Faso’s people are subsistence farmers,[10] so droughts are especially devastating for them. The country is also plagued by waterborne diseases common to undeveloped areas—diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid fever.[11]
According to Water Aid UK, 4,500 children under the age of 5 die of diarrhea each year in Burkina Faso, and nearly half the residents live without clean water.[12] When the rains do come, mosquitoes that breed in the standing water spread malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever.
These women are collecting water for crop irrigation in Burkina Faso, where the global water crisis is severe.
One of the main industries in Burkina Faso is gold mining. But the mining process has introduced deadly arsenic into the groundwater.[13] On top of all these challenges, the rapidly-growing population is putting unprecedented stress on the water supply. War and disruption in neighboring countries have displaced millions of people, many of whom seek refuge in Burkina Faso. This has only exacerbated a problem that was already severe.[14]
Efforts to improve conditions in Burkina Faso haven’t always been effective. Relief workers from Water Aid UK found that many existing wells there were unusable because of broken handpumps. And toilets provided by the government to improve hygiene were going unused—because people don’t know what to do with them.[15] This underscores the importance of education to go along with physical improvements. One without the other leads to failure.
[7] Ghosh, N.C., Singh, R.D. Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in India: Vulnerability and Scope for Remedy, Uttarahkand, India, National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, p. 2. Accessed December 26, 2018.
“In our world, one in eight people live in slums. In total, around a billion people live in slum conditions today.”—UN-Habitat Slum Almanac 2015-2016.
Upon reading this fact, my mind almost shut down. An eighth of the world’s population?[1] It seems absurd, but apparently, it is the truth. The reality for those living in slums is harsher than what is reported.
Maisie (not pictured) is among millions living in slums. Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported workers seek to bring them the love and hope of God.
The Slums: An Explanation
Firstly, what exactly are slums? Merriam Webster defines “slums” as “a densely populated usually urban area marked by crowding, run-down housing, poverty, and social disorganization.”[2] Little to no basic utilities exist in slums. Sanitation facilities, clean water, medical provision are inadequately present in these urban areas. Diseases run rampant, with little to no prevention.[3]
Slum dwellers suffer under these harsh and brutal conditions. These people endure the hardship and poverty around them. Entire families are caught in the endless cycle, with no visible way out. Hopelessness and despair rule their lives.
As I perused the many reports and stories about slums, one in particular caught my attention. The story is of one woman’s return from the brink of desperation and despair. This is Maisie’s story.
A Mother’s Heart Touched
Maisie lives in one of the many slums in Asia. Poverty and destitution were all she had known. Maisie’s husband, Abhaidev, was an alcoholic. Any money he received from his odd jobs went to fuel that addiction. No money for food was left for Maisie and their child. With her stomach empty and her body bruised from the physical abuse heaped upon her by Abhaidev, Maisie couldn’t take it anymore. She decided she would take her own life.
By the grace of God, the very same day she set out for suicide, a neighbor stopped by. This neighbor was a believer and shared Jesus’s love with the desperate woman. The believer gave Maisie a booklet, and the message contained within it transformed her heart.
After learning that she was truly loved, Maisie decided to attend the local church led by Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastor Mrithun. After sharing her story with him, Pastor Mrithun prayed for Maisie and encouraged her. That day, Maisie fully recognized the love of God, and no longer wished to end her life.
However, Abhaidev opposed her new faith. He beat Maisie and told her to never go to church again. Maisie refused and continued to pray for her husband. Little by little, the man’s heart softened. Not only did her let her go to church, but he eventually accompanied her!
The Millions Untold
Maisie’s story can be repeated in so many other slums. The destitution and addiction, coupled with abuse and hunger, affect not just the women, but men and children as well. The slums are unforgiving and harsh, but God’s love lifts up and transforms the hardest of hearts. Millions are suffering, but there is hope for them. To learn how you can provide those in slums with hope, visit www.gfa.org/compassion-services/slum-ministry.
“The poor do not need our compassion or our pity, they need our help.” — Mother Theresa It is almost impossible for us to understand the magnitude of the needs of the children of South Asia and their families needing the assistance and intervention of Gospel for Asia (GFA) and others. How bad can their life be?
Frankly, their lives are much worse than most of us can even begin to imagine.
Oh, you’ve heard the appeals over and over again from Gospel for Asia (GFA), Save the Children, Compassion International, World Vision, and a seemingly endless number of NGOs who are committed to reaching out to those living in extreme poverty who are considered the lowest of the low in their home countries.
But there are literally millions of precious, innocent children suffering indignities at levels we fail to comprehend. So, let us explain a few reasons these children need our help.
1. They are considered outcasts.
Our national missionaries go into the urban slums and remote villages where the most impoverished people live. The cultural climate in South Asia has regarded these people as outcasts for centuries. Those living in abject poverty were the lowest of the low in the old caste system. Hence, we get the term “outcasts.” They were considered outcasts (outside of the castes).[1]
2. They are counted as having no value.
In any society, outcasts are regarded as having no merit. Therefore, they have no value. Anything that has no value is considered worthless. Things that are worthless are either discarded or disregarded.
3. They must scavenge to survive.
Because their parents are assigned the most menial tasks in agriculture, commerce, and industry, they (the parents) often do not earn enough wages to afford to feed their families. Children like the one in the image at the beginning of this article are often consigned to begging or scavenging just to stay alive.
4. They are made to do the most menial and repulsive tasks.
“The poorest of the poor perform the jobs that no one else wants to do. Some of the more gruesome of these include removing bits of dead carcasses from roads, and where possible, preparing and tanning animal hides to make leather goods. More disturbingly, they are the people who clear both private and public latrines, often by hand and many . . . have died in the sewers from the highly toxic fumes caused by raw sewage.”
That even includes young children.
One seven-year-old boy shared this story:
“I collect the excrement lying near the school. The excrement of dogs and cats are collected by impoverished children and thrown away. There is no toilet in the school so the human excrement lying outside the school compound is cleaned by underprivileged children. Women sit outside the school for defecation in the evening which the teachers of the school ask the children to clean.”
An 11-year-old girl shared,
“I daily do clean and sweep at a . . . house in my village. I am not paid, but to survive I have to do this. In return, I am given leftover food. I go myself to get leftover food because after the death of my father my mother has become mentally unstable. In case a dog or cat dies in my village then if I am called, I go to drag the dead animals and for that, I am paid 5 to 10 rupees. In case I do not have any work, I go for rag picking and from that money I buy vegetables.”
5. Their survival is existentially more important than their education.
Aside from the intense discrimination they endure in primary schools – which causes many to decide to drop out – if they do not eat, they will not live. So, they do what they must to survive.
6. Surviving until tomorrow means another day of the same despair.
Without outside help, unsponsored children will continue to live in these unimaginable conditions.
7. Your financial support can change their lives.
Sponsoring a child through Gospel for Asia will ensure that the child is both educated and fed. In addition, they are given regular health checkups by qualified medical staff.
Your support of poverty-stricken children is enough to radically change their lives from a foreboding destiny to a future of hope. Supported children are enrolled in Bridge of Hope centers where they learn to read and write, do mathematics, and understand the doors of opportunity that these skills can open for them.
They don’t have to pay for an education they cannot afford. They don’t have to scavenge for food or to earn money. They learn personal hygiene that helps them to enjoy a healthy life.
Perhaps most importantly, they are taught by indigenous people who demonstrate the same love that Jesus does for children. That love is filled with compassion, concern, and care that, together, restore the deeply-need sense of dignity that these children – and all children need.
[1] The caste system was fundamentally based on the belief that those in lower castes could hope to be reincarnated into a higher caste after death. They believed that each time a person died, they would have another reincarnation and, therefore, an opportunity to do better. The cultural belief was that most underprivileged were too low to be eligible for reincarnation.
Every part of God’s creation is distinct. Every person, every animal, every tree is unique and different than all others of their kind. The same can be said of every church, every business and every organization. Something about each is distinctively different. Often, it is not one thing that makes something distinct and different. It may be a combination of distinctives that makes that entity unique in its own right. Gospel for Asia (GFA) cites five Gospel for Asia (GFA) distinctives that describe its function as a faith-based organization (FBO).
1) Focusing on the “Least of These”
Like so many faith-based organizations (FBOs), Gospel for Asia (GFA) distinctives focuses its mission on ministering to people Jesus referred to as “the least of these”—the approximately 3 billion people who are disadvantaged, disabled, uneducated and often disenfranchised and ostracized. Gospel for Asia (GFA) ministers to the physical needs of slum dwellers and people living in abject poverty in remote villages throughout Asia.
Meeting the physical needs of these people is a way to demonstrate the incomparable love of Jesus Christ and to share the good news of what He has done for us.
Gospel for Asia (GFA) expresses God’s love and care by providing food, clean water, sanitation, education, vocational training, health care and disaster relief so people may discover a life of hope beyond their experience of despair.
2) Supporting National Missionaries
“Change happens at the personal, family and community level when people with true servant hearts labor unselfishly to bring real hope and change and encouragement.”
Gospel for Asia was founded 40 years ago by Dr. KP Yohannan, a native of Southern India who had come to the United States to further his education in theology, and his wife, Gisela. Yet, Dr. Yohannan was unable to shed his passion for his own people. But he could not do it by himself.
Dr. Yohannan also understood that there was a revolution happening in world missions as developing countries began to look upon Western missionaries as persona non grata.
His passion and his prophetic insight contributed to creating Gospel for Asia (GFA) as a means for supporting, training and equipping national missionaries who would live and work among their native people.
Many FBOs today ascribe to the practice of supporting national missionaries. Not that these faithful servants are without resistance—that is a product of unbelief. However, they have an enormous advantage when it comes to knowing the language, the culture, the customs and the perspective of their fellow countrymen.
3) Developing Better Communities for Children and Families
Gospel for Asia is about loving the Lord and loving others to see communities changed, both for this life and eternity.
The Lord transforms communities where GFA-supported national missionaries serve the least of these in places where no one else is serving.
Leaders of groups that advocate for the marginalized on a global level are slowly beginning to realize that true change does not happen by making broad declarations and setting global goals. Change happens at the personal, family and community level when people with true servant hearts labor unselfishly to bring real hope and change and encouragement.
“When we are willing to come and die to self, the Lord is able to abundantly bless us beyond all we are able to ask or think. That is exactly what He has done through Gospel for Asia for 40 years.”
Everyone at Gospel for Asia understands that the Lord does not impact people’s lives by might and power, but it is by His grace. His grace empowers national missionaries to have life-changing impacts as they minister in His name to meet the needs of the least of these.
The Lord proves daily that He is faithful to supply the needs of local workers on the field as they demonstrate His loving kindness by being, as it were, His hands and feet.
5) Loving the Lord and Dying to Yourself
Whether on the Gospel for Asia (GFA) campus in Wills Point, Texas, or in Asia, the godly men and women engaged in the Lord’s work commit themselves to maintain a Christ-centered lifestyle described by Jesus in Luke 9:23, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
When we are willing to come and die to self, the Lord is able to abundantly bless us beyond all we are able to ask or think.
That is exactly what He has done through Gospel for Asia (GFA) for 40 years. We trust He will continue to do so regardless of trial or tribulation, sunshine or scandal, communion or criticism.
Our mission is to be devout followers of Christ and to live lives fully pleasing to Him. God has given us a special love for the people of Asia, and it is our desire to minister to them and help them through ministries such as education, health and practical gifts, or through the spiritual transformation of peaceful hearts, restored relationships and mended lives.
“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” —1 John 3:2–3 Do you ever wonder how Christ would be received if He were born today? He came to Earth as humbly as the poorest child in any modern-day developing country. He didn’t live in luxury. His mother and earthly father struggled to even find a safe place for His birth. He didn’t have a pint-sized orthopedic mattress in a custom-made crib. He certainly wasn’t on a waiting list for an exclusive nursery school.
The world didn’t recognize the infant Jesus or care to help. And yet His very existence changed everything.
Each child is an individual who deserves compassion, love and hope. Not just for who they might grow up to be or what they might become but because of who they are now—a precious child of God. Every day, the most innocent among us live in a harsh, unkind environment where surviving until tomorrow is at the forefront. The future is so far away. It could be filled with struggles and pain. It’s not entirely unlike the world our Savior was born into, that he shared the love of God with, and that he ultimately gave His own life to save.
How much easier is it for us, as Christians striving every day to be more Christlike, to merely give compassion and love? What better time is there than now to give the hope of a full belly, clean water and a chance for life-changing education with a child who needs it?
Bridge of Hope Helps Break Down Barriers to Success
” ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'” — Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
What mother doesn’t look into the eyes of her child and wish for a happy, healthy future? Mary, the mother of Jesus, surely adored her newborn son. She wanted the best for him. Children bring hope, even when the odds are against them. The world often has other plans, but through sharing God’s love, we can intercede and help.
