In Depth:  Gospel For Asia

This story was recounted for World Malaria Day, 25 April.

Lavenia was a widow, who, with her children continued to live with family members. The children couldn’t attend school and they lived in abject poverty.

Barun’s life was in ruins long before the earthquake ever struck his country of Nepal in 2015. When he was younger, his mother died and his father got remarried to a woman who treated him harshly. Because of the ill treatment, he never finished his studies.

When Barun married, he and his wife moved away to avoid the conflict with his stepmother, despite the cultural norm of staying near his parents. But this didn’t bring the peace he hoped for. Barun and his wife, Parbarti, argued all the time. Their son often fell ill, which only added to Barun’s growing depression. Discouraged and disheartened, Barun found it difficult to work or provide for his family. His wife took up work sewing clothes to maintain the family.

Kavana, a 22-year-old in Asia, shared her story of God’s faithfulness in her life.

‘When I was 16 years old, my father suddenly passed away. After that, my mother and I became helpless. We had no work to earn money and meet our needs.

Palash was a very spiritual man, a priest and a spiritual leader in his community.

He meditated daily on the holy book of his traditional religion. His life looked full from the outside. He was married, had two children and stayed busy with all his priestly duties. But he realised something was missing when he heard the name of Jesus being shared over loudspeakers in his village.

Pretvan had a reputation of being a dangerous man – and he was only a youth. Pretvan had dropped out of school, failing to make it past the eighth grade, and started drinking alcohol with friends. The teenager quickly became a dangerous addict, often starting trouble with other villagers. Even his friends grew frightened of him, thinking he would hurt them.

His mother wept every day as she watched her son plummet toward destruction.

Today dry, cracked ground and barren fields cover the landscape of Maharashtra. The farmer’s crops are dying and, with shortages of water supplies, people’s lives waver in the balance.

Clouds hover over the fields, bringing gentle drizzles instead of the usual torrential monsoons, which Northeast India is currently experiencing. How to survive stands at the forefront of many minds in Maharashtra.

This is a story of encouragement in Asia – from early April.

Ravit listened closely to the words of Jesus as he watched the film that night. He was a fisherman by trade, but he had never heard of a fisherman catching men. He had only heard of this God named Jesus earlier in the day, yet here he sat with everything he knew about life beginning to change.

Pastor Sudhir Marak strolled into the village and immediately recognised its poverty.

It was seeping from the walls of every home and was evident in the children who ran past him to go to work in the fields . Families struggled for survival, with no education, medical facilities or transportation. Sudhir had good news to give them, but when the villagers rejected Sudhir’s message, it took just one woman for them to listen.

A wonderful present-day double miracle was reported in November by an organisation that reaches out to the many unreached people groups across Asia.

Here is Jai’s story. ‘I was dreadfully stunned when my wife, then 62 years old, told me she became a Christian. I warned her hundreds of times not to go to her sister’s home, not to attend fellowship and not to listen to anything about Jesus Christ. But regardless of my words of warning, she believed in Jesus Christ as her Saviour. I found myself like Goliath, who was terribly defeated by David, a young lad.

Idhant had only been married a few years when his wife left him. He earned less than a dollar a day chopping wood, and scraped by into his mid-40s with little to cheer him or look forward to, until he met Gospel For Asia Pastor Matthew.

When Pastor Matthew came to Idhant’s village and heard the man’s story, he was so deeply moved that he invited Idhant to live with his family. Pastor Matthew’s wife and children took him in as one of their own, and as they demonstrated God’s love each day, Idhant began to want what they had.

Gospel for Asia (GFA) reported in June about women missionaries Champa and Bakul who had been accused of a man’s death, chased out of his village and warned never to come back. Despite that, a small group of believers continued to grow every day.

The village’s fellowship started in 2001 with one paralysed man named Tariq. When Champa and Bakul first visited his house, Tariq could feel nothing in his legs. But after the two women prayed for healing, his cold legs became hot, and he was able to shake them. After sharing the gospel with Tariq and his family over several weeks, the five members of the family, along with three of their neighbours, put their trust in him. Shortly afterwards, Tariq died.

Most Christians are familiar with Jesus’ command, the Great Commission, to make disciples of all nations.

But with the average Christian giving less to mission than the cost of a coffee, once a month, it appears that the church is omitting the commission, it was concluded in December by Gospel for Asia.

On October 20, an elder of a Gospel For Asia supported church was murdered by a man for whom he was praying for healing.

Debalal was called to the home of Sardar, 29, to pray for his healing. Sardar’s wife had asked Debalal to pray for her husband who had been crying out with acute pain in his body. As Debalal prayed for Sardar with his eyes closed, Sardar left the room to come back holding a sharp kukri, a common Nepali knife with a curved edge that is much like a machete. Before Debalal could be made aware of the weapon, Sardar attacked him, slitting his throat.