Public schools aren’t the only ones gaining attention these days. Greg Yoder with Christian World Outreach says parents in Sri Lanka are increasingly drawn to their after-school tutoring program. 

At first, “parents are a little leery that we’re trying to just convert their children, but then they learn that that’s not what we’re doing,” Yoder says. “They’ve grown to love what we do and [are] open to hearing that Jesus loves them, and wants nothing more than [for] them to love Him.” 

Run by volunteers, the program offers tutoring in math and English. “They use Bible stories and songs to share Christ, as well as giving them education,” says Yoder.

Ministry in Sri Lanka. (Photo courtesy of Christian World Outreach)

However, not everyone in the community wants to hear the Good News. 

“There is some resistance to the Gospel [due to] Sri Lanka being mostly Hindu and Buddhist.” 

CWO works with dedicated local leaders in Sri Lanka who live out the Gospel while meeting educational and physical needs. Pray for one CWO partner facing persecution. 

“The Buddhist priest is trying to force this homeowner to stop renting to one of our leaders [who] has a house church,” says Yoder. “We’re working to help him find another place, if he does get kicked out.”

Yoder asks that you also pray for wisdom for CWO as they connect with local gospel workers. 

“Word is being spread that we’re coming alongside ministry leaders,” he says. “They’re coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, can we partner with you?’ So that’s a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity.”

CWO’s vision for gospel-centered ministry goes beyond mere financial partnership.

“We are encouraging them to find funds in-country. Some of them are doing that,” says Yoder. “They’re looking to their churches and saying, ‘Hey, we need to step up. If we want to share the gospel with our community, we need to invest in that.’”

CWO partners with ministry leaders who want to share the gospel, whether they’re doing a church plant, house church, or any kind of evangelism in their communities. Learn more about their mission and how you can be part of it here.

Header photo from Galle, Sri Lanka courtesy of Fredrik Öhlander via Unsplash. Cropped from original version. 

Both Bangladesh and Pakistan have voiced strong criticisms of India, bringing them closer politically. The two nations also share Islam as the majority religion.

(Graphic courtesy FMI) Bangladesh Flag

This new connection could have significant consequences — not just for politics on the Indian subcontinent, but also for everyday people in Bangladesh.

Patrick Anthony with FMI says, “The interim government is more of a Muslim fundamentalist government [and] they’re trying to build ties with Pakistan instead of India.

“One concern that our partners have is that this may lead to civil war down the road, especially if the former prime minister gets more and more involved.”

As Bangladesh reshapes its global relationships, the question remains — What does this mean for religious freedom?

The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council recently called out the government for failing to protect religious minorities, saying officials are even using their power to silence them.

One group feeling the impact is the country’s small Christian community, which makes up just 0.4% of the population. In early August alone, there were over 2,000 incidents of communal violence, leaving many religious minorities feeling unsafe.

Bangladesh (Photo courtesy of FMI)

“People around the country are seeing they haven’t liked Christians to begin with, and they’re seeing more of an opportunity to loot, steal, and burn houses and properties of Christians, and that’s what our partners are feeling,” says Anthony.

“Just last month, our partner said that Muslims attacked a church and broke the boundary of a mission school and they occupied the place.”

Anthony says FMI-supported pastor Rajiv has described how other pastors in Bangladesh are being intimidated by Muslims in their communities to stop preaching.

Yet, “Rajiv believes that the Lord’s using this to make them stronger and more courageous so that they can witness more effectively to the larger community, particularly to Muslims.”

Please join Bangladeshi believers in prayer for their nation. Anthony asks, “One prayer target could be that Christians would be creative and find ways to increase security because if they are attacked by a mob, there may not be a whole lot that they can do.

“Pray for faithfulness, that whether they’re FMI partners or other Christians in the country, that they really would find that this is now an opportune time even more to stand for their churches, to stand for the Gospel — that attackers may see something different and may see that they have a strength that comes from not this world.”

Learn more about FMI’s ministry in Bangladesh.

Header photo: Bangladesh National Parliament House in Dhaka. (Photo by Ashraful997 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154337869)

Wycliffe Associates’ Tony Tophoney says former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left a power vacuum when she fled to India last week. Minorities are paying the price of lax governmental control.

“The police stepped back and kind of ‘circled the wagons’ [and] the people left out on the fringes of the society are the minority [groups] like Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians,” Tophoney says.

“The opposition party has been waiting for a moment like this. They were burning down Christian churches and Hindu temples, beating the believers in their homes.”

The unrest is directly affecting Wycliffe Associates’ partners. “All Bible translation work in Bangladesh has ceased due to the conflict because most of the Christians are hiding in colonies now,” Tophoney says.