With each new child born in each new generation, a family and community imagines what they might achieve. In the Western world, those possibilities are virtually limitless. In America, even incredibly poor children have access to state-funded education, books and transportation to school.
In developing countries, however, many children are born at an extreme disadvantage. Their potential is tethered to obstacles that are difficult to imagine, many of them beyond a parent’s control. But they are not beyond hope.
Bridge of Hope was created to help break those tethers and offer underprivileged children a chance to succeed when the odds are stacked high against them.
Why Do Asia’s Children Need Help?
In many parts of Asia, school is available to children, and they’re required to attend. That sounds like a good start, right? On the surface, sure. It’s a nice framework. But the challenges of severe poverty fill in the blank spaces with problems such as hunger, poor (or nonexistent) sanitation, a lack of books and school clothes, childhood disease and limited access to clean water.
In the poorest families, children may be expected to work and earn wages. That cuts into study time and can often lead to quitting school early. Parents may not have the education or the time to help their children learn. When a child stops attending school, their lifetime potential changes dramatically.
For girls, more challenges arise. Their education may be considered less important than the education of boys. Girls will one day marry into another family. As harsh as it sounds, the family sacrifice that it takes to feed, clothe and send girls to school doesn’t pay off for the family who raises them. That’s especially true where the custom of dowries still exists.
Poverty marches through every continent and every country in the world. But conditions in the poorest parts of rural Asia are different. Education is vital, not just for the life of each child, but also for the growth of a developing country. With help, these children have a better chance to learn with fewer of the distractions that poverty inflicts, and they can help create a better future for their family and the next generations.
What Exactly is Bridge of Hope?
GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program exists in community-based centers where children can go for help with some of their toughest problems. The program, established in needy areas throughout Asia, addresses real problems with real solutions.
The difference is amazing.
Children who enroll in Bridge of Hope get help to succeed in school, but they also get so much more. Dedicated staff provides these needy children with nutritious meals, which may be a child’s only meal of the day. They provide books, school uniforms, a quiet and safe place to study, basic medical care and tutoring.
Students can participate in sports programs, practice good study habits and learn about civic duties and community responsibility.
They also receive training on good hygiene and gifts of the basic toiletries they need. The first toothbrush they ever own may be given to them by a caring and compassionate Bridge of Hope worker.
The well-rounded Bridge of Hope approach helps children not just excel in their education, but also helps them grow and develop into strong, healthy, productive citizens. With each new generation, communities gain more and more of the hope they so desperately need.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” — Galatians 6:2
“We can’t know who any of these precious, poverty-stricken children in Asia will grow up to be. But what we do know is that God loves them as equally as he loves every other child.”
Children are the primary focus of Bridge of Hope, but the story doesn’t end there. Program workers are active in the community, sharing the gift of God’s love and supporting and teaching parents and guardians. In doing so, they broaden hope for the future to encompass whole communities.
Through home visits, parents learn about positive and uplifting childcare practices and good health and hygiene.
Because the success of parents supports the success of the child and the community, Bridge of Hope is also active in helping families achieve a better standard of living.
Workers can connect parents and guardians with vocational training for a better income through self-employment. To support that initiative further, they distribute meaningful gifts, such as sewing machines, small livestock, tools, carts for street vending and other necessities to help generate much-needed income.
Bridge of Hope supports boys, girls and families living in the poorest parts of Asia. And an important piece of the puzzle is you.
We can’t know who any of these precious, poverty-stricken children in Asia will grow up to be. But what we do know is that God loves them as equally as he loves every other child. Especially at this time of year, when we have just celebrated the greatest gift ever given to the world, hope is transformative.
Your gift can sponsor a child and give them a chance to succeed when most of the world has forgotten.
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report Part 2 – Discussing the impact of educational development on the eradication of extreme poverty.
Education’s Holistic Impact on Family Life, Income
God’s creation of the human mind is a marvelous thing. It has the capacity to imagine, dream, create, cherish, remember, deduce, learn and use logic.
When given opportunities through education to learn, cultivate skills and dream, we are capable of accomplishing extraordinary things. To name a few, these include sending human beings into space, discovering medical breakthroughs, crafting new written languages and rebuilding crumbled economies.
