As the lowest social class in Pakistan, “Christians suffer through incredible cycles of poverty and exploitation,” AMG International’s Brian Dennett says. “Wealthy owners of brick kilns enslave the entire family for generations.”

Believers struggle to see beyond tomorrow when their lives are consumed by work.

“This is back-breaking, hot, miserable work. Children working in these kilns making bricks all day by hand have no access to schooling. This leaves them with very few options for a future and continues that cycle of enslavement,” Dennett says.

A gift of $600 will equip the school with a laptop, while a donation of $90 would provide a sewing machine.
(Photo, caption courtesy of AMG International)

AMG opened the Sablome House several years ago to help vulnerable women escape poverty and find hope in Christ. More about that here.

“This is a safe place to receive medical care [and] legal assistance. We do vocational training, and of course, we’re always sharing the Gospel,” Dennett says.

“In the last year, we worked with over 11,000 individuals; we’ve seen so many lives transformed through the hope we have in Jesus.”

Now, AMG wants to open a second ministry hub elsewhere in Pakistan to help marginalized Christians find meaningful employment and education. Here’s how you can help.

“Be praying for our brothers and sisters in Pakistan and that the Lord would provide the resources we need to open this new safe house,” Dennett requests.

Along with vocational training, AMG plans to include an elementary school as part of the ministry center. “We hope to help them buy the entire family out of slavery and be rescued from what would just continue going on generation after generation,” Dennett says.

Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz/Pexels.

World Mission traveled to two different brick kilns and paid for the workers to take a day off. They shared the Gospel with them, and many began to follow the risen Jesus.

Brick kiln owners

Then, another brick kiln owner asked World Mission to visit his worksite, this time for free. Greg Kelley recounts his words. “’I was told that the slaves [at other kilns] have changed like lightning hit them. They’re working harder and have great attitudes. I want you to come and share.’ So here this Muslim owner of a brick kiln was asking us to come and share the Gospel with his people.”

Many of the laborers began following Jesus after hearing World Mission staff speak. But Kelley asks readers to pray for the owners. “Ask God to make these brick kiln owners recognize just the evil that they’re participating in and how they need a savior just like the slaves. They are wealthy people. They’re self-sufficient. They have never been told no, and they pay off the governments with bribes so they look the other way. They need a radical encounter with Jesus.”

World Mission’s goals

World Mission works with local partners in Pakistan. They have a goal to feed these slaves and even free as many as they can. Kelley says, “We are actively identifying the most vulnerable. There are elderly people that are in there. The slave owners couldn’t care less about their physical situation and the demands they have on them, they still have expectations and quotas.”

“I talked to a man and a woman who were probably in their early 60s. They just limp around. They say, ‘The slave owner beats us every day, because we don’t make enough bricks. We are going to die here.’”

Pray their love will clearly reflect Jesus: the God who sets slaves free.

Header photo courtesy of MabelAmber on Pixabay. 

“It truly is modern-day slavery in every sense of the word,” says Greg Kelley with World Mission. “We met people that had been born in these brick kilns that have been there 40 years, members of second and even third-generation families. [Their] slavery was initiated by a debt of maybe as little as $100 of a medical bill that they couldn’t pay. The slave owners pay that debt;  then they own these people.”

Horrible conditions

These people have to live in shacks near the kilns. If they do not make their brick quotas, they are assaulted or starved. Sometimes, the owners even kidnap the daughters of the kiln workers, selling them into the sex trade.

Kelley recounts one of the most harrowing stories from his trip. “A woman approached me, and it was clear that she had a child in her hands – an infant, maybe not even a month old. … She said, ‘Please take my daughter. I can’t bear the thought of her living the life that I have.’”

How to pray

Kelley says World Mission paid one day’s wages to some of the kilns so the slaves could take a day off. “It was like a Christmas celebration because they didn’t have to work. … we were able to gather these people together at these different brick kilns we visited and [share] the Gospel. I would say 90% of these slaves were coming to receive Jesus.”

Pray for the eradication of this practice and that many more kiln workers in Pakistan will encounter Jesus, the One who sets slaves free.

The header photo shows workers in a Pakistan brick kiln. (Daniel Buckles, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)