Exclusive stories from the mission field
After her first miscarriage, Tanvi Lal went for ritual washing according to Hindu custom in eastern India, and a year later she was pregnant again. In her sixth month, she miscarried again.
Earlier this year, a new Christian in Bangladesh overheard a Muslim tell a tea vendor that his health was getting worse each day. Hassan, a young father and construction worker who grew up Muslim, had put his faith in Christ only two months prior.
Though at times in her right mind, in fits and spurts Ramya had spit insults and obscenities at nearly everyone in the village. No sorcerer within or outside the village had been able to drive the evil spirits out of her. A lifelong Hindu, Vijay was puzzled that she was just as devoted to the idol images of their gods as he was. He sensed in her the same evil presence that he had seen in his grown daughter.
When Tumo went to the temple as a little boy in Bangladesh and saw his parents worshipping the Buddha idol, he could not help thinking that it did not move and did not have life. “I used to tell my parents,” he said, “‘This idol does not have life, cannot speak and cannot hear – then why should we worship the idol of Buddha?’”
For all of his 60 years, Karim had been a staunch Muslim in a rural area of Bangladesh where few knew of anyone who was not a Muslim. Leaving Islam was also unheard of. So when a young Bangladeshi from outside the village began visiting homes and telling families about Jesus, Karim was as perplexed as he was scornful.
The Lord told a native missionary to erect a church building in southern India, which he obediently did. By the next day, villagers had destroyed it. The missionary had come to a village where no one knew Christ. God had told him that He desired a church building there, however, under the philosophy, “If you build it, people will come to Christ.”
An indigenous missionary in South Asia has seen miraculous healings and thousands of people come to Christ, but his work has been anything but easy. Vinay’s devotion to poor, remote peoples who are without Christ means travel on perilous paths, sleeping alongside jungle insects and snakes, and preaching amid hostile Hindus and Buddhists.
Deep in southeastern Bangladesh’s Chittagong Division, the very trees, bamboo, vines and even holes in the ground were the objects of the Chakma tribal villagers’ devotion.
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