This woman works alongside her husband to make bricks, bringing her infant with her. Both men and women work hard in rural villages to try to make ends meet.
We’ve glimpsed snapshots of what happens when mankind lacks the necessary opportunities to cultivate the amazing mind God has granted him.
Underdeveloped minds and absent opportunities steal much of the influence people could make if they only had a chance.
What does it look like when people with little or no opportunity to receive an education are at last given that chance?
An article posted by Schools & Health states,
“Education is fundamental to sustainable development, it is a powerful driver of development and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health; it enables people to be more productive, to earn a better living and enjoy a better quality of life, while also contributing to a country’s overall economic growth.”[1]
Girls study in a UNICEF-supported ‘tent school’ in Afghanistan. Many of their families have been displaced by conflict. (Photo credit UNICEF)
The strong connection between education and income is easy to identify. For every year of primary education received as a child, a worker’s earnings experience a 10 percent increase.[2]
Knowledge of a skill empowers breadwinners to find jobs with better pay and better hours. A literate person in Pakistan earns 23 percent more than an illiterate worker. And in the female workforce, a woman with high literacy skills can earn 95 percent more than an illiterate woman or one who has low literacy skills.[3]
In rural Indonesia, those who finish lower secondary education are twice as likely to escape poverty. In addition, their chances of descending into poverty are reduced by a quarter.[4]
In one study done by an EFA Global Monitoring Report team, findings revealed,
“If all students in low income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which would be equivalent to a 12% cut in world poverty.”[5]
Increased education doesn’t only open new job opportunities for breadwinners; it also enables workers to succeed in their inherited family businesses. Farmers who receive an education are more likely to implement the use of fertilizers and be better equipped to understand the needs of their crops and soil.
Equipped with mathematical skills, a parent can wisely make choices on purchases, contracts and family budgets. And in any business, an increased understanding of finances and mathematics helps guard business owners against being taken advantage of.
If a mother can read, her child is 50 percent more likely to live past the age of 5.
Education’s Impact on Health
By learning how to wash his hands, this young student in GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program helps his family to be more healthy.
The increase in pay a literate person receives also increases their chance for a healthier life. The extra income buys food for children who might otherwise suffer from malnutrition; it gives the family the option of visiting a doctor for medical treatment—and even better, it enables them to undergo preventative medical care such as regular checkups or vaccinations.
A healthy breadwinner misses fewer days of work than a sickly one, and medical bills demand less from the family budget. But education’s impact on a family’s health extends beyond their improved financial situation.
Education also empowers parents to make wise, healthy choices for their families.
If a mother can read, her child is 50 percent more likely to live past the age of 5.[6] The mother is able to read warning labels and follow those simple instructions intended to protect her family from diseases or accidents.
In places where education is absent, superstitions abound. Misconceptions on proper health practices endanger grown adults and children alike—especially children in the womb. In the case of one mother in Asia, her lack of education tragically resulted in her child perishing before birth.[7] Sadly, her story is repeated in villages across the globe. Simple health care classes for women who never received education can mean the difference between lost pregnancies and healthy, full-term babies.
One of the most common hygiene practices—hand washing—is virtually unknown in some parts of the world. According to UNICEF,
“Rates of handwashing around the world are low. Observed rates of handwashing with soap at critical moments—i.e., before handling food and after using the toilet—range from zero percent to 34 percent.”
As a result, easily avoided illnesses are claiming millions of lives. Every year, diarrhea claims the lives of more than 1.5 million children under the age of 5; proper handwashing practices can reduce diarrhea by more than 40 percent.[8]
A person’s health impacts their education as well: A study among primary schools in China with active hand-washing promotions and distributions of soap identified that students missed 54 percent fewer days of school compared to students whose schools had no such program.[9]
No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.Nelson Mandela
Education Development and It’s Impact on Society
There is power in education. “No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated,” said Nelson Mandela.[10]
“Education inspires dreams and equips citizens to pursue their goals.”
Education inspires dreams and equips citizens to pursue their goals. The resulting entrepreneurial efforts help boost economies and create jobs, which aids in global efforts to eliminate poverty.
Literacy is also key to being informed about what is taking place around the world. It builds global awareness into a person’s heart and enables them to engage with others in ways that are impossible without literacy.
