(Graphic courtesy PIONEERS)

International (MNN) — As explained in 1 John 4:9, “We love because He first loved us.”

PIONEERS USA’s Danny Anan says that’s the heartbeat of their 2016 Love Moves initiative.

“It moves individual hearts. It moves people’s souls. Those who are hopeless – it moves them to find hope, and find life, in Jesus,” says Anan.

Earlier this week, we outlined two aspects of the Love Moves initiative – Victims of War and Victims of Disease. Today, Anan describes the “big picture” of Love Moves.

Love Moves: a 2016 Gospel Initiative

(Photo courtesy Pioneers/Arab World Ministries)

As described here, PIONEERS wants to send 130 new missionaries to the field, and keep existing ministries going strong.

They also want to share Christ’s compassion and Truth with more of India’s HIV victims and Middle East refugees.

“We’re very clear that the reasons we’re doing these things is because Jesus loves them,” Anan explains.

“People who are in these situations, they are without hope. For them, it’s really touching to know that why we’re doing that is because of Jesus.”

PIONEERS leadership envisions a surplus of Kingdom-building projects and outcomes in 2016, which fall under one of four categories:

1. Support local movements
2. Initiate new movements
3. Secure and train workers
4. Serve victims of war and disease

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

Get the full picture here.

“We have this access that many others don’t, into the lives of these people who are so desperate,” says Anan.

“God has brought us to these places and by supporting them, we’re in a really unique position to share the Gospel.”

Bringing these ambitions to fruition won’t happen without help from the Body of Christ. Anan outlines three ways you can come alongside the Love Moves initiative:

PRAY

• Pray for local believers to lead movements of faith among their people groups.
• Pray for more Christians to commit to sharing the Gospel with the world’s 2.9 billion unreached individuals.
• Pray for PIONEERS missionaries to rely on God for strength, safety, and leadership.
• Pray victims of war and disease will find new life and hope in Jesus Christ.

GIVE

Every dollar given to PIONEERS’ Love Moves initiative will be matched. Friends of the ministry are doubling every Love Moves gift, up to $100,000 USD.

Help PIONEERS share the Good News with the unreached.

GO

(Image courtesy PIONEERS)

PIONEERS recruits, trains, and sustains U.S. Gospel workers to initiate new church-planting movements among people groups without a strong, local presence.

In 2016, the ministry hopes to recruit 200 new U.S. missionaries, and send 130 missionaries to the field.

Will you be one of them?

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

Middle East (MNN) — Hope is an underlying theme in our “Love Moves” series.

PIONEERS’ Danny Anan says it makes the Middle East refugees they work with want to know more about the God they proclaim.

“It really does touch people, and it moves them, to know that our God is a God of love,” Anan states.

“We have this access that many others don’t, into the lives of these people who are so desperate. God has brought us to these places, and…by supporting them, we’re in a really unique position to share the Gospel.”

Love Moves: Victims of War

The so-called “ISIS crisis” escalated quickly last year, following the terrorists’ expansion into Iraq and establishment of a caliphate. The size and scope of the refugee crisis created by this expansion hasn’t reduced as the end of 2015 approaches.

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

At least half of the total Syrian population has been displaced, either by civil war or the Islamic State, resulting in approximately 11.5 million Syrians seeking safe haven.

In Iraq, over four million people are on the run.

PIONEERS missionaries have been actively helping refugees fleeing violence in Syria since 2013. They’ve made nearly 3,000 visits to refugee families in crisis, delivering 585 food packages along the way.

“The Muslim organizations have only lied to us and ignored us,” one Syrian refugee told PIONEERS. “You were the only ones to help us when we needed it most.”

More about PIONEERS’ impact here.

“By meeting the personal, the material, the immediate needs of these people, it builds trust and it shows the love of Jesus tangibly,” says Anan.

As love moves PIONEERS missionaries to meet physical needs, they are also engaging in spiritual conversations with refugees.

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

“There’s so much violence being done in the name of Islam,” Anan observes.

“For the first time, maybe in hundreds of years, there are thousands of people who would call themselves Muslims who are rethinking their faith as a result of this refugee crisis.”

Sometimes, it’s not the emergency aid, or even the kindness of a missionary, that makes refugees take a closer look at this God called Jesus.

In this report, PIONEERS shares the story of “Mahmoud.” Mahmoud is a refugee who stumbled across PIONEERS’ partnering church while searching for someone who would help his family.

“He noticed a verse written on the wall: ‘Jesus is the light of the world’,” writes PIONEERS in its report.

“Mahmoud shared with our missionaries that this verse is what gripped him and brought him into the church—not the promise of aid, but the thought that he needed to find the light of Jesus.”

After this initial discussion, Mahmoud, his family, and three other refugee families began studying God’s Word with PIONEERS missionaries.

They aren’t the only ones, either. So far, more than 50 groups of Muslims are engaging in similar Bible study groups and 17 refugee families have put their faith in Christ.

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

As part of their 2016 Love Moves initiative, PIONEERS wants to reach over 2,000 more refugees with the love and hope of Jesus Christ.

Learn more about the project and its expected outcomes here. Then, ask the Lord how He’d have you come alongside.

“By praying, by providing financial support for this initiative, it really will enable our missionaries to be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

Read Love Moves: Day One.

(Photo courtesy PIONEERS)

India (MNN) — Be prepared: for the next few days, you’ll be hearing a lot about “Love Moves.”

Together with PIONEERS USA, we’re taking a look at what happens when the love of Christ compels believers to act.

Put simply, love moves because faith without works is dead, according to James 2.

“Rani” exemplifies how life changes when it intersects with Christ and how His love propels broken people forward in new hope.

Rani’s story

If you were to meet Rani a couple of years ago, you probably wouldn’t recognize her today. In the past, Rani was defined by her disease: HIV.

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“She had HIV: it meant she was worthless,” explains Danny Anan, Global Projects Coordinator for PIONEERS USA.

You might think with the world’s third-largest HIV-infected population, understanding about the disease would be widespread in India. Instead, ignorance runs rampant.

“Her family rejected her,” shares Anan. “Her community stigmatized her and was constantly reminding her that she…[was] a lower class of person now because she had HIV.”

Rani’s husband, who infected her with HIV, died shortly after discovering he had the disease.

“She was then hit with this ‘double stigmatization:’ not only was she an HIV victim, but now, she’s also a widow,” Anan says.

As highlighted each year on International Widows Day, widows are outcasts in Indian society. As described here, a woman essentially has three options when she loses her husband: death, re-marriage to a brother-in-law, or exile.

For Rani, the bullying and exile eventually became too much.

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“She had a cup of pesticide with her, and she thought, ‘I should just drink this poison and die.'”

Hear Rani share, in her own words, what stopped her from ending her life.

“It just kind of stopped her in her tracks, and made her not go through with trying to kill herself,” says Anan.

The Lord had better plans for Rani’s life than she ever could have imagined. Today, Rani is starting to discover what those plans are, with the help of PIONEERS and its in-country partner.

Love moves forward

Initially, Rani was told about the love of Christ by a PIONEERS in-country ministry partner, who also helped meet Rani’s daily needs.

Then, a PIONEERS missionary started a tailoring business. The business hired Rani, giving her both a self-sustaining income and a place to belong.

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“Through the love that they have shown and the grace that she’s received from all these other women, she’s even able to forget that she has HIV,” shares Anan.

“She’s really found a lot of new hope and a lot of new life through the love she’s experienced in this PIONEERS business.”

Rani is the “poster child” of PIONEERS’ Love Moves initiative. With your help, PIONEERS wants to accomplish four major goals in 2016. Helping HIV-infected individuals like Rani is part of one goal, and we’ll uncover the other three in the days to come.

Tomorrow, we’ll hear from Middle East refugees helped by PIONEERS.