Asia/Pacific Updates

Myanmar Mission Team

From June 25 to July 1, a medical mission team organized by TEAMS ministries came to Myanmar to hold free clinics as a service to IPHC churches and an outreach to local communities. The composition of the team was truly international, with 7 members from the USA, 4 from the Philippines, 3 from Japan, and one from Bangladesh.

The first clinic was held at ACTS Children's Home in Yangon, where over 240 children are cared for and taught by dedicated Christian staff. The campus is also home to ACTS Bible College, where some 160 students are enrolled in diploma, bachelor's or master's courses. On that day, over 170 students and staff came for medical exams and medicines.

The next clinic was held at a church on the outskirts of Yangon. Many people from the community, old and young, lined up outside the church to take advantage of the medical care. The team worked hard all day and saw over 240 patients! Hiro Bamba and Erika Mine from Japan entertained the children as they waited, introducing them to the joys of blowing bubbles and jumping rope.

On Sunday, the team ministered in two worship services at Church on the Rock in Yangon. OMC Russell Board preached in the 8:00 am Chin language service, while Dr. Vijay Balla, missionary to Bangladesh, spoke in the 10:00 Burmese language service. Erika sang worship songs in Japanese and English in both services, with translations into the local language projected on screen. Another clinic was held in the afternoon, with about 90 patients.

The following day the team drove out to a village area to hold another church-based clinic, but were refused permission by local authorities. They attempted to change the venue to the pastor's home, but the authorities again forbade them to see anyone from the village. The team prayed that these actions would result in greater favor for the church among the community, and that healing and freedom would come to the village through the Word of God. The team set up again on the main campus, and people from the surrounding community were invited. Some 100 came, keeping the team busy throughout the afternoon.

James Lian Sai, national leader of the Myanmar IPHC churches, invited the team to return next year to minister in another region of the country. Many thanks to Brenda Clowers and all the members of the team who made the trip a great success.

Note: The Children's Home is supported through People to People sponsors who adopt individual children. Only about 40 children currently have sponsors, so nearly 200 more are needed. To see about sponsoring a child in Myanmar, contact People to People by phone (405-787-7110, ext 3212) or on the internet here.

View photos of the mission trip in the album at left.  View a video of the mission trip here. 

Violence and Death in China

According to China state media, violence in the western region of Xinjiang has left at least 140 people dead and more than 800 injured. Officials say that protests by Muslim Uighurs in the city of Urumqi erupted into violence on Sunday, as demonstrators attacked passers-by and set fire to vehicles. Police restored order, and several hundred people have been placed under arrest. Uighur groups blame police for violent suppression of a peaceful protest.

This is the bloodiest suppresion of protest in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre twenty years ago. The death toll is expected to rise.

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims who make up about 8 million of the 20 million population of Xinjiang. China re-established control of the region in 1949 after crushing the short-lived state of East Turkestan. Since then, large scale immigration of ethnic Han Chinese has left the Uighurs fearful of losing their traditional culture. Since 1991, there have been sporadic incidents of violence in the region.

                                                -- from BBC News

    

Crisis in Sri Lanka

The World Evangelical Alliance is calling on Christians worldwide to help the Sri Lankan church meet the overwhelming humanitarian crisis affecting the country. The aftermath of the three-decade old armed conflict has displaced more than 300,000 people who are desperately in need of food, medical assistance and other basic needs. The displaced include malnourished children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and the elderly.

“Despite being a small minority, the Christian community is valiantly and sacrificially giving to meet these needs, but urgently requires assistance from their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world if they are to complete their task”, said Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, of the WEA.  “The church is called to be salt and light and rarely have I seen such dedication in extending God’s love to non-Christian communities, despite logistical difficulties and real personal danger to themselves.”

Assistance to the Sri Lanka Pentecostal Holiness Church can be sent to IPHC World Missions Ministries, project number 72006.

More information can be found in the Lausanne Connecting Point Newsletter.

Pray for Freedom

As protests of Iran's presidential election results continue, Christians in the nation remain hopeful that the election may bring greater freedom. Read more here from Charisma News.

In Vietnam, police invaded the Sunday service of a Baptist house church congregation and beat worshippers, then arrested a pastor and an elder, who later received further beatings in their prison cells. Read more here from Charisma News.  

Death and Danger in Nepal

On May 23, a bomb exploded during worship in the Assumption Church in Lalitpur. The blast took the lives of three worshipers, and wounded fifteen others, some of whom remain in critical condition. Responsibility for the act of terror was claimed by a religious extremist group called the Nepal Defense Army (NDA). In a newspaper article, the group declared their intention to attack every church, drive out the Christians, and declare Nepal to be a Hindu country.

A peace rally was organized and held on May 31 by the Christian community of the Kathmandu valley. Participants spoke out against the killings and violence, and called for peace and religious tolerance. The Chief District Officer and Superintendent of Police suggested that religious institutions implement security measures such as the installation of closed circuit TV to monitor strangers on the premises.

 

A 27-year-old woman connected with the NDA has been arrested for planting the bomb. The Nepalese police quoted her as saying, "I planted the bomb because I hate Christians and other religions and love only Hinduism."

The current threat underscores the need for the IPHC church in Nepal to secure property of their own. Currently at the mercy of landlords who are unfriendly to Christians, the congregation lacks freedom to worship in peace, stability and security.

 

Pastor Mohan Adhikari, leader of the IPHC church in Nepal, asks for prayer from IPHC family around the world: “We highly value your prayers on this matter.  We believe your prayer will bring healing in our ministry. May the Almighty God enrich you with His blessing!”