The UN states that “quality early education provides children with basic cognitive and language skills and fosters emotional development.”[11] Alternatively, an estimated US$129 billion is lost each year due to the 250 million children globally who are not learning basic skills (and thus have less potential).[12] The importance of quality education on society is revealed by its inclusion in the UN’s global Sustainable Development Goals.[13]
Ashima once faced punishment at school and scolding at home because her family could not afford the school supplies she needed. After she enrolled in Bridge of Hope, which provided for all of her school needs, plus many other gifts to support Ashima’s development, she shares, “My future ambition is that I want to become a medical doctor. Especially I want to serve the poor from our society.”
Beyond influencing the economy of a society, education also touches the fibers of morals and lifestyles in a region.
According to Professor W. Steven Barnett, author of Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications, a child’s academic success can be impacted by early childhood education, which can also reduce incidences of crime and delinquency.[14]
“Beyond influencing the economy of a society, education also touches the fibers of morals and lifestyles in a region.”
The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child confirms that a person’s childhood heavily influences their mental, physical and emotional development, with children raised in secure, loving environments thriving more than children who have experienced trauma even one time.[15]
Do you remember the joy you felt as a child when you did something well in school? The sense of accomplishment and the praise from a teacher or parent give courage and confidence to approach other challenges in life. In the same way, the shame felt when encountering failure can hinder children in life. If a child grows up with a constant sense of failure and insufficiency, that can result in low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Training children at an early age to pursue their goals and giving them the tools they need to succeed prepare them to thrive in the future challenges they will face as adults.
Solutions to Poverty Line Problems of the Poor & Impoverished: Part 1 | Part 3
This Special Report article originally appeared on gfa.org
Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.
Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the human rights injustice and violations, modern-day oppression, extreme poverty, that continues to exist, affecting millions of women, men and even children.
Human Rights Injustice in Social Structures
For those who are considered “Untouchables”—that’s some 300 million Dalits who fall at the bottom of the societal ladder—discrimination typically leaves them with only menial work no one else wants to do.
The Indian government took affirmative action to enforce policies about caste discrimination “reserving a certain percentage of government jobs and admission to educational institutions, as also financial support through loans and special schemes, for these castes,” reports the CRG.
Some Dalits have managed to break out of their long-time social, religious and economic confinement. Recently launched, The Dalit Enterprise celebrates the rise of entrepreneurs from among the Dalits, among whom are around 50 billionaires.
But such successes are often the exception rather than the rule. Seven decades after the government first introduced measures to address the caste issue, CRG’s Sagar notes that “there is not a single positive indicator of social development” where lower castes feature prominently.
“Whether it is land holdings, income, literacy, nutrition or health status, it is these sections-who constitute one-third of India’s population-that are right at the bottom of the pile,” he says.
Migrant workers endure discrimination and social injustices too. In the 2018 Human Rights Watch Report on Sri Lanka, WHO reports that “The government took some steps to protect the [human rights] of more than 1 million migrant workers in the Middle East and other parts of Asia, but many continued to face long working hours with little rest, delayed or unpaid wages, confinement in the workplace, and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.”
“There’s so much improvement and progress in this world,” she said. “But for us, nothing has changed. We’re still in the same hell.”
Cultural attitudes also often limit women’s opportunities to work; they are expected to stay home and look after their families. Female participation rates in the workforce are low in the entire region, while only one in three women in Bangladesh participates, says the World Bank.
Most people in this woman’s village are laborers at a brick factory. Women are often “invisible” workers in brick kilns, vulnerable to exploitation and having little to no rights.
Women working in brick kilns as part of a bonded labor family are what ASI calls “invisible”—not even formally registered on the employment roll, with wages paid only to their husbands.
Often forced to work in what are called “vulnerable” occupations, informal employment where they have no human rights, women are more susceptible to financial exploitation.
Pushed to the fringes, women may be forced to do jobs others refuse, like Suneeta. She told Germany’s Deutsche Welle how she had been a manual scavenger—cleaning latrines by hand for 20 years to feed her family.
“There’s so much improvement and progress in this world,” she said. “But for us, nothing has changed. We’re still in the same hell.”
Widows are particularly vulnerable, often shunned because they are considered cursed and left to beg or even forced into prostitution.
Frequently involved in “cultural employment”—handcrafts and similar arts-based fields—women are more likely to have to supplement their income with more than one job, says the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report Precarious situation for women working in the field of culture.
Grinding poverty in Asia often starts with the women.
