All Features

There are a billion stories to tell of lives in need. There are many stories of changed lives. These are just a few.

Brothers accused of ‘blasphemy’ slain in Pakistan

http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=33384

Posted on Jul 21, 2010 | by Staff

FAISALABAD, Pakistan (BP)–Two Pakistani brothers accused of “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet Muhammad were gunned down by suspected Islamic extremists on July 19 in Faisalabad, the country’s third-largest city.

The brothers, Rashid and Sajid Emmanuel, both Christians, were arrested July 10 for allegedly distributing a pamphlet with “disrespectful material” about Muhammad, according to a BBC report on July 20.

Rashid Emmanuel was the leader of United Ministries Pakistan; its website was not operative on July 21. One source on the Internet described United Ministries Pakistan as encompassing several churches, a school and orphanage, a women’s program and other initiatives.

Emmanuel, on a Web profile page, had stated, “We are a group of believers, committed and dedicated to preaching the Word of God and have been helping the poor and downtrodden people of this area for the past 5 years.” According to a UPI report, the ministry was located in the Waris Pura slum, encompassing about 100,000 people in the Faisalabad metro area of 5.4 million people.

Emmanuel’s brother Sajid was described in news reports as a graduate student and one of the ministry’s leaders.

There are conflicting reports whether the brothers were gunned down prior to or after a hearing on the blasphemy charge and whether they were killed inside the courtroom or outside the courthouse. A police official also was critically injured in gunfire leveled by as many as five gunmen, all of whom escaped.

According to the Compass Direct News Service, the gunmen shot the Emmanuels five days after handwriting experts notified police that signatures on materials denigrating Muhammad did not match those of the brothers.

As recounted by Compass, “Expected to be exonerated soon, the two leaders of United Ministries Pakistan were being led in handcuffs back to jail under police custody when they were shot at 2:17 p.m., Christians present said.” The UPI reported, meanwhile, that the brothers were killed prior to their hearing on the blasphemy charges.

Compass reported that Sajid Emmanuel died at the scene of a gunshot to his heart; Rashid Enmmanuel, who was shot in the chest, died later.

The brothers’ murders sparked clashes involving ethnic Christians in the Waris Pura slum, police and Muslims, the UPI reported.

After the Emmanuels were arrested on July 10, several hundred demonstrators marched to the Waris Pura slum voicing demands that the brothers be executed, the BBC reported.

Concerning the blasphemy charges, the BBC quoted Atif Jameel, a spokesman for the Pakistan Minorities Democratic Foundation, as stating: “No one in his right mind would issue a derogatory pamphlet against the Prophet and put his name and address on it.”

Jameel added: “This appears to be a conspiracy against peace and religious harmony in Faisalabad.”

According to the BBC, no one has been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy law, although “about 10 accused have been murdered before the completion of their trial, according to a BBC Urdu correspondent in Lahore. Dozens more are living in exile to avoid punishment under the legislation.”

According to Compass Direct, “The last known Christian to die as a result of a false blasphemy charge was Robert Danish on Sept. 15, 2009. The 22-year-old Christian was allegedly tortured to death while in custody in Sialkot on a charge of blaspheming the Quran. Local authorities claimed he committed suicide.”

Compass reported that the charge against Danish “led to calls from mosque loudspeakers to punish Christians, prompting an Islamic mob to attack a church building in Jathikai village [Danish's hometown] on Sept. 11 and the beating of several of the 30 families forced to flee their homes.”

On July 5, Compass also noted, a Christian husband and wife and son-in-law fled their home in the Lahore area after being accused of blaspheming the Quran. A mob of some 2,000 Muslims tried to burn their house, according to Compass, citing local Christian sources.

Rashid Emmanuel was 32; conflicting reports listed Sajid Emmanuel’s age as 24, 26 or 30.

Human rights and minority organizations in Pakistan have called for seven days of mourning for the Emmanuel brothers, UPI reported.

–30–
Compiled by Baptist Press editor Art Toalston.

WorldCrafts changes distraught lives

Baptist Press, Oct. 30, 2009: http://bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=31574

By Staff

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (BP)–Lives are being turned from darkness to light in more than 30 countries through WorldCrafts, an ongoing artisan ministry coordinated by Woman’s Missionary Union.

WMU encourages Southern Baptists to consider WorldCrafts, to support a ministry that has helped thousands of neglected women embrace fulfilling careers as artisans. Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST-PERSON: About 100,000 people need to be snatched from the fire in Jharia, India

By Lincoln Willett*

“When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you” (Isaiah 43:2b, NASB).

JHARIA, India–How long has it been since you walked through the fire?

Maybe you have recently watched someone you love battle addiction or sickness. This is certainly a fire to walk through. Read the rest of this entry »

While studying keyboarding in a slum, a boy learns to share the Gospel

By Dara Fullerton*

MUMBAI, India–Agni* is 12-year-old boy who is innovative and musically gifted but sadly also nonliterate.

His mother is a housewife, his father an auto rickshaw driver. A poor family, they live in a small, single-room home in the middle of a slum. Piles of trash border the slum where women dig deep, hoping to find something of use. Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Michel goes on tour in South Asia to share the Gospel through music

By Dara Fullerton*

DELHI, India–Halfway through his music set at a popular club in India, blues and rock musician Sean Michel began to play his soulful rendition of Amazing Grace, strumming his guitar in his blues-style fashion for several chords before piping out the lyrics to the famous hymn.

“We just try to connect with the spiritual part of a person through the music and hopefully to communicate the truth of the Gospel after we’ve connected with them,” Jay Newman, Michel’s manager and friend, said. Read the rest of this entry »

WORLDVIEW: Faithful is as faithful does

By Erich Bridges

Posted on May 13, 2010

EDITOR’S NOTE: Visit “WorldView Conversation,” the blog related to this column, at http://worldviewconversation.blogspot.com/ Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/110/11044/11044-59940.mp3

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Every Christian, declared the great preacher C.H. Spurgeon, is either a missionary or an imposter.

Or both. Even the Apostle Paul had his days of discouragement, despair and failure. Just read his letters. A sign of growth for a believer is living like a missionary more days than you live like an imposter.

One of the great things about being around Christian mission work — or a good church, for that matter — is associating with people who are more faithful, more committed and more passionate about serving God than you are. They are a “cloud of witnesses,” as Hebrews 12:1 describes the saints of old, who motivate the rest of us to pursue a higher calling.

Anna, a 98-year-old lady in my church, participates in multiple ministries during a typical week. Recently she spoke at a women’s detention facility and 14 inmates gave their lives to Christ. Anna has a great sense of humor, too. No one can top that! But we can listen to her wisdom, learn from her life and follow her example with God’s help.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, faithful is as faithful does.

Sometimes being faithful to God means being too stubborn to quit in the face of indifference, inertia, bureaucracy and human nature. Medical missionary Jennifer Myhre calls it “push.” Anyone working outside the developed world will instantly recognize what she’s talking about. “Cope vs. Hope,” an excerpt from Myhre’s blog, appeared in the April 24 issue of WORLD magazine (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16626).

“Much of life as a missionary and a physician in a rural, poor, marginal and probably corrupt place involves push,” writes Myhre, who serves with an evangelical mission at a hospital in Uganda. “By this I mean the extra effort required to make the system work the way it should. One could simply go to the hospital, do what one can do and throw up one’s hands about the rest. Which is, after many years of stress and defeat, the passive way that many of our colleagues cope. And me too, some days.

“But not today. As soon as I walked on the ward, I found out that my newest admission had died at 2 a.m. This was an extremely ill child with sickle cell disease and severe acute malnutrition, who had come on death’s doorstep. Worrisome, but we’ve seen many similar kids revive. Only this time, the person who promised to bring the blood needed for transfusion never showed up, and no one noticed or did anything about it. I called him today, and he said the district had refused to pay for his transport, because all its funds were frozen due to failure of our entire district to pay taxes for who-knows-how-many years (and who-knows-where that money went).”

She could have cried, yelled at the people who let the child die, or raged against the machine in general. Maybe she did all of those. But she didn’t quit. She got on the phone to cajole, beg and plead with various officials (already overwhelmed with other issues) to fix the blood transport system — at least for the next delivery.

Meanwhile, another child arrived mid-morning with severe malaria and sickle cell disease, needing a blood transfusion. But the child survived the day and even sat up after receiving a liter of IV fluid. Another kid in the ward, a 5-year-old with tuberculosis, smiled and chased a ball after a week of therapy. Twins, and an abandoned 1-year-old girl whose mother was convinced to return for her, went home healthy.

“Very little of my effort today involved specific medical knowledge,” Myhre admits. It involved a few basic resources — and a lot of determination. “People who work in settings like this need prayer support, to not give up, to believe that a little more push is worth it. I know I do.”

Reminds me of Tom Thurman, perhaps the greatest missionary I have known. He carried other people’s suitcases and called himself a “barefoot boy from Mississippi.” But Tom and his wife, Gloria, spent more than 30 years loving and serving the people of Bangladesh — years that included massive cyclones, famine, civil war, the bloody birth of a nation, more human suffering than most can imagine.

“One of the beautiful things is the resilience of the people here,” Tom once said, looking out over the Ganges at dusk. “They just keep trying, against all kinds of odds — winds, storms, cyclones, floods. A farmer will lose everything he has and say, ‘Well, maybe it will be better next year,’ and plant again…. We’ve just walked along the road with them and helped them carry their burdens.”

A close Bangladeshi friend once walked with Tom for many hours on a ministry errand. Looking down, he noticed the missionary’s shoes were bloody. Tom just kept walking.

That, friend, is push.

–30–

Erich Bridges is global correspondent for the International Mission Board (imb.org).

Evangelist murdered in India’s Bihar state

In the poverty and despair of an Indian slum, one woman finds life through Jesus

By Marcus Rowntree*

INDIA–It was like hell.

That is how Trishna* describes her life before she knew Jesus.

Trishna grew up in one of India’s slums — a squalid, crime-ridden place where families languish in misery. Drunken, unemployed men beat their wives, women turn to prostitution to feed their families, and children gamble, drink and steal.

Trishna’s fate was like most girls in the slum, who — some as young as 10 — are given in arranged marriages by parents who often see them as burdens to be shifted to someone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Saving Grace: Christians fight infant killing in an Indian slum

By Marcus Rowntree*

INDIA–A baby girl, only a few hours old, is carried to her execution.

The woman who holds her calls herself a midwife, but everyone in this Indian slum knows who she really is: the bringer of death.

As the woman approaches the pressure cooker, the baby’s mother does nothing. She has already paid, after all, about 30 cents for her newborn daughter to be boiled alive. Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST-PERSON: A Hindu apprentice carpenter chooses to follow Jesus on Easter Sunday

By Rand Carruth*

KOLKATA, India—Bijoy* chose to follow Jesus on Easter Sunday. The 18-year-old former Hindu, an apprentice carpenter, placed his faith in Jesus as his Savior, rejecting worship of other gods.

I am sounding off an exclamation of praise to our great God! Will you join me? Read the rest of this entry »