Story number 2 for 7 Dec 2000

Meanwhile, Turkmenistan is believed to have one of the most repressive religious policies of any of the Central Asian republics. A recent crackdown on evangelicals has led to more persecution and harassment. Open Doors’ Mike Yoder.”A Protestant church has been destroyed, literally bulldozed by the government, and members of a variety of faiths have subjected to repeated police raids and large fines, it’s a very, very difficult situation. It’s really the latest blow to this struggling young church in Turkmenistan.” Yoder says Christians need to be rooted in their faith. “At the beginning of this decade, there were no known indigenous believers in the entire nation of Turkmenistan, and now there is a struggling young church just a few years old; even the most senior leaders of this church are very, very young men and women, just a few years old in their Christian faith, and not many years older in their actual life.”