Females at Risk Due to Grinding Poverty, Human Rights Violated
Illiteracy is a dangerous factor. The more than 250 million women across Asia who are unable to read are vulnerable to exploitation—unable to understand an employment contract (if they are given one) or the details of a loan they may need to take out—and at risk of being cheated when they spend their money.
There are health consequences, too. In a University of California, Berkeley paper, The Rural-Urban Divide in India, Tathagato Chakraborty writes that lack of educational opportunities for girls “increases the fertility rate, maternal and infant mortality, and malnutrition in the family.” With little education, basic hygiene practices may remain unknown. Furthermore, because the human rights of women to land and property are rarely recognized, “this increases the risk of poverty to women and their families and increases poverty overall as women and children make up two-thirds of the population.”
This girl takes care of her younger sister while her mother works at a tea plantation. Even when the mother is breastfeeding, she often still goes to work because she cannot miss her quota of picking tea leaves.
Then there is violence and abuse, physical and sexual. Many young girls are kept away from school not only because they are required to work, but also for fear they may be attacked on the way to school or while they are there, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
Indeed, the World Health Organization names gender-based violence as “a significant public health concern in the South-East Asia Region,” and “one of the most pervasive human rights violations.”
Girls are “particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of child labor,” says the ILO, comprising the bulk of children in “some of the most dangerous forms of child labor, including forced and bonded labor, commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work outside of their home.”
Part of the problem is that attitudes are slow to change, as noted last year by Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO regional director for South-East Asia, when he introduced the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
“Gender inequality is at the root of violence against women,” he said. “Beliefs and practices that value women less than men are normalized, excused and tolerated—a substantial proportion of adolescent girls and boys believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife for at least one reason.”
Realizing that millions of women in India have become exposed to sexual assaults each year simply because of the lack of toilets, the government of India has taken up the task of building toilets and latrines in the rural parts of the nation. The construction of toilets under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream project, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), has gained momentum, with many NGO’s (like Sulabh International) joining the initiative. Gospel for Asia helped to build and install more than 10,000 toilets in 2016.
Seeking Justice and Defending Human Rights: Part 1 | Part 3
Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the extreme poverty that globally creates modern-day slaves, affecting millions of women, men and even children.
More than 80 years after George Orwell wrote in his classic Animal Farm that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” his barbed observation on disparity rings ever truer for humankind.
According to a 2017 report by Credit Suisse Research Institute, 10 percent of the world’s richest population owns 88 percent of all global wealth, while “3.5 billion individuals—70% of all adults in the world—have wealth below USD 10,000.” That includes some who could be living in grinding poverty in Asia.
Poverty devastates the whole family, often causing children to drop out of school early to start working. This boy is one of 168 million child laborers doing the backbreaking work of collecting, breaking and selling rocks from a nearby river.
Despite improvements in some parts of the globe, the World Bank says “extreme poverty remains unacceptably high.”
Globally, 1 in 10 is below the poverty line, somehow surviving on less than $1.90 a day.
If such staggering inequality doesn’t provoke the rich to concern for reasons of the heart, it should at least cause them to reflect on the ongoing health of their wallets. The World Economic Forum sees the rising gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the social polarization it breeds, as a major threat to world financial stability.
Such kinds of situations—the more extreme of a continuum of injustices—continue across Asia and other parts of the world because of a complex web of factors: social prejudice, gender discrimination, lack of education, and more.
Not surprisingly, then, fair employment and rights at work are among the core emphases of the United Nations’ annual World Day of Social Justice, celebrated on Feb. 20.
Poverty is not just a divide between the West and the rest, however. The gap between the rich and the poor may be as wide as an ocean or as narrow as a billboard.
“Globally, one in 10 is below the poverty line, somehow surviving on less than $1.90 a day”
With booming technology and industry sectors, India’s economy is presently the sixth largest in the world and has created more than 100 billionaires. Its financial strength is much of the reason for the World Bank tracking South Asia as the world’s fastest-growing region.
Yet, “the effects of an increasingly sophisticated and prosperous India have not reached its poorest and least educated citizens,” concludes Devin Finn in an article for the University of Denver’s Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery digest on bonded labor.
Across South Asia, “Hundreds of millions more live slightly above the poverty line, more than 200 million live in slums, and about 500 million go without electricity,” notes the World Bank. Though the number of people in the region living in “extreme poverty” has been slashed in the past decade, around 62 million children still must work to help support their families.