 

 

Recantation, Repentance, Revival

During the violence of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Chinese Christians were forced to recant and deny their faith. Those who refused were brutally killed. Before the rebellion was quashed, 188 missionaries had been killed, as well as over 50 of their children. Nearly 2000 Chinese Protestants were martyred, and as many as 30,000 Catholics.

Reports such as these spread throughout the land: "Liu Ming-chin, a chapel-keeper, was bound to a pillar in the temple of Yu Huang. He kept preaching to his persecutors. One of the Boxers in a rage cried, ‘You still preach, do you?’ and slit his mouth from ear to ear. A Bible-woman, named Wu, was taken to the same temple and bound to a pillar. She was beaten across the breasts, but never uttered a cry. Then a bunch of lighted incense was held to her face till all the flesh was burned off. Then her feet and hands were cut off. Finally she was carried out of the temple, hacked to pieces, and burned."

Pastor Wang Ming’s flock of 1,600 met in 90 small groups within a 20-mile radius of Ching-chou Fu. The Boxers said it would be sufficient that one leader recant for all the Christians in the district, and, tormented, he did so. He reasoned that he would thus protect his people, and besides, he merely had to sign a document pledging to “no longer practice the foreign religion.” Since Christianity was universal and not a “foreign religion,” he saw a loophole in the wording.

Once the conflict was over, he realized that he had dishonored the Lord and that, through the ages, God had used suffering and even martyrdom to strengthen the Church. By implying a want of faith in Christ and denying his people the spiritual blessing that only comes from trials, he had sinned. But by confessing this to his people, he regained his joy, and the missionaries observed that his public repentance and the congregation’s tears of forgiveness marked "a breaking up of the hard crust of the Chinese phlegmatic temperament." So though he was once broken by the threat of terrorists, Wang Ming's brokenness before God and his people brought revival.

                                                        -- from Kairos Journal.

Jailed for Evangelism

Singapore has never been considered one of the nations in Asia where Christians confront hostility to their faith, and struggle against restrictions on their activities. Until now. A lay Christian couple was found guilty last month of four charges of "sedition." Their crime? Possession and distribution of Christian tracts.

Over a 7-year period, the couple sent out some 20,000 tracts to addresses found in the telephone directory. In 2007, a complaint was lodged by two Muslims offended by the tracts they received in the mail. This complaint led to the arrest and trial of the couple.

The judge found that the couple's actions were clearly intended to "convince the Muslim reader to convert to Christianity." He declared that the pair had committed "serious" offences that "have the capacity to undermine and erode the delicate fabric of racial and religious harmony in Singapore". The couple were sentenced to eight weeks in jail.

More on this story here.

Our Mission

"Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world."

                                                                    -- Isaiah 12:4, 5

Praying for a New China

June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in which Chinese soldiers opened fire on thousands of student protestors, and armored tanks rolled over the crowds, killing hundreds. The violence followed weeks of demonstrations in favor of democratic reforms, and heralded a crackdown by the authoritarian communist regime.

In advance of the anniversary, China removed known dissidents from the city. Police occupied the public square on the day of the anniversary, and banned all media from the site.

Christan leaders from the US and China gathered in Washington, DC, to hold a prayer service and remember the victims of the massacre.

"China is at a crossroad," said Bob Fu, an organizer of the prayer vigil and founder of China Aid, a Texas-based ministry that advocates for religious liberty in China. "We pray in unity that the international community will choose to stand in true solidarity with China's freedom pursuers without any wavering so that a God-fearing, human rights- and dignity-respecting new China will emerge as a blessing to the whole world in the 21st century."

"Following the massacre, many educated people abandoned their trust in the Communist system and searched for other answers," said Paul Hattaway, director of Asia Harvest, which supports China's underground church movement. "This led to thousands of university students accepting Christ in the months following the massacre. Today there are countless Christians in China among university graduates, professors, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs."

David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine and author of Jesus in Bejing, said Tiananmen Square taught the Chinese church that its hope is in God, not government, and that awareness is now one of its strengths.

"A change of political institution is not enough to get a country moving in the right direction," Aikman told Charisma. "You have to have a moral revolution at the heart of it, and I think that's a very healthy sign."

IPHC World Missions Ministries is connected to a network of underground churches operating in several regions of China.

-- Quotes taken from a report on the prayer vigil in Charisma magazine.

India's Child Slaves

Vinothini, pictured at left, is 14 years old. She gets up at 4:00 am and works in the hot Indian sun until 7:00 pm, in Tamil Nadu. Her parents owe a debt of 35,000 rupees (about $750), incurred before Vinothini was born, and for which she serves as collateral. Vinothini will work her whole life to service the debt, which her parents will never be able to pay.

Monisha, age 11, was sold by her father to a factory owner for 10,000 rupees (about $215) when she was seven years old. Since that time she has worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a filthy fabric mill in Tamil Nadu. Her work of threading and cleaning the looms is backbreaking, and is likely to induce "eye damage, lung disease, stunted growth and a susceptibility to arthritis." She can only leave the factory by repaying the "loan" received by her father. Since the interest charges exceed her wages, she will never escape. 

Vinothini and Monisha are two of an estimated 15 million child slaves trapped in similar situations in India. While such bonded-labor arrangements were outlawed 30 years ago, the practice remains rife, especially in remote villages where authorities seldom visit, but brokers often do, offering cash advances to parents for child workers. Desperate parents who are often illiterate and innumerate agree to pay employers compound interest rates of 30 to 40 percent per year, dooming their children to a life of slavery. Victims are members of the lowest castes.

The debts from bonded labor are passed on to future generations. Deepa, 13, and Pritha, 8, have worked in a quarry in Madras since infancy. The debt that binds them is a 10,000 rupee advance taken by their grandparents more than 25 years ago. The family has been forced to add to the loan countless times, using their children as collateral.

Information take from Rhys Blakely's report here.