Stories & Testimonies

If you followed David and me on our recent trip to India, you'll recall that we spoke of a man named Thomas (name changed for safety) who is working to plant 5,000 churches. This area in North India is less than 0.1% Christian. There is an anti-conversion law and the persecution is severe. But so far you have already helped Thomas plant 320 churches. Wait, make that 321.

Two years ago, we got word that one of Heaven's Family's national missionaries in Pakistan, Fatima, was on the run. Some of her disciples had been kidnapped and her enemies were hot on her heels. We began to pray for her but didn't get an update. When people at my church asked if she was okay, I had to say that I didn't know.

The second leg of our journey took us to a free state in India with no anti-conversion law. It is predominantly Hindu, so the Christians who live there still suffer persecution. Tapan (name changed) met us at the airport, and we had a short ride to his home. There was much less pollution than in Delhi.

Taking over the National Missionary Ministry at Heaven’s Family was a challenge for me. I'm very big on developing relationships, but now I have all these new partners I've never met. How do I tell their story? What vision has God given them for their nation and how can I communicate that to you? How can we best help without fully understanding their ministry context? My recent trip to India and Nepal has helped to answer these questions. But even more importantly, it gave me time to build relationships with these giants of the faith.

The Hmong Tribe in Northern Myanmar has only 12,000 people. They are considered an unreached people group as fewer than 2% of the tribe are Christians. Most of the Hmong are animists who believe in a spirit realm. One of their beliefs is that monkeys know which herbs are the best for medicines. As a result, they think eating monkey excrement is healthy!

Kiya (name changed for security reasons) was hopeless. Her husband had died two years earlier in an accident, leaving her and her three little children with a huge debt to pay. She tried working as a household maid, but the hours were long and the work exhausting. She became sick and started having severe knee pain. Not knowing where her next meal would come from, she began to think that her best option was to take her own life.