Hindus protest the mistreatment of religious minorities in Bangladesh on August 12, 2024.
(Wikimedia Commons)

“With the violence ramping up and the uncertainty of the political situation, those colonies are being threatened and attacked by the opposition party.”

Many believers have fled to makeshift refugee camps on the border with India, hoping to escape across the border to safety. However, “the Indian authorities are guarding their border and stopping them from going any further,” Tophoney says.

“They’re stuck in that situation and don’t have any food because the agitators have made it impossible for those groups to access food.”

Ask the Lord to intervene and help as only He can. “We’d love to have your prayers,” Tophoney says.

“We need them desperately for South Asia and Bangladesh in general, that the Lord will protect the believers and protect the small light that burns for Christ. It is a fragile light, but it has been burning brightly.”

Header image depicts student protestors on July 11, 2024. Students launched the “Bangla Blockade” following a one-point demand for scrapping all illogical and discriminatory quotas in public service through the enactment of a law and keeping a minimum quota for marginalized citizens in line with the constitution. (Wikimedia Commons) 

Bruce Allen says these eight believers recently converted from Buddhism to Christianity. “In this community, even though Bangladesh is the third-largest Muslim majority nation, [the attackers] were an enclave of Buddhists, actually. They are a minority in Bangladesh, but they can get pretty militant. When these former Buddhists were making a declaration of faith in Jesus Christ, that really riled up the other members of their tribal community.”

The attack happened in December – local churches love to baptize during the Christmas season. Now, the assailants have begun threatening the FMI church planter as well.

This shows how most Christians in Bangladesh and around the world experience persecution. Their family or community members often see following Jesus as a betrayal of ethnic and religious identity.

How to pray

Allen says, “We do need to remember and just support in prayer the leaders of those people. Pray they would know how to care for them in the midst of persecution. Pray for the people who have been persecuted, that God touches their bodies and restores their health. And pray he would also give a balm to their spirit.”

Despite the persecution, Allen says these believers still plan on being baptized. The pastor has sent a deacon to continue discipling them as they recover from their injuries. Pray also that more permanent churches would be planted in Bangladesh.

The header photo shows Pastor Pratapgarh, the FMI church-planter, standing with one of the attack victims. (Photo courtesy of FMI)

Greg Kelley of World Mission says, “Myanmar, like many of these countries in Southeast Asia, have gotten a taste of democracy and freedom. And they’ve experienced the internet. They know what’s going on around the world and they yearn for that. They long for that to be a part of their country and their government.”

Violent reaction to protests

That’s why citizens have protested in such great numbers ever since the coup. But Kelley says, “These military authorities, their approach is they’re shooting people. I mean, we would expect maybe tear gas, or maybe even rubber bullets. But that’s not the case. These military authorities are literally killing people. People are fearful to leave their homes at night. They’re being kidnapped. They’re vanishing, disappearing. It’s a very dire situation right now.”

Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, has become a war zone. Thousands are fleeing, leaving their possessions behind.

But many Christians are also using these turbulent circumstances as an opportunity for ministry. Kelley says, “When tragedies like this happen, it causes everyone in the community to look thoroughly at their worldviews. In this case, it’s primarily Buddhists. It’s a great opportunity for the body of Christ to share the Gospel. And that’s exactly what’s going on right now.”

The header photo shows a protest taking place in Yangon. (သူထွန်း, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The United Nations General Assembly committee demanded last week that Myanmar end the military campaign targeting Rohingya which has “led to the systematic violation and abuse of human rights”.

Shep Owen with Food for the Hungry says, “The people are still arriving every day and the current number of refugees is estimated at around 800,000. When this began a couple of months ago, the population was in the high 300,000s…. Fifty-two percent of the refugees are children, which is an interesting and alarming statistic.”

A Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. (Photo courtesy of FMI)

According to CNN, the estimated number of Rohingya refugees is estimated to grow past one million in the coming weeks. And those arriving every day in Bangladesh are in desperate need.

The International Research Committee says 40,000 Rohingya children currently need life-saving treatment for malnutrition. Three-quarters of Rohingya refugees have a lack of food and 95 percent are drinking unclean water.

On Monday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed that Myanmar enact a ceasefire to end the ethnic cleansing, begin repatriation of Rohingya refugees, and work towards a long-term poverty alleviation solution. Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, said Rohingya who can prove they were residents in Myanmar would be allowed to return.

But with their homes destroyed and their communities scattered, what is there to go back to? And is it safe or even advisable?

Currently, Myanmar plans to resettle most returning refugees in new “model villages”. The UN has criticized this move, saying it would just be creating permanent camps to contain the Rohingya within Myanmar.

Of the Rohingya, Owen says, “They are a group of Muslim people who live in a primarily Buddhist area that borders Myanmar and Bangladesh, and it’s an area that has been a bit disputed in terms of which country they belong to.”

Myanmar is a Buddhist-majority nation, and the Muslim Rohingya minority has suffered severe oppression for generations. The government has denied them citizenship and refused to recognize them as an ethnic group.

Food for the Hungry has been working in Bangladesh since 1971. They primarily serve communities with long-term development programs to enact sustainable solutions to poverty.

“We’ve been monitoring the [Rohingya refugee] problem for some years actually. This has been brewing and it’s really hit a peak this last year. So we decided we can no longer simply just watch the situation and realized the government and the actors that were responding needed help. We went in quickly to do an assessment with some partners, including the teams that are with one of our partners on the ground right now.”

As FH works with government and humanitarian agencies to provide aid for Rohingya, Owen says they could really use the support and prayers of the Body of Christ.

“[Be in] prayer primarily for obviously the refugees, but also for the political situation in Myanmar and also between Myanmar and Bangladesh…. Pray for our teams as we work there, that they’ll be safe and that the government of Bangladesh will continue to be a helpful partner in allowing us to help there.”

If you’d like to give in support of FH’s aid work among the Rohingya, click here.

Header photo courtesy of Jordi Bernabeu Farrús via Flickr: https://goo.gl/daSWrS

The circular in question was issued nearly a decade ago in Sri Lanka by the Ministry of Buddha Sasana and Religious Affairs. It states that churches should be required to register with the state; however, the directive has no teeth to it legally, and a church registry hasn’t even been set-up.

So what exactly is a circular? In a Western context, the word ‘circular’ sounds like it’s just a periodical or a newspaper.

(Photo capture courtesy of Prayercast)

Todd Nettleton with Voice of the Marytrs USA explains, “My understanding is a circular like this is kind of a proposed law and it circulates through the different departments of the government and through the different parts of the parliament, but it wasn’t actually voted on and approved to become an official law.”

However, churches don’t always know that this circular can’t force them to stop meeting because they didn’t register. And the people harassing them know how to manipulate it.

“For maybe an uneducated pastor in a rural area, you get a bunch of people [who] come in, they look official, they have a document that looks official, and you feel frightened by that. So it’s really used as an intimidation factor more than carrying the force of law and being upheld by the courts or upheld by judges there. It’s really just a tool for intimidation.”

 VOM Korea is petitioning to dismantle the 2008 circular so it can’t be used to manipulate minority Christians in Sri Lanka anymore.

(Photo courtesy of Christian Aid Mission)

Since the circular was issued, a new government in Sri Lanka was set up in 2015. There may be hope to successfully repeal the circular and its misuse with the most recent administration. Most of Sri Lanka is Buddhist accounting for 70 percent of the population, but the country still promotes freedom of religion.

“[With] the new government, so far, my understanding is the Christians there expected improvements in religious freedom, improvements in respect for the Evangelical Church, which makes up just a very small percentage of the population of Sri Lanka.”

Nettleton says there’s a few things you can do. “I think one of the things obviously is just to be aware of what’s going on. That helps us to pray effectively for Christians in Sri Lanka, being able to understand some of the challenges they face.”

You can also sign the petition with VOM Korea here!

We spoke via Skype with a Christian leader working with Asian Access in Sri Lanka. For security reasons, we’ll call him ‘Brother Amos’. He confirms the reports. “Large numbers of churches have been attacked and many people think, when it comes to violence, it is the Muslims who can be violent against Christians. But that is not true, in our experience in this part of the world. The Buddhists can also be extremely violent.”

Why the spike in trouble from Buddhists? Violence seems to go against all their principles. Brother Amos explains, “With the Church beginning to grow, they feel very insecure. Their economy is hurting because people are turning to Christ. As a result of that, they (Buddhists) have turned against the churches and that is their belief, that by violence and by persecution, they can cause the growth of the church to be stopped.” How is economy tied into this problem? The growth of the church means that people who used to be going to Buddhist temples aren’t, anymore. “The income that came to the temple from these believers of Buddhism has now been diverted to the Church. Some of the temples in rural areas are finding it difficult to survive because people are leaving Buddhism.”

There’s a political angle, too. “Our constitution says that every religion has a freedom of worship and expression and to propagate their faith”, explains Brother Amos. However, “70-percent of our people are Buddhist. So, the government is aware that if they go against Buddhism, that they will be thrown out of power very soon.” The government turns a blind eye to the attacks in order to appease the majority Buddhists, he adds.

Some churches have taken legal action and gotten favorable decisions, but is this a development in the right direction? On one hand, it’s an accountability question. On the other, the challenge of persecution puts the relevance of the body of Christ into play. Brother Amos says, “Our mandate is to develop leaders who become relevant to the soil and relevant to the nations. Part of being relevant to our nation now is to be able to face persecution. In the midst of persecution, one of the key factors has been helping our people to know that God still reigns and God is seated on the Throne.”

Asian Access invests in leadership training for the future. “Our investment has been picking the best in the country, and providing them with the best training and presenting them with the best models so that they can be the catalyst in the growth of the Church.”

It’s likely the backlash won’t be easing up soon. “My gut level feeling is that it will continue and it will intensify until and unless the international community will bring pressure on the government”, he says, confirming that extremists will do whatever it takes to keep Sri Lanka a Buddhist nation. What it boils down to is the fight for the soul of a nation. “The God of this world has blinded the eyes of the people. Our direct enemy is not the human beings who are attacking us, but our direct enemy is the Evil One who causes people to do things against the Church of God.”

Will you pray with the believers in Sri Lanka? They’re asking prayer for wisdom for the Christian leaders, strength to endure hardship and boldness to share the hope of Christ regardless.

(Image courtesy VBB)

They spent a couple weeks ministering to believers there supported by Vision Beyond Borders (VBB). The team visited 14 Children’s Homes in and around Burma, sharing Christ’s love with close to 1,000 kids.

VBB sent funds to purchase things that were needed for the children, along with supplies the team carried over.

Umbrellas were one of the items among those much-needed supplies. Kids at VBB’s Children’s Homes must walk to the government school, slogging daily through the downpours of monsoon season.

A recent VBB newsletter stated, “We purchased umbrellas for many of the children, and they were so grateful.

“They had never owned an umbrella. Even the older children were unsure how to use them, and we had to show them how to put them up. They would laugh and laugh as the umbrellas went up!”

In addition, team members were invited to a Buddhist temple, where they shared the Gospel with villagers, monks, and Buddhist nuns.

Five years ago, this same village was persecuting Christ-followers. According to the VBB newsletter, anyone who converted to Christianity was kicked out of the village.

Praise God for opening doors to share His Gospel. Pray that many in this village will turn to Christ for salvation.

Along with this team’s work in and around Burma, VBB’s contact in the northern Kachin state also reports headway. Last month, they were able to send new aid and build new shelters for the persecuted Kachin. In the coming days, they plan to send food to four IDP camps.

According to this contact, tens of thousands of Kachin people are still displaced and now lack a home to return to. Entire villages have been overtaken by the Burmese government, and some property has been sold to companies in neighboring China.

VBB says a group of Kachin men are trying to rescue young girls who fled to the Burma-China border when they were displaced. The girls were kidnapped, drugged, raped, and trafficked to Chinese men; some were trafficked to far-flung Chinese provinces.

Pray that the Kachin will be successful in this dangerous project. Pray for the girls’ safe rescue and return home.

To learn more about VBB and their work in Southeast Asia, click here to visit their Web site.

They spent a couple of weeks ministering to believers there supported by Vision Beyond Borders (VBB). The team visited 14 Children's Homes in and around Burma, sharing Christ's love with close to 1,000 kids.

VBB sent funds to purchase things that were needed for the children, along with supplies the team carried over.

Umbrellas were one of the items among those much-needed supplies. Kids at VBB's Children's Homes must walk to the government school, slogging daily through the downpours of monsoon season.

A recent VBB newsletter stated, "We purchased umbrellas for many of the children, and they were so grateful.

"They had never owned an umbrella. Even the older children were unsure how to use them, and we had to show them how to put them up. They would laugh and laugh as the umbrellas went up!"

In addition, team members were invited to a Buddhist temple, where they shared the Gospel with villagers, monks, and Buddhist nuns.

Five years ago, this same village was persecuting Christ-followers. According to the VBB newsletter, anyone who converted to Christianity was kicked out of the village.

Praise God for opening doors to share His Gospel. Pray that many in this village will turn to Christ for salvation.

Along with this team's work in and around Burma, VBB's contact in the northern Kachin state also reports headway. Last month, they were able to send new aid and build new shelters for the persecuted Kachin. In the coming days, they plan to send food to four IDP camps.

According to this contact, tens of thousands of Kachin people are still displaced and now lack a home to return to. Entire villages have been overtaken by the Burmese government, and some property has been sold to companies in neighboring China.

VBB says a group of Kachin men are trying to rescue young girls who fled to the Burma-China border when they were displaced. The girls were kidnapped, drugged, raped, and trafficked to Chinese men; some were trafficked to far-flung Chinese provinces.

Pray that the Kachin will be successful in this dangerous project. Pray for the girls' safe rescue and return home.

To learn more about VBB and their work in Southeast Asia, click here to visit their Web site.