Worldwide, there are around 168 million of such child laborers, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), half of them engaged in hazardous work “which endangers their health, safety and moral development.”
Extreme Poverty Creates Modern-day Slaves
Many of the world’s poor are not just struggling to survive, they have even lost their freedom. The ILO estimates that more than 40 million people around the world are currently living in some form of slavery. Of that number, some 25 million are to be found in Asia and the Pacific, where the region also accounts for 73 percent of all victims of forced sexual exploitation.
Five-year-old Bina should have been in school, but her parents were so poor that every member of her family had to work.
Some of those in forced labor are found working in brick kilns, with entire families—and, in some cases, even whole villages—laboring to pay off what started as a small loan and became, through withholding of wages and other abuses, an ever-increasing debt. Children and adults alike work long hours in difficult conditions.
Promises of a good salary did not materialize, he recalled. Instead, they were forced to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite sustaining minor injuries while mixing and making bricks, they were never allowed to go to the hospital. The children were beaten with a pipe and verbally abused if they were caught playing when they were supposed to be working.
Tea plantation workers often only earn an average of $1.30 a day
Similar exploitation occurs in the tea and handmade carpet industries. One investigation of a large plantation found “a shocking disregard for health and safety,” with workers spraying chemicals without protection, children working, and families forced to defecate among the tea bushes because there were no toilets.
The International Labor Organization completed a recent study of conditions in the Uzbekistan cotton harvest, historically labeled as one of the worst human rights violations of forced labor.
While it was stated by The Cotton Campaign in 2015 and 2016 that “the government of Uzbekistan forced more than a million people, including students, teachers, doctors, nurses, and employees of government agencies and private businesses to the cotton fields, against their will and under threat of penalty, especially losing their jobs,” the ILO study noted distinct improvements in 2017.
It concluded that “the systematic use of child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest has come to an end” and that efforts were being made to ensure all labor was voluntary. Still, the ILO found that “a certain number pick cotton during at least some part of the harvest as a result of persuasion, pressure or coercion.” Uzbekistan president Savkat Mirziyoyev stated at the United Nations General Assembly, “In cooperation with the International Labor Organization, we have taken effective measures to eradicate the child and forced labor.”
Anti-Slavery International (ASI) identifies the main barriers to the eradication of slavery as “strict hierarchical social structures and caste systems; poverty; discrimination against women and girls; and lack of respect for children’s rights and development needs.”
Many millions more may not be so clearly enslaved, but they are also caught in poverty’s endless cycle, scrabbling to make a living as day laborers or scavengers. Often, parents are forced to make their children work too, to try to make ends meet. But keeping them out of school just ensures another generation remains on the bottom rung of the ladder.
Children who are trading time in school for scavenging in the garbage dumps or working the brick kilns or rice patty fields to survive remain illiterate and thus unable to rise out of poverty in the future. Whereas, kids attending a GFA-supported Bridge of Hope program get backpacks, supplies, a meal and a hope for a better future as they learn to read and write and use their education to get better jobs.
The number of out-of-school children in South Asia constitutes “a formidable challenge,” says the ILO. It estimates more than 25 million boys and girls aged 7 to 14 do not attend school in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India alone.
Lack of opportunities for fair and meaningful work is not just about financial well-being, of course.
“Far from economic inequality being seen as purely a ‘labor rights’ issue, the world is realizing that economic and social inequalities are intrinsically linked to human rights,” says U.K.-based ASI. “Inequality is one of the biggest human rights issues of our time.”
Very practically, poor working conditions and poor pay mean poor health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),“Nearly 9 million children under the age of five die every year, according to 2007 figures.” Of those children, one-in-three deaths are linked to malnutrition.
In some impoverished communities in Asia, more than half of the children have a body mass index below 18.5, writes Satya Sagar for the Canada-based Centre for Research in Globalization (CRG), “which is regarded as chronic sub-nutrition-placing them by World Health Organization standards in a permanent state of famine.”
Seeking Justice and Defending Human Rights: Part 2 | Part 3
We are thankful for our many faithful supporters, through whom the Lord has worked to touch the lives of countless millions in Asia. And we are grateful for the men and women serving on the field, giving of their time, energy, emotion and every part of their lives in order that more may experience the love of God.
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