China, Refugees, France, August 2007
Sis. Esther Worrell has written another spiritual meditation on the plight of our refugee brethren, at refugeelife.
Our brother Don reports from China that he is visiting many contacts, and recently baptized HONG in some isolated woodland.
Photo: Brother Hong
Probably many readers of Carelinks despair at the lack of response to their preaching in the Western world. We're delighted to report that there have been another 6 baptisms in France, which is the classic secular nation which may appear stony ground for the Gospel. These baptisms are all the result of the outreach made to immigrants, and the witness made by our refugee brethren to other refugees.
Our new sister Tina is making a wonderful outreach. She takes food to groups of refugees and asylum seekers, reads the Bible to them, and explains to them about the return of Jesus and the Kingdom coming on earth. We were able to join her one morning in her work- it was a truly good experience to be involved in such frontline preaching, actually taking the true Gospel raw to those on the streets, mixing basic humanitarian care with the preaching of the good news of the coming Kingdom and of the Lord Jesus.
Photo: Cindy and Tina on a bench with bread for the refugees, many of whom sleep rough around an embankment
Photo: Cindy and Tina reading the Bible and preaching - the group of African asylum seekers in the audience grew to over 25, and they listened for over 30 minutes to the Gospel. The Police even dropped by to ensure the girls were OK!
But preaching on the street to immigrants from a Moslem background isn't so easy. In another location, we ran into additional opposition from local French Catholic yobbos, who were supposedly distributing food to the immigrants. Here's Cindy comforting Tina after a very unpleasant encounter:
Photo: Recuperating by playing Praise The Lord songs
We were able to visit our Iranian refugee brethren, and found them in good faith and spreading the Gospel. Along with Sister Aja Goddard from Newcastle NSW [Australia], we visited two of them where they live along with the young son of Brother K, who has now arrived safely in France. It's in the attic at the top of a 7 storey building in a large French city, reachable only by a narrow spiral staircase [140 steps in total, as we counted!]. The place is quite unfit for human habitation, they'd have no chance of escape in a fire, but our brethren live there- and prepared a wonderful Iranian meal for us, after which we had an even more enjoyable breaking of bread.
Photo: Sisters Aja and Cindy on the spiral stair case
Photo: Breaking bread in the "upper room"
We also visited dear brother Ali in another city, who is so very full of the Scriptures and the things of the Truth. He is recovering after a major road accident, and yet is introducing the Truth to Iranians throughout Europe. At the conclusion of our memorial meeting, Ali gave a prayer for all the refugee brethren which will remain an abiding memory for us.
Photo: Breaking bread with Br Ali
We're delighted to announce the baptisms of 6 new brethren: TEKLE, BAHTA, HABTOM, SHEBA, SMOULE, YOSEF and DAVUT. Some of them, along with at least 20 other contacts, are from Eritrea and we have a great need for Bibles in Eritrean [i.e. Tigrinyan language]. These aren't so easy to get hold of, and so far as we can see it's very hard to get a complete Old Testament and New Testament shipped to Europe for less than 30 GBP [US$60, AU$ 70) each. Anyone interested in supporting this project, or who knows anything about getting Tigrinya Bibles or New Testaments, are welcome to contact us!
We invite your continued prayers for the work, and we rejoice in the spread of the Gospel amongst the poor of this world who are rich in faith.