China, Latvia, Refugees, Cholera January 2009

We keep praying for our Iranian refugee brethren, and doing what we can with the UNHCR [United Nations High Comission For Refugees] to get the cases of our brethren sympathetically responded to. And our prayers are answered wonderful ways. Our brother P  has been waiting 3 years for acceptance of his case by the UNHCR, which will enable him and his young family to be resettled in a Western country. They're living in a very cold basement whilst waiting and surviving by doing odd jobs. After his baptism, we approached the UNHCR the next day to see what could be done. They informed us that his case had been considered the day BEFORE his baptism, and unknown to him, he had been accepted. So he is just ecstatic with joy. Before we ask, God has answered. Our deepest desires are known to Him from the beginning. All is in His amazing timing.

Brother P  writes [through translation]: "We are so great to hear and read your emails with Mr. A! Now I have been informed about my case results! It is the prayers to God which helped me to hear nice news! We will stay faithful for God and Jesus all the time of our life and bring people to love the real Jesus".

Brother S, who has visited Brother P  just now, writes: "P  is the happiest man in the world now and he is always appreciating your efforts with them. He is talking to everybody to convience them to draw their attention towards the truth and the love of Jesus and be baptized".
 
So we give thanks, knowing there are so many others in precarious situations praying every day for their cases to move forward. As they're not allowed to legally work whilst they are in the assylum application process, many are living in terrible conditions and depend upon us for daily living.

CHINA
The great internet response from China continues, and we're so grateful to Brother F  for travelling around to visit and baptize contacts. He recently reported:

"Hi,I just came back ! It was really a long journey,but I think it worth to doing. Since I know that we are all sinners, "for the wages of sin is death", but after baptism, we can have eternal life with Lord Jesus when He comes. I travelled by train (more than1000km) to  baptize Wang, who studies in a university in Beijing. The arrangements for the baptism at the swimming pool  had already been made by him before I arrived [he was so eager]. Our bro NiFu keeps on preaching at that village after his baptism. I took a vehicle to meet the contacts. In another place, I tried to preach the true gospel among the people who attended the church (correcting them about Trinity etc.).
God bless!"

LATVIA
Salaries here have been cut 15% for Government workers, and by 20% by many firms, inflation is booming, snow not being cleared , fire service being closed down in many small towns... there are protests going on big time. So many here are losing their jobs, it's pretty gloomy for folk. One young family we visited this weekend [married couple with 3 children and elderly parents to care for too] were in a really hard situation- the brother's salary hadn't been paid for 3 months, and there were heavy heating bills to meet. Our sisters in the women's shelter of course are finding things hard- here we are giving Sis Lilija a new pair of boots, hat and scarf.
    

Rising prices for energy mean that we have a very large number of calls upon our Winter heating support program, and really we and those assisted do appreciate your help.
Elsewhere in Eastern Europe are bre & sis are suffering from the Russian / Ukrainian cutoff of gas supplies- but likely most readers are aware of this from the media. There's little we can immediately do to assist apart from undertake to help with electricity bills which will be higher as a result of using electric heaters.

Here's a photo we took recently of a fairly typical gas heating arrangement widely used in rural areas of South East Europe- and quite simply, there's no gas in many areas at the moment [although as we go to press the gas is supposed to be flowing again]
    

CHOLERA
The plight of Zimbabwe has been somewhat overshadowed by events in Gaza, but the fact is that many thousands are infected with cholera as the sanitation system grinds to a halt, state hospitals are closed, elephants in the game parks are killed for meat for the army. Around 2000 are estimated to have died, and this includes some family members of our brothers and sisters. It's such a shame, because nobody need die of cholera given even the most basic supply of clean water and salts. Cindy's produced some simple material about cholera which we're distributing to brothers and sisters not only in Zimbabwe but in other affected areas. You can view it at http://carelinks.net/doc/cholera3 where there's a link to a printable illustrated PDF file.

ERRATA
We mentioned in a previous Carelink a temperature of -18 C. We made a mistake in the conversion to Fahrenheit: -18C is actually -0.4F.